(NEW YORK) — At the time Australian Olympic snowboarder Alex Pullin died in a spearfishing accident last year, he and his partner, Ellidy Vlug, were hoping to become parents, according to Vlug.
Now, nearly 16 months after Pullin’s death, Vlug has given birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter she named Minnie Alex Pullin.
Vlug gave birth to her daughter on Oct. 25, 2021, according to a photo of the newborn she shared with her followers on Instagram.
Pullin, who was Australia’s flagbearer at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, was 32 when he died in July 2020 off the coast of Queensland.
In June of this year, Vlug shared on Instagram that she was pregnant with their child via in vitro fertilization (IVF).
“When my love had his accident, we all held onto hope that I’d be pregnant that month. We’d been trying for a baby,” she wrote. “IVF was on our cards but it wasn’t something I ever imagined I’d be tackling on my own. Bittersweet like none other, I’ve never been more certain or excited about anything in my entire life.”
“Your Dad and I have been dreaming of you for years little one. With a heart wrenching plot twist in the middle, I am honored to finally welcome a piece of the phenomenon that is Chump back into this world!” Vlug wrote at the time.
Vlug shared her pregnancy journey on social media, writing about how her friends have supported her as she both mourned Pullin and prepared on her own to become a mom.
“My friends literally deserve a medal for the way they have shown up for me the past year,” she wrote in an Oct. 14 post, later adding, “I feel so grateful and lucky to be bringing Chumpy’s daughter or son into this love bubble.”
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The future of the Minneapolis Police Department may be decided on Tuesday.
A ballot measure is asking voters if the city should amend its charter to replace the police department with the Department of Public Safety, which would take a “comprehensive public health approach.”
The new department could include police officers, but there wouldn’t be a required minimum number to employ. The MPD had 588 officers as of mid-October and was authorized for up to 888, according to The Associated Press.
The charter amendment would replace the police chief with a commissioner nominated by the mayor and approved by the City Council. By state law, the charter amendment would go into effect 30 days after it passes.
“It’s a vote for us to all reimagine public safety and to move away from the type of systems that have not produced safety for all communities,” said Rashad Robinson, a spokesperson for Color of Change PAC, which organized in support of the ballot measure.
City Council member Jeremiah Ellison told ABC News that the police department would become a division of law enforcement within the Department of Public Safety.
“Question two is about are we locked into our current system of public safety, this police only model,” he said. “Are we locked into this model, that’s what voting no does, or do we have an ability to transform public safety into the future? That’s what a yes does.”
While supporters of the charter amendment connect it to the calls for police reform that followed George Floyd’s killing last year, opponents, including those who want reform, have said the measure is ill-defined and crafted without enough community input.
“We skipped over a lot of steps that would normally happen when you’re bringing about a change of this magnitude, and people are being sold a proposal that has no plan attached to it,” said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minneapolis civil rights attorney and activist. “There’s no certainty of what this new department will actually look like, how it will function and whether it will actually address the underlying public safety issues.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo similarly criticized the charter amendment at a press conference on Wednesday.
“It will not eliminate tragic incidents between police and community from ever occurring in our city,” he said. “It will not suddenly change the culture of the police department that has been in existence for 155 years.”
Voters appear divided. North Minneapolis resident Tallaya Byers said that she supports the public safety charter amendment because she feels current police officers aren’t trained to handle certain situations, like those involving people who use drugs or have a mental illness.
“It will bring an element to where they can identify and analyze situations, to where people are not seen as such a threat,” Byers said. “For me, it’s going to help the police officers do their job, analyze situations, have a conversation. It’s that simple.”
Teto Wilson, a North Minneapolis resident who owns a barbershop, said that he plans to vote against the ballot measure because proponents haven’t elaborated on how it will affect people of color.
“I think policing needs to be radically reformed, and they’re proposing this charter amendment like it’s a radical change to policing, but how can you say that you haven’t told us what that means,” he said. “What’s going to be in this Department of Public Safety?”
He added: “They have not told us what it would look like other than, you know, we’re gonna have mental health workers that are going to show up on calls. I can’t see how that’s going to solve our problems.”
Some council members have pushed back on claims that they haven’t explained the proposal thoroughly. Council member Phillipe Cunningham tweeted in August that the city attorney advised council members to not engage on an outline of the ordinance that would explain the functions of the proposed Department of Public Safety because it could be seen as advocacy.
“A charter change is supposed to be as barebones as possible,” he said. “You’re not going to put a bunch of details that might need to be flexible in the charter, you’re going to put a skeleton language in the charter.”
Ellison added that amending the charter would not reallocate funds. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the most recent police budget approved was $164 million, with an additional $11 million accessible if approved by the City Council.
Wilson said he was worried neighborhood crime may increase with fewer officers. Armstrong mentioned a similar concern.
