richardmurray

Jacinda Townsend Wins 16th Annual Ernest Gaines Book Award for Mother Country
Read more details in the post immediately below

Alvin Bragg, now Manhattan District Attorney, speaks with supporters on election night, in New York, Nov. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

Bragg to toss 188 convictions due to NYPD misconduct

Dean Meminger reported
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday said he will toss nearly 200 convictions that were secured by eight NYPD officers found guilty of work-related criminal conduct.  

Bragg on Thursday morning began the process of vacating 188 misdemeanor convictions stemming from arrests that took place between 2001 and 2016, his office said in a press release. 

Eight officers tied to the 188 convictions were convicted themselves, of crimes ranging from bribe-receiving and official misconduct to falsifying business records and perjury, the release said. More than 94 of the convictions led to prison sentences or fines. 

What You Need To Know
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday said he will toss nearly 200 convictions that were secured by eight NYPD officers found guilty of work-related criminal conduct

Bragg on Thursday morning began the process of vacating 188 misdemeanor convictions stemming from arrests that took place between 2001 and 2016

Eight officers tied to the 188 convictions were convicted themselves, of crimes ranging from bribe-receiving and official misconduct to falsifying business records and perjury
“While most law enforcement officials and police officers are dedicated public servants, these eight officers, who played a material role in hundreds of arrests, criminally abused their positions of power,” Bragg said in a statement. 

“These illegal actions irrevocably taint these convictions and represent a significant violation of due process rights — the foundational principle of our legal system,” he added. 

In a statement NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said there was "zero tolerance in the NYPD for corruption or criminal activity of any kind by any member of the service." 

“Those who betray their sworn oath to serve and protect the public have no place in the NYPD — and it is important to note that the involved officers are no longer employed by New York City Police Department," Sewell said. 

One of the eight former NYPD officers tied to the convictions, Jason Arbeeny, was found guilty of charges that included official misconduct for planting drugs on two people, the DA’s office said. 

A second officer, William Eiseman, was convicted of first-degree perjury and official misconduct for carrying out illegal searches and falsely testifying, while a third officer, Michael Foder, was found guilty of lying under oath during a federal hearing, the release said.

A fourth officer, Richard Hall, received five years’ probation after he and another NYPD detective had sex with a woman they took into custody in exchange for her release, according to the DA’s office. 

The four other officers were Michael Arenella, who was found guilty of petty larceny, official misconduct and falsifying business records; Michael Carsey, who was convicted of first-degree perjury and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing; Johnny Diaz, who was convicted on charges including second-degree bribe receiving; and Nicholas Mina, who was found guilty of charges including criminal sale of a controlled substance and criminal sale of a firearm. 

In a statement, Elizabeth Felber, the director of the Wrongful Conviction Unit at The Legal Aid Society, praised Bragg’s push to vacate the convictions.

“While this moment delivers some justice and closure to these New Yorkers, they were forced to endure hardships that should have never been allowed to happen,” Felber said. “This includes incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences.” 

“Going forward, we urge DA Bragg and all of the other New York City District Attorneys to conduct these reviews on an ongoing basis and with full transparency,” Felber said. 
article
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/news/2022/11/17/manhattan-da-bragg-to-toss-convictions?cid=app_share
referral
https://twitter.com/DeanMeminger/status/1593427403434594306

MY POST THOUGHTS

Every single law enforcer in the history of the NEw York Police Department has committed the crime or aiding or abetting another NYPD member. This is a simple fact.
The reality is the quantity of NYPD members plus their saturation in every community in New YOrk  City means many will put up a wall of denial to the stated fact for a relative or friend who is in the nypd ranks.

This combo image shows Democratic candidate for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District Adam Frisch, left, and U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., right. Associated Press, File

Lauren Boebert's Democratic challenger conceded after she declared victory, even as the unexpectedly tight race has not been called and likely heads to an automatic recount
Story by hgetahun@insider.com

Democratic candidate Adam Frisch conceded to his opponent, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert, in an extremely close race to represent Colorado's Third Congressional District. 

Boebert was leading by about 554 votes with more than 99% of votes counted as of Friday evening, according to Insider's election partner Decision Desk HQ. No major media network has yet called the race, which was not expected to be competitive until the surprisingly close results began rolling in on election night.

Under Colorado state law, a recount will automatically ensue if a candidate wins by a margin that is 0.5% or less of their total vote count. Boebert's current lead of 554 out of her total 163,832 votes falls within that threshold, at about 0.34%.

Despite the results not being called yet, Frisch said on Facebook live Friday that he called Boebert to concede the race to her, adding that the chances of him winning were "very small."

