Search the Community

The truth of law enforcement groups in the usa, is all have a history of severe abuses which when you parallel them to the crimes they prevent, i argue far outweighs what they prevent, sequentially making them dysfunctional. The tragedy is the populace in the usa who actually need aid by law enforcement is a fraction of a percentage of the whole but their mouthpiece is amplified by the communication channels of the wealthy in the usa who know false problems make great news. 

A police officer took a teen for a rape kit.

Then he assaulted her, too.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been accused of sexually abusing children over the past two decades, a Post investigation found

A teen who was sexually abused by a New Orleans police officer.

Story by Jessica Contrera, 

Jenn Abelson and 

John D. Harden

Updated March 14, 2024 at 5:54 p.m.Originally published March 14, 2024

The 14-year-old did not want to go to the emergency room. Her mother had begged her. Her therapist had gently prodded. And now there was a police officer in her living room.

“You really should think about it,” he said.

He introduced himself as Officer Rodney Vicknair. His New Orleans Police Department cruiser was waiting outside, ready to take her to the hospital for a rape kit. Early that morning, the girl said, a 17-year-old friend had forced himself on her.

Under the police department’s rules, a case like this was supposed to be handled from the start by a detective trained in sex crimes or child abuse. But on this afternoon in May of 2020, it was Vicknair, a patrol officer with a troubled past, who knocked on the girl’s door.

He tried to coax her into changing her mind. “If I’m a young man that has done something wrong to a young lady and she doesn’t follow up and press the issue,” Vicknair said as his body camera recorded the conversation, “then I’m gonna go out and do it to another young lady.”

“And it’s gonna be worse, maybe, the next time,” Vicknair said, “because I’m gonna think in my head, ‘Oh, I got the power. I can go further this time.’ ”

The girl didn’t want that. She just wanted this to be over.

She didn’t know it was only the beginning. Four months later, police would arrest a man for sexually assaulting the girl. But it wouldn’t be her teenage friend. It would be Officer Rodney Vicknair.

The day the 14-year-old met 53-year-old Vicknair was the day the officer began a months-long grooming process, prosecutors would allege. Within hours of meeting the girl, Vicknair wrapped his arm around her while they took a selfie. He let her play with his police baton. He joked with her about “whipping your behind.” He showed her multiple photos of a young woman dressed only in lingerie.

Officer Vicknair talks to teen at the hospital

0:23

The Washington Post blurred the teen’s face to protect her identity. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Americans have been forced to reckon with sexual misconduct committed by teachers, clergy, coaches and others with access to and authority over children. But there is little awareness of child sex crimes perpetrated by members of another profession that many children are taught to revere and obey: law enforcement.

A Washington Post investigation has found that over the past two decades, hundreds of police officers have preyed on children, while agencies across the country have failed to take steps to prevent these crimes.

At least 1,800 state and local police officers were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022, The Post found.

Abusive officers were rarely related to the children they were accused of raping, fondling and exploiting. They most frequently targeted girls who were 13 to 15 years old — and regularly met their victims through their jobs.

The Post identified these officers through an exclusive analysis of the nation’s most comprehensive database of police arrests at Bowling Green State University, as well as a review of thousands of court documents, police decertification records and news reports.

In case after case, officers intentionally earned the trust of parents and guardians, created opportunities to get kids alone and threatened repercussions for broken silence. Unlike teachers and priests, they did it all while wielding the power of their badges and guns.

Chuck Wexler, who leads the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy and training organization, said the number of officers charged with these crimes is “very troubling.”

“Whatever we can do to prevent this and hold those accountable will help restore the trust in the police,” Wexler said.

But while many school systems and churches have created practices and policies to root out predators, law enforcement agencies have largely treated child sexual abuse as an isolated problem that goes away when an officer is fired or prosecuted — rather than an always-present risk that requires systemic change.

There is no national tracking system for officers accused of child sexual abuse. At a time when police departments across the country face staffing shortages and are desperate to hire, there are no universal requirements to screen for potential perpetrators. When abuse is suspected, officers are sometimes allowed to remain on the job while investigations of their behavior are left in the hands of their colleagues.