“Many in our community feel as though we have already been underserved when it comes to having to call 911 or receiving an adequate response when there is a crisis,” she added.
Robinson, the Color of Change spokesperson, said that the charter amendment gives the city more tools for approaching public safety issues.
“The community has been doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result,” he said. “This is putting something new on the table and hoping to build some new ways of really bringing about safety and bringing about justice.”
But Armstrong, a local organizer, pushed back on that idea.
“It’s a false dichotomy between voting ‘no’ and keeping things the same, or voting ‘yes’ and agreeing to this new public safety charter amendment,” she said. “Really, we should have had a community engagement process. We should have had evidence-based practices and we should have had options in terms of what kind of structure, you know, the MPD should become, versus being boxed into voting ‘no’ or voting ‘yes.'”
ABC News’ Zachary Kiesch and Briana Stewart contributed to this report.
(GLASGOW, U.K.) — As the leaders of the world gather in Glasgow to discuss the fate of the climate crisis, the power to save the planet from destruction caused by humans does not only lie in the hands of those in power.
While the majority of reductions in greenhouse gases will need to be accomplished by transformation in policy and industry, individual actions can also help prevent further warming, according to the experts.
“As individuals, we have to pursue collective action to actually move the needle on this,” Jason Smerdon, a climate scientists for Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, told ABC News.
This is what individuals can do to help slow down climate change, according to experts:
Discuss climate change at the dinner table
Recent polling shows that global warming is “one of those controversial subjects that don’t get discussed at the dinner table,” but according to Smerdon, that is a mistake.
“People often say that you shouldn’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table … and that’s a significant disadvantage,” he said. “People need to be discussing what it means for us individually, what it means for our communities, the regions where we live.”
Smerdon encourages people who are educated and worried about the issue to talk to their loved ones and inner circles about what climate change would mean for them.
Continue to talk about climate change to transform the culture and “mobilize at the scale we need,” Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, environmental policy expert and founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for urban coastal cities, told ABC News.
Use the power of the vote
It’s up to the voter to put politicians in place to implement solutions already available, such as renewable energy, restoring ecosystems, practicing regenerative farming and making transportation greener, according to the experts.
Actions taken during the Trump administration, such as the decision to roll back dozens of environmental protections and remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, as well as holding the Biden administration accountable on their promises, illustrate why it is so important to vote in every single election, Johnson said.
Lawmakers will need to address the structural deficiencies and ensure that climate legislation is passed and implemented swiftly, Smerdon said.
“The biggest, the most important things with regard to addressing climate change are addressing so many of the threats to our democracy that are unfolding currently in the United State,” Smerdon said, adding that gerrymandering, the filibuster, the strong money lobby within politics and voter disenfranchisement are all “real, serious impediments to passing climate change legislation.”
Carefully select who to do business with
A relative few number of companies are responsible for an overwhelming percentage of the world’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, why it’s important for consumers to know where they are putting their money, activists say.
Just 100 companies worldwide are responsible for 71% of the world’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a report by the non-profit Carbon Disclosure Project, published in 2017.
It is important to “look at the institutions that are financing and expanding and digging us more deeply in this climate hole,” Lindsey Allen, executive director of the non-profit Rainforest Action Network, told ABC News.
Individuals should think about where their money “sleeps at night” and remove it from the banks they believe do not have a commitment to the climate fight, Allen said.
“I think there really is an opportunity if consumers engage with their dollars and vote with their wallets to really increase the ambition of financial institutions with what the climate crisis demands,” she said.
In addition, donate time or spare cash to organizations dedicated to the fight against climate change, Johnson said.
Eat sustainably
On of the easiest thing individuals can do in their daily lives to make an impact in the climate fight is simple switches to their diets, according to experts.
Individuals do not need to become a vegetarian or give up animal products altogether to reduce the carbon footprint of their meals.
“We’re not turning them into vegans,” Marty Heller, senior research specialist at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, told ABC News. “We’re just saying, hey, eat something that is an average [carbon] footprint.”
The easiest way to make a meal more sustainable is to eat less meat and more organic, plant-based foods — the closer they were grown, the better, according to the experts.
Meat consumption is the largest culprit of greenhouse gas emissions in American diets. Individuals should cut back on beef consumption, which has a “monumental” carbon footprint compared to any other meat, Smerdon said.
Individuals should also choose foods that are grown regeneratively, which restores carbon to the soil, “where it belongs” and plant trees and grow their own food, even if with just a small plot of land, Johnson said.
We can no longer wait on large changes from the federal government
Individuals will find more success addressing the impacts of climate change on their local communities rather than wait on the federal government to pass sweeping legislation, Smerdon said.
Climate change is already here and impacted communities, as seen in the recent superstorms to hit the South and the wildfires burning in the drought-ridden West.