"The likelihood of this recount changing more than a handful of votes is very small. Very, very small. It'd be disingenuous and unethical for us or any other group to continue to raise false hope and encourage fundraising for a recount," Frisch said during his concession speech. "Colorado elections are safe, accurate, and secure. Please save your money for your groceries, your rent, your children, and for other important causes and organizations."

Frisch did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Boebert also acknowledged the call in a Tweet on Friday, saying: "I look forward to getting past election season and focusing on conservative governance in the House majority."

—Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 18, 2022 [ https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1593675506712338432 ]
The conservative firebrand had already declared victory in the race. On Thursday evening, Boebert announced on social media: "We won!"

In the accompanying video, she said there were "less than 200 votes outstanding" and that she was "certain" that she would win the race, even with the recount. Insider could not confirm the amount of outstanding votes.

"Past recounts in Colorado have resulted in far fewer votes being adjusted than anything that could affect the current outcome we're seeing tonight in this race," she added.

Meanwhile, a Thursday FEC filing showed that Frisch had already submitted a statement of candidacy for 2024, potentially setting the stage for another Boebert-Frisch showdown.

ARTICLE
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lauren-boeberts-democratic-challenger-conceded-after-she-declared-victory-even-as-the-unexpectedly-tight-race-has-not-been-called-and-likely-heads-to-an-automatic-recount/ar-AA14ilG9

MY THOUGHTS 

I requote Frisch: The likelihood of this recount changing more than a handful of votes is very small. Very, very small. It'd be disingenuous and unethical for us or any other group to continue to raise false hope and encourage fundraising for a recount," Frisch said during his concession speech. "Colorado elections are safe, accurate, and secure. Please save your money for your groceries, your rent, your children, and for other important causes and organizations.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Nov. 10. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)

Rising tide of immigration to Europe pushing continent's politics to the right, experts say
Story by Melissa Rossi • Yesterday 7:44 PM

After 16 days of the ship’s ignored distress calls to the Italian government asking to dock, France allowed the Ocean Viking safe harbor in Toulon on Nov. 11. According to the French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, the vessel was Italy’s responsibility since it had been in Italian search and rescue waters, and ignoring the pleas “lacked humanity,” was “a nasty gesture” and was “incomprehensible.”

In a statement, Meloni’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, fired back that “Italy has taken in 90,000 [migrants] just this year” and that it was the actions of France, which according to French broadcaster France 24 had never before received a migrant-filled rescue ship, that were “totally incomprehensible.” France, which in August took in 38 of the migrants that arrived in Italy this year, according to the European Commission, had pledged to accept 3,500 more later in 2022. But, said Darmanin, Italy’s behavior had forced France to retract that offer.

Such skirmishes between countries are becoming more common across Europe, where an increase in “irregular” migrants — as those who’ve entered illegally are called here — is pushing European politics in a rightward direction.

“There’s a relationship between the demographic change through immigration and the rise of the populist right in Western Europe,” Eric Kaufmann, author of “Whiteshift” and professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, told Yahoo News. “The number of Europeans saying immigration is a top issue really rises along with rising migration numbers, and then the populist right rises along with that.”

Of late, the numbers of migrants, both legal and illegal, crossing into Europe are soaring.

This week Frontex, as the European border control and coast guard agency is called, released a new report showing that the number of illegal entries into Europe has risen by 77% since last year and is the highest since 2016.

Migrants have been illegally entering not only from across the Mediterranean but via land from non-EU Balkan countries, and tens of thousands have entered the United Kingdom by crossing the English Channel. And from Britain to Germany, Spain to Greece, countries are trying to figure out how to secure the continent, which has over 42,000 miles of coastline and 30 borders with non-EU countries, making external border security challenging.

According to Frontex, over 132,000 “detections” of entries to Mediterranean countries via sea were made from January to September of this year. However, an increasingly popular route for those trying to enter Europe illegally — whether to seek asylum or better economic opportunities — is to enter from non-EU countries such as Serbia and Albania, toward Hungary and from there to Austria and Germany. Over the past year, Frontex has made over 128,000 detections of illegal border entries of migrants, largely from Burundi, Afghanistan and Iraq, from that corner of southeastern Europe. According to the Associated Press, by September of this year state police had registered over 57,000 unauthorized entries into Germany, where the government in October met with EU officials to discuss how to seal borders, crack down on smuggling and speed up deportations.