In the New Orleans Police Department, child sexual abuse has been a problem before. The city recently paid $300,000 to settle a lawsuit over its 1980s Police Explorers program led by a lieutenant who was accused of sexually exploiting 10 boys. The case was investigated by the head of NOPD’s juvenile sex crimes unit — who in 1987 was convicted of child sex crimes, too.

In more recent years, two officers remained on the force after they were accused of abusing young girls. Then they sexually assaulted other children. They are among six NOPD officers who have been convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse since 2011.

Vicknair is the latest. His case reflects larger problems that police departments confront in conducting background checks, identifying red flags and responding to complaints of inappropriate behavior. To reconstruct what happened in New Orleans, The Post obtained hundreds of internal law enforcement records, hours of video footage and dozens of text messages.

Vicknair was hired in 2007 despite a record that included multiple arrests and a conviction for battery on a juvenile. His sexually charged interactions with the girl he drove to the hospital, though witnessed by another officer, went unreported to superiors. He frequently visited the girl’s home in the summer of 2020, telling new cops he was training that they should stay in the car while he went inside alone. And when concerns about Vicknair’s behavior were reported to the department, police officials allowed him to remain on duty for a week. During that week, the girl said, Vicknair sexually assaulted her.

Reached by phone last year, Vicknair declined to comment for this story. In November of 2022, he pleaded guilty to violating the girl’s civil rights, admitting that he locked her in his truck and touched her under her clothing.

The city of New Orleans and its police department also declined to discuss the case with The Post, citing pending litigation. The victim and her mother filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and its superintendent of police in 2021.

In court filings, the city has repeatedly denied that the police department is responsible for the girl’s abuse, arguing that Vicknair was not on duty at the time of the assault he pleaded guilty to and was not acting on behalf of NOPD “while performing any of the inappropriate actions alleged against him.”

Soon, the case will go before a jury. A trial over what, if anything, the girl is owed by NOPD was scheduled to begin March 18. But hours after The Post published this story online, a judge ordered that the trial be delayed.

With the permission of the victim and her mother, The Post is identifying the girl only by her middle name, Nicole.

At 14, Nicole was barely 100 pounds. She hadn’t yet gotten braces. A large stuffed giraffe still watched over her bedroom.

She’d spent her preteen years in custody battles between divorced parents, in a domestic violence shelter with her mom and in a hospital for self-harm. She believed all adults just wanted to tell her what to do. But on the day Vicknair persuaded her to go to the emergency room and then sat with her and her mother for hours, Nicole felt like he actually wanted to listen.

“If you ever just want to shoot, talk, text me,” he told her as his body camera continued recording. “You having problems, just need somebody to talk to, if I’m working I’ll come swing by and talk to ya, okay? ... We’ll go get some ice cream in McDonald’s or something.”

Nicole saved Vicknair’s number in her phone as “Officer Rodney.”

“Now hit call so I know it’s you and I can save you as a contact,” Vicknair said before leaving. He lifted his phone and aimed his camera down at her. Her bare legs were dangling off the hospital bed.

“No,” Nicole objected, raising her hand to block his view.

Vicknair took the picture anyway. “There we go,” he said. “Perfect.”

icole was just a year old when Vicknair applied for the job that would make it possible for him to meet her and other children.

“I always wanted to be a police officer in New Orleans,” Vicknair wrote on his NOPD application in 2006. “I truly love helping + serving my community.”

He was far from the typical police recruit. He’d worked as an EMT and a hospital security guard, but he was about to turn 40 — an age that would have disqualified him from joining some departments at the time. At 5-foot-11, he weighed 237 pounds. He had lifelong tremors that regularly made his hands shake.

A department spokesperson told The Post that, today, NOPD has some of the most stringent hiring requirements in the state of Louisiana. Since entering into a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2012, NOPD has been working to reform its policies and practices.

But at the time Vicknair applied