“So we have to engage locally,” he said. “We have to engage our local networks, our local institutions, our local decision makers, to think about the impacts of climate change in our communities and make our communities more resilient and interconnected.”
‘Individual efforts only go so far’
While there are several things people can do to reduce their carbon footprint, there are more reasons why placing the burden on individuals is “simply not enough,” Smerdon said.
The guilt that people associate with the their carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of others is not actually helping to slow down global warming, he added.
“And when people start to feel guilty about what they are doing or not doing, it can lead to a sense of paralysis and a feeling of guilt that’s not productive,” Smerdon said.
Smerdon gave an example of the pandemic, and how it stalled the transportation sector across the globe in 2020.
“Despite all of the individual sacrifices that we made — staying in our homes or apartments, not traveling, not going out much at all — that made a very minimal dent in the overall emissions,” he said. “And so that really indicates that these are systemic characteristics of how we do business, how we create energy on the planet.”
(AMBOVOMBE, Madagascar) — “Kere” is a word that echoes around southern Madagascar. It means hunger, and the people here know it all too well.
For the past four years, the lack of food has become a constant in their lives.
But unlike other countries, where extreme hunger and near-famine conditions are caused by war, conflict, or isolated weather events, in this part of Madagascar, the cause is so far unique: southern Madagascar is on the verge of becoming the world’s first climate-change induced near-famine in modern history.
Arduino Mangoni, the deputy country director of the World Food Programme in Madagascar, told ABC News he had “never seen people, especially children, in this situation that we’re seeing here.”
“I have seen people eating cactus leaves, insects, and surviving upon nothing, and the lack of water is probably the most striking element,” he said.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and his team traveled to Madagascar to report on the worsening situation, as aid organizations and the Malagasy government rush to fill in the gaps of food and water in this region.
Southern Madagascar is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, making the land here too arid to farm and leading to crop failure. For the past four years, the severe lack of rain has led to depleted food sources and dried-up rivers. Climate change has also led to sandstorms affecting these lands, covering formerly arable land and rendering it infertile.
“As they cannot plant, it’s affecting their food security,” Patrick Vercammen, the World Food Programme’s emergency coordinator here, told Muir during a visit to Akanka Fokotany, an affected village. “Having sandstorms in this kind of landscape is not something usual and having the effects of sandstorms shows that nature is changing, the environment is changing, and the climate change is affecting this area more than the rest of Madagascar.”
The situation has led to widespread malnutrition affecting more than 1 million people, and pockets of what the United Nations classifies “catastrophic” food insecurity signaling deepening hunger.
Madagascar has produced 0.01 percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions in the last eight decades, but it is suffering some of the worst effects.
“It is not fair…these people have not contributed to climate change because they do not have electricity, they do not have cars etc., and they’re paying probably the highest price in terms of the consequences of climate change,” Mangoni said.
The children are the most affected, with at least half a million kids under the age of five expected to be acutely malnourished, according to the World Food Programme and UNICEF.
In fact, the agencies say about 110,000 children are already in severe condition, suffering irreversible damage to their growth.
As the country enters the lean season – that dangerous time during which people wait for the next successful harvest — the need to provide food to those at risk of starvation has become more urgent. Aid workers warning that, without action, they could run out of food resources by the end of the year.
The World Food Programme is working together with the Malagasy government to alleviate some of the most acute needs in this region; prevent and treat children experiencing malnutrition; and build infrastructure and knowledge to make the population of southern Madagascar more resilient in the face of drought. They’re supporting more than 700,000 people in dire need, and the need is expected to grow.
(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up to send a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station for the fourth time.
The mission, dubbed Crew-3, will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, to the ISS for a six-month stay in orbit.
The spaceflight, moved to Wednesday from Sunday because of weather, will be the first for three of the four crew members.
The veteran on the mission is Marshburn. The doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, making his third trip to space, said this research could one day answer bigger questions about human existence.
“It’s every one of us who has looked into the night sky and wondered, ‘How does the universe work, and how did life come to our planet Earth?'” Marshburn told ABC News.
Barron, an astronaut who has experience on submarines, said her time in Navy has helped prepare her for this moment — and that she made a playlist for the ride out.
“There are some strong millennial favorites on my playlist and throwbacks to the ’90s,” she joked.
They will launch aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.
The crew is scheduled to spend 22 hours in the capsule before docking with the ISS. The team decided to call the new capsule “Endurance” — a tribute to the human spirit and a historic sailing vessel used by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the ISS successfully for the first time in June 2020, which cleared them to continue conducting flights with their rocket and Crew Dragon. It was the first crewed launch to depart from American soil in nearly a decade.
Last month SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission made history as civilians traveled the greatest distance away from Earth — 367 miles — even farther than the International Space Station.