“Annually, 2 to 3 million nationals from non-EU countries come to the EU legally, in contrast to 125,000 to 200,000 irregular arrivals,” EU Commission spokesperson for home affairs Anitta Hipper told Yahoo News. But, she added, “irregular migration is still a challenge.”

What’s more, the number of irregular migrants popping up in England is suddenly spiking even higher. This week the British department of defense announced that more than 40,000 people had crossed the English Channel from France and illegally entered England so far in 2022, while four years ago the number was a mere 299. On Wednesday the U.K. government also announced it is paying $75 million to France to bolster border security along the channel. Spain, meanwhile, is paying millions to Morocco to increase its security and prevent would-be migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to Spain. The EU has also spent billions on programs from economic development to job training to try to address the root causes behind illegal migration.

“There’s a concern that EU development funding is increasingly being used to finance projects aiming to curb migration towards Europe, rather than fulfilling their stated purpose, namely development in these countries — reducing poverty and inequality and improving livelihoods,” Stephanie Pope, EU migration policy adviser of human rights organization Oxfam International, told Yahoo News. “And we consider this to be a very dangerous development.”

To Rainer Münz, a senior research associate at the Martens Centre who specializes in migration, Europe’s media and policymakers are looking at the wrong issues — the recent attention given to the Ocean Viking saga being a case in point. “When 0.2% of migrants to Europe are dominating the headlines for weeks, it clearly shows that people are not looking at what’s going on.”

The biggest issue for him is that Europe’s population is declining, with the death rate exceeding the birth rate since 2015 — and the EU needs to bring in more skilled migrants “to stabilize the workforce.” But that’s not happening, he said. Legal immigrants “are not selected according to the talent and skills,” he said. “Politically, that’s not feasible, when 60 or 70% of your immigration is humanitarian, being either marriage or family reunion or asylum.”

And this year, with Europe taking in 5 million Ukrainians, who can legally live and work in the EU, the figure of humanitarian-motivated immigration in Europe is far higher, he added. “When 90% of your immigration is humanitarian, it’s not easy to convince the general public that we need to recruit another million people,” Münz said. “But if the aim is to bring more talented people here, you would have to reduce the inflow of people who do not fit European labor market needs. You would have to reduce the humanitarian flow in order to open up capacity for skilled worker admissions.”

Such talk is anathema to Pope. “Europe is a very, very wealthy region. If we look at it globally, and particularly the EU, by the end of 2021, for example, less than 10% of the world’s refugees were living in the EU. So if we look at it globally, [taking in more refugees] is very much something that the EU could manage effectively and humanely.”

However, Anna Knoll, head of migration and mobility at the European Centre for Development Policy Management, is concerned that humanitarian efforts are giving life to right-wing movements across the continent.

“You see countries like Sweden or Italy flipping more to the right side of the political spectrum,” Knoll told Yahoo News. “I think states are realizing they cannot afford having more refugees situated there or more irregular migrants coming in, because it does potentially push the voters more to the right. Obviously we try to balance this — we have principles, we have values and we are also a sanctuary for refugees. But we cannot allow everyone in.”

Knoll is especially worried about this winter, when more Ukrainian refugees are expected to come to Europe since Russia keeps attacking electrical and heating infrastructure. “If everything comes together — more migrants, super-high energy prices, inflation hitting the roof — at some point I wonder how much the system can take before people say, ‘No, we don’t want this.’”

In the meantime, France has already rejected the applications of 123 of the asylum seekers aboard the Ocean Viking, and on Friday, the Le Figaro newspaper reported that 26 of the minors on board had gone missing.

ARTICLE
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rising-tide-of-immigration-to-europe-pushing-continents-politics-to-the-right-experts-say/ar-AA14hVwx

MY THOUGHTS

Most in humanity don't like strangers in their town. Maybe they are violent, maybe they are not, but few are happy. The newcomers want and the only way they get is if someone else doesn't have. The USA is a prime example. 
People will say, Immigrants do jobs people in the usa don't want but that is untrue. the Native American, the Black DOS, the WASP <white anglo saxon protestants>  are willing to do jobs with a better wage. The reality is, the fiscally wealthy in the usa setup the environment for immigration to get as near to slave labor as they could get and it worked. The price was laborers who already existed in the usa. 
Europe doesn't want its workers to suffer the fate of workers in the usa, who between firms sending jobs overseas for lower wage or setting up domestic jobs under the salary standard, the immigrant or their kin overseas are the labor winners.
Europe enjoyed the USA being the haven but now upon  being challenged to do it themselves, they are displaying the truth that they Europe, especially western Europe, chastized Russia/China or many other countries outside the USA or WEstern Europe for doing.