But on that flight they discovered an issue with the toilet inside the Crew Dragon that almost hampered the Crew-3 launch. A tube became unglued and spilled urine onto fans beneath the floor.
“It had no impact on Inspiration4 at all,” William Gerstenmair, SpaceX’s vice president, said during a press conference. “We didn’t really even notice it, the crew didn’t notice it, until we got the vehicle back and we looked under the floor and we saw the fact that there was contamination.”
Engineers eventually fixed the problem.
SpaceX is contracted to launch up to six crewed flights for NASA, with two more scheduled for 2022.
(NEW YORK) — Two trials over killings that have garnered national attention are now going on simultaneously and legal experts said they expect both will hinge on video evidence.
Jury selection in the trial of 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of killing two white people and wounding a third during a protest over the police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, began on Monday.
At the same time, jury selection is ongoing for the trial of three white men accused of chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia.
Opening statements in both cases could commence by the end of this week.
Chris Slobogin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and director of the school’s Criminal Justice Program, told ABC News that he is not aware of two major murder trials such as these occurring at the same time.
Although the allegations are vastly different, video is expected to play a major role in both trials.
“The prevalence of video in this day and age has made many criminal cases much different than was the case 10, 20, 30 years ago,” Slobogin said.
But Slobogin said the video evidence does not necessarily mean a slam dunk for prosecutors in either case.
“Visual evidence isn’t necessarily the truth in the sense that there are a lot of different angles to any given event and the only angle you’re getting when you have video is the angle that the camera was pointed from,” Slobogin said.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of his alleged crimes, is claiming he used deadly force because he was being attacked by a mob and feared for his life.
The Antioch, Illinois teen Rittenhouse, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide. He has also pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possession of a firearm by an individual under the age of 18.
Rittenhouse, according to his attorneys, answered “his patriotic and civil duty to serve” when an online call was put out by a former Kenosha city alderman for “patriots” to take up arms and help protect lives and property in the city against looting and rioting that occurred in August 2020.
Angry protests broke out in Kenosha after a police officer there shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, multiple times in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. The local district attorney declined to charge the officer after he was cleared in an investigation by the state Department of Justice.
Rittenhouse, who is white, is accused of using an AR-style semiautomatic rifle to fatally shoot two men, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, during an Aug. 25, 2020, protest in Kenosha. He is also accused of shooting and severely wounding another white protester Gaige Grosskreutz, 27.
“We have a situation where a 17-year-old boy, who is not even legally able to carry a weapon, was allegedly in town to protect property that did not belong to him. That’s extraordinary,” veteran Michigan defense attorney Jamie White told ABC News. “Clearly, he (Rittenhouse) was under some form of assault when you look at the video in an acute sense. But when you look at the entirety of the situation, he just should not have been there.”
The Arbery case
In the Arbery case, the defendants Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer, his son, Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, are accused of trying to make a citizens’ arrest when Travis McMichael allegedly shot the unarmed Arbery three times with a shotgun, killing him.
Travis McMichael is also expected to claim self-defense, arguing the use of deadly force was justified when the 25-year-old Black man violently resisted a citizens’ arrest under a law that existed at the time. The pre-Civil War-era law that was repealed in May primarily due to the Arbery killing gave civilian vigilantes the power to arrest someone they “reasonably suspected” of trying to escape from a felony.
Gregory McMichael, according to his attorneys, claims he thought Arbery, who was jogging past his house, matched the description of a neighborhood burglary suspect. Both he and his son allegedly brandished firearms while chasing Arbery in Travis McMichael’s pickup truck that prosecutors allege had a vanity plate featuring a Confederate flag.
Bryan recorded a cellphone video of the confrontation that partly captured Travis McMichael shooting Arbery during a struggle and is expected to be the key evidence prosecutors plan to present at trial.
Bryan’s lawyer claims he was just a witness to the incident, but prosecutors alleged he was an active participant in “hunting down” Arbery. Prosecutors also allege that Bryan told investigators he overheard Travis McMichael yell a racial slur at Arbery as he lay dying in the street, an allegation the younger McMichael denies.
Prosecutors say the evidence will show Arbery was just out for a Sunday jog when he was allegedly murdered.
All three men have pleaded not guilty to state charges of murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment stemming from the Feb. 23, 2020, fatal shooting in the unincorporated Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick.
The three men were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.
“We have men who had no property interest in the home where the deceased was apparently trespassing at the worst-case scenario and ended up shot to death,” said White, the Michigan trial attorney, referring to a home that was under construction Arbery was caught on surveillance video leaving empty-handed just before he was killed.
‘I just shot somebody’
Video evidence expected to be presented in the Kenosha case could prove favorable in the defense of Rittenhouse, Obear said.
“You know the old saying, a picture speaks a thousand words, a video speaks a million. Having watched the videos, I think it’s very apparent exactly what the defense argument will be: ‘You just have to watch the videos,'” Obear said. “He’s basically naturally in a position where he would seem to be defending himself with people approaching him in that manner.”
Cellphone videos played at earlier court hearings, partly captured two confrontations the teenager was involved in. In the first, Rosenbaum allegedly followed Rittenhouse into a used car lot and confronted him in an attempt to disarm him before he was shot to death, according to a criminal complaint. As Rosenbaum lay on the ground, Rittenhouse was recorded in a video running away while allegedly calling a friend and telling them, “I shot somebody.”
Defense attorneys have cited what appears to be the muzzle flash of a gun in the video before Rittenhouse fired his first shot.
Other videos recorded after Rosenbaum was shot show people chasing Rittenhouse down a street and him apparently being hit by Huber with a skateboard and falling to the ground. The video shows Rittenhouse allegedly shooting Huber, who apparently tried to take his gun away and firing at Grosskreutz, who investigators said was armed with a handgun. Grosskreutz suffered a severe wound to his arm when he tried to grab Rittenhouse’s rifle, prosecutors said.
The videos prompted then-President Donald Trump to comment on the Rittenhouse case in August 2020, saying it appeared he was acting in self-defense.
“He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like,” Trump said during a news conference. “I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.”
A number of conservatives and gun-rights advocates rallied to Rittenhouse’s defense, contributing to his defense fund and putting up $2 million to cover his bail.
Judge’s controversial ruling
During what was expected to be the final hearing before the Rittenhouse trial begins, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder made a series of rulings that White said appeared to help the defense.
Schroeder ruled that defense attorneys can refer to the two men who were killed and the one wounded as “looters” and “rioters,” but barred prosecutors from referring to them as “victims” or even “alleged victims” during the trial, saying they must be called “complaining witnesses” or “decedent.”
The judge also granted the defense permission to call an expert witness in police use of force, even though the testimony will pertain to a civilian’s use of force.
“We do see the judge already acting in a way that could be arguably biased,” White said.
But Obear said much is being made over what he described as a “pretty standard” ruling.
“No one is a ‘victim’ until there’s an adjudication of guilt and the prosecutors like to throw that term around as if it’s a prejudged sort of situation,” Obear said. “But it’s a loaded term. When people hear the term victim it naturally conjures sympathy.”
Both White and Obear agreed that allowing the defense to call an expert on the use of force is a “huge win” for Rittenhouse.
“I think that what Mr. Rittenhouse did on this occasion is so extraordinary that to allow a third party to come in and make commentary about that from a legal point of view is certainly going to be powerful and probably will persuade the jury in one way or the other,” White said.
Obear added, “If this all has to do with what was going on inside of Kyle Rittenhouse’s mind the only way to solve that question is to let a jury decide this.”
“What possible reasonable resolution could there be here? We’re talking about homicides and his position is, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, and self-defense is an absolute defense,’” Obear said. “If that’s correctly posited to the jury, they’ll find him not guilty, and he’ll go home.”
Will Rittenhouse take the witness stand?
Legal experts interviewed by ABC News were split on whether defense lawyers should put Rittenhouse on the witness stand.
“This is a case where I can actually see the defense prevailing here without putting him on the stand,” Obear said, citing the video evidence.
But White believes Rittenhouse should testify.
“He’s a child … and anytime you can present someone who’s vulnerable in that kind of way it’s going to benefit the defense from the standpoint of a jury,” White said.
Slobogin, however, said that if Rittenhouse testifies, he runs the risk of opening the door for prosecutors to raise broader questions about his actions and intentions.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. was gripped by two public health crises in 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic and a historic rise in gun violence.
Even as cities locked down, people retreated into their homes and life was seemingly put on pause last year, 2020 still marked the deadliest year for gun violence in at least two decades, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There were more than 19,400 homicides involving a gun and accidental fatal shootings — a 25% increase from 2019, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. Gun suicides reached 24,000 last year, matching the year prior.
Experts say it’s not easy to identify one precise reason for the rise in gun violence.
Rather, 2020 was a turbulent time that presented COVID-19 concerns and economic downturn as well as a racial reckoning that rocked communities in multiple ways, including massive protests and civil unrest.
It also was a time when an estimated 23 million guns were purchased — a 65% increase from 2019, according to Small Arms Analytics, a consulting firm that tracks gun sales. It is unclear if the increase in gun purchases was linked to the increase in gun violence and research is split on the connection generally.
The violence unfolded across the country, big and small cities alike. Overall, 57% of 129 law enforcement agencies surveyed across the nation by the Police Executive Research Forum reported an increase in gun homicides from 2019 to 2020, according to the January 2021 report.
The agencies serving the biggest cities reported a 75% increase in firearm homicides in 2020 compared to 2019, and all surveyed agencies also reported a nearly 70% increase in nonfatal shootings.
Colorado mother-of-three Ana Thallas’ life changed forever amid the pandemic when her daughter Isabella was fatally shot while walking her dog with her boyfriend in a Denver park on June 10, 2020, just two days after her 21st birthday. Her boyfriend was shot twice by the suspect but survived.
The Denver District Attorney’s office said that Michael Close, 37, allegedly got into an argument with the couple “over a command they used to have their dog defecate,” and he opened fire with an assault rifle.
“I never thought my daughter would be slaughtered mid-morning walking a dog in the middle of the city,” Thallas told ABC News. “This pandemic has created fear within people. Just having to be secluded, cooped up and isolated contributed to the mental health crisis. Fear turns into anger, and the anger turns into violence.”
2020 was a ‘perfect storm’
Dr. Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said 2020 was the “perfect storm” of conditions where “everything bad happened at the same time — you had the COVID outbreak, huge economic disruption, people were scared.”
At the same time, after-school programs and violence disruption programs were greatly restricted, plus 2020 was an election year, during which gun purchases tend to rise for fear that the new administration will change gun policies, Webster said.
“It’s particularly challenging to know with certainty which of these things independently is associated with the increased violence. Rather it was the ‘cascade’ of events all unfolding in a similar time frame,” he added.
For instance, as kids moved to at-home online learning due to school closures and many parents either lost jobs or had to work remotely — all while grappling with financial stress and social isolation — there was gun violence in some of their homes.
From March to December 2020, unintentional shooting deaths by children rose 31% over the same time in 2019, resulting in 128 gun deaths, according to the Everytown #NotAnAccident Index.
Unsafe storage likely played a role, experts say. A January study by the University of California, Davis violence prevention research program found “more than 50,000 Californians said they had started storing at least one of their firearms in the least secure way — loaded and not locked up,” Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, an assistant professor with VPRP who led the study said. “Approximately half of those respondents lived in homes with children or teens.”
People changed how they stored guns based on “fear and anxiety and pandemic-induced uncertainty about the future,” the study found.
But storing a firearm unsecured is a massive risk, Kravitz-Wirtz said, especially for unintentional shootings and suicide. Approximately 60% of gun deaths are suicides according to CDC data.
Although preliminary CDC data shows that overall suicides in the U.S. slightly decreased in 2020 compared to the year prior, gun suicides still surpassed 24,000, just as they did in 2019.
Another way gun violence played out in homes was through domestic violence incidents.
A study entitled “Firearm purchasing and firearm violence during the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.” analyzed data from March through July 2020 and found that excess firearm purchasing was associated with an increase in firearm injuries from domestic violence in April and May, “particularly during the early months where social distancing was at its highest point,” said Julia P. Schleimer, the main author of the report with UC Davis’ violence prevention research program. The authors say that linking firearm violence to civil unrest and other factors during summer of 2020 had to be studied further.
The pandemic led to an 8% increase in calls for domestic violence services in March, April and May, the initial three months of the pandemic, in 14 large U.S. cities, according to a study published in Journal of Public Economics.
The Domestic Violence Hotline also received the highest incoming volume in its history, with over 636,000 calls, chats and texts in 2020, including a 19% rise in callers experiencing the use or threat of firearms last year, according to the organization.
The pandemic may have put many people in a vulnerable situation as research shows that access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a woman will die at the hands of a domestic abuser, according to the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.
Impact on Black and Latino communities
An analysis of nine U.S. cities found that over 85% of the increase in gun violence from 2019 to 2020 was in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
These groups had to deal with the converging crises in 2020: coronavirus and gun violence. They were already disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, with Black and Hispanic people nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19, according to CDC data.
At the same time, Black people are 10 times more likely to die from gun homicide than white people, according to an Everytown analysis of the CDC’s Underlying Cause of Death database. In 2019, Latino people were nearly twice as likely to be killed by guns than non-Hispanic whites, according to a study from the Violence Policy Center.
In the pandemic, these groups also were disproportionately affected by job loss and financial strife compared to white households, according to a summer 2020 poll by NPR, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Further, these more than half of all Black, Latino and Native American workers hold essential and nonessential jobs that must be done in person, compared to 41% of white workers, even as many jobs went remote out of safety precautions, according to a December 2020 report by the Urban Institute.
John Donohue, a Stanford University law professor who studies gun violence, said time periods of stress are associated with more shootings.
“It does seem that the dislocations of the pandemic were in neighborhoods that were more vulnerable to both the economic insecurities and just pressures of a more stressful life,” Donahue said. “The pandemic was a major disruption.”
Kravitz-Wirtz told ABC News that the violence was concentrated “in neighborhoods that have experienced systemic racism and disinvestment.”
The closure of community centers and suspension of many violence prevention organizations also led to “destabilization that can really create the conditions for violence to emerge,” she added.
As gun violence played out in homes and communities, law enforcement also faced challenges responding to crime due to COVID-19 concerns and tensions with the public.
Donohue said civil unrest and police played a role in the storm.
Officers couldn’t be “as effective in stopping crime,” because they were responding to protests around the country in 2020 decrying racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death by Minneapolis police, Donohue said.
Several police agencies also reported they scaled back proactive enforcement due to the pandemic, such as making fewer traffic stops and suspending gun buyback programs, the Police Executive Research Forum said in their January 2021 report.
“You had police departments overtaxed in response to COVID because their officers were getting sick. Then you had the George Floyd murder and ripple effects from protests and then often violent response by law enforcement,” Webster said. “There is a clear connection between trust in police and community safety, all of this takes a toll on public safety.”
Increase in gun ownership
Researchers at the UC Davis violence prevention research program issued a statewide survey in July 2020 that asked respondents specifically if they acquired a gun due to the pandemic as well as their concerns about violence in the health crisis. They found that an estimated 110,000 California adults acquired a firearm in response to fears stemming from the pandemic, including 47,000 new firearm owners, according to the January study.
The survey respondents who bought firearms mainly did so for protection, with 76% saying they were concerned about lawlessness, 56% about prisoner releases and 49% that the government was going too far due to changes during the pandemic.
One in 10 residents surveyed also expressed fear that someone they knew may intentionally harm someone or themselves due to pandemic losses including losing a loved one, job or housing.
Experts are split on whether the stunning rise in gun purchases will fuel future firearm violence.
While there is a broad field of research that provides evidence that gun availability increases the risk for firearm violence, 2020 is unique in that other compounding factors are at play.
Last year’s trends have already continued into 2021, with over 31,000 gun violence deaths recorded, according to Gun Violence Archive data, and over 27 million background checks initiated so far, according to National Instant Criminal Background Check System data.
Schleimer, who studied firearm purchases and firearm violence in 2020, said it’s possible that increased firearm access and continuing stressors could “result in an increased risk of firearm violence moving forward.”
The US can ‘shift the trajectory’
Donohue, though, forecasts some of the violence could taper off with the end of the pandemic.
“As the pandemic recedes, you’ll get some restoration of normality,” he said. “But we still are going to have to contend with the politicians, growing power of weaponry and its increasing availability and tensions between the public and the police — all unhelpful for restricting crime.”
Kravitz-Wirtz said there’s been “positive momentum” to reverse the pandemic’s trend of gun violence. But she warned that root issues of inequality need to be addressed through “thriving wage” jobs, housing security and youth empowerment programs especially in Black and brown communities.
“There’s a real opportunity now,” Kravitz-Wirtz said. “We can really shift the trajectory that we’ve been experiencing in positive directions if we can follow through on the data-informed and community wisdom-informed strategies.”
On a national and state level, there have been efforts to mitigate gun violence. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced federal strike forces in five major cities to take down gun trafficking corridors over the summer, and President Joe Biden unveiled several executive actions to combat the rise in shootings. The administration has also allowed coronavirus relief funds to be used for community violence intervention.
In Colorado, Thallas helped get the Isabella Joy Act passed in honor of her daughter. It requires gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to law enforcement within five days of realizing the weapon is missing. The Denver Police Department said the shooter in Isabella’s case had taken a rifle from a friend’s home without their knowledge or permission, CBS Denver affiliate KCNC reported.
Thallas is now calling for the act, which went into effect last month, to be implemented nationally.
“Unfortunately I don’t see an end to this [gun] epidemic. Encouraging responsible gun ownership would be more realistic,” Thallas said. “It’s our family that pays the life sentence with Isabella’s death. Don’t doubt this couldn’t be you. Be proactive, not reactive.”
(NEW YORK) — Exactly two months after allowing Texas to impose a near-total ban on abortions, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday was taking a closer look at the groundbreaking state law deliberately designed by its sponsors to evade constitutional review in federal court.
SB8, which outlaws most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, has succeeded — at least temporarily — because it is enforced through an unprecedented scheme that deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets” an unlawful abortion.
The arrangement has made it difficult for abortion clinics, patients and their advocates to preemptively show concrete harm in court and identify whom, specifically, a court should enjoin from bringing lawsuits.
During two hours of scheduled oral arguments, which were livestreamed to the public, the justices were expected to examine whether abortion rights advocates and the federal government have the ability to sue Texas over the law given the way it’s designed.
State officials insist they have no role in implementation of the law and therefore cannot be targeted in court. They also claim that it does not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking abortion care, since they are still free to do so up to six weeks of pregnancy and can freely travel out of state to seek services elsewhere.
Texas abortion providers argue SB8 has had a chilling effect on clinics and imposed irreversible harm on women patients, many of whom don’t have the financial means to travel long distances to seek abortions. They also warn that if the law stands, copycat bills in other states could threaten other constitutionally-protected rights without any chance of legal recourse.
The Justice Department, which filed suit in a separate case against the law this fall, said the federal government has also been directly harmed by the law and has a responsibility to defend the rights of all citizens from plainly unconstitutional state laws under the Supremacy Clause.
A federal district court judge in early October sided with the DOJ, saying SB8’s enforcement mechanism created “offensive deprivation” of a constitutionally-protected right. Several days later, a panel of appeals court judges put the decision on hold.
SB8 will remain in effect across Texas until the Supreme Court rules. The court’s decision to expedite the case demonstrates rare speed not seen since the Bush v. Gore case in 2000; a ruling is widely expected before the end of the year.
The design of SB8 makes it unique from similar pre-viability abortion bans enacted by other states for which enforcement is handled by state officials; those have all been subsequently blocked by federal courts.
A majority of Supreme Court justices in early September said “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” made it difficult to intervene in the Texas case, even though “serious questions” about the law’s constitutionality exist.
Longstanding precedent clearly renders the six-week abortion ban unconstitutional. The scope of abortion rights in America are not directly under review by the court in the Texas cases, but the justices are scheduled to revisit Roe v. Wade in a separate case from Mississippi set for December.
(NEW YORK) — American Airlines has canceled more than 2,000 flights since Friday — stranding tens of thousands of passengers temporarily at U.S. airports across the country. American is just the latest airline to suffer crippling logistical failures amid staffing shortages.
The airline said high winds at its Dallas-Fort Worth hub on Thursday left flight crews out of their regular position and sparked the dayslong cancellations.
“The problem with most of the large airlines is if they if one hub sneezes, the other hubs catch colds,” aviation expert Henry Harteveldt told ABC News. “The airlines’ networks are all interconnected.”
American COO David Seymour said in an internal memo that in order to provide scheduling certainty for their crews, they were forced to proactively cancel some flights “for the last few days this month.”
American has already canceled 300 flights Monday morning, but anticipates they will get through “the brief irregular ops period quickly with the start of a new month.”
“Unfortunately, when bad weather hits an airline at the end of the month, the problems are exacerbated because often crews are out of the legal amount of time they’re allowed to work,” Harteveldt said.
A staffing boost from the 1,800 American flight attendants set to return from leave Monday should help American re-stabilize this week, experts said.
Southwest had a similar operational meltdown three weeks ago when the airline canceled 2,000 flights over three days.
The airline blamed the multi-day mess on air traffic control issues, bad weather and “other external constraints.”
In response, Southwest said it’s going to hire more than 5,000 employees by the end of the year to mitigate future issues and has 50% of the goal met.
Experts are worried American and Southwest’s inability to stabilize their schedules quickly is a potential warning of what’s to come this winter.
With airlines booking their flights to 100% capacity, experts are concerned there is no wiggle room left in the system to recover if a major airline suffers any logistical failure during the busy travel season.
“The chaos that is the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel season will be even more chaotic this year,” Harteveldt said.
ABC News’ Annie Ochitwa and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — In New York City, where a vaccine mandate for municipal workers is now in effect, 18 fire companies are out of service due to sick calls Monday, but no firehouses are closed and the mayor said there were no immediate disruptions to city services.
Nearly all New York City municipal workers, including police officers, firefighters and EMTs, had until 5 p.m. Friday to get at least one shot or be placed on unpaid leave, starting Monday. While the official deadline was Friday, those who got vaccinated over the weekend will not be placed on leave.
FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said he couldn’t say how many fire companies were understaffed Monday morning because it “changes by the minute.” But Nigro did call on firefighters to stop misusing sick leave and report to work.
“There are understaffed units. That understaffing could end immediately if members stopped going sick when they weren’t sick,” Nigro said. “Once the members come to their senses and stop using medical leave improperly, they can help out not just the citizens of the city but their brothers and sisters staffing the units.”
Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro and FDNY-Fire Officers Association President Jim McCarthy said at a Monday news conference that they tried to negotiate for more time for members to be able to file for exemptions, decide on retirement or get the shot.
About 9,000 municipal workers were on leave without pay Monday, representing about 6% of the total city workforce, said Danielle Filson, the mayor’s press secretary.
“Mandates work,” Filson said. “That number will continue to decrease. The remaining have pending accommodations/exemption requests. They are working and subject to weekly testing.”
Of the municipal departments, the Department of Corrections, which faces a later compliance deadline, currently has the most unvaccinated workers, followed by the FDNY, which has an 80% vaccination rate.
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul contributed to this report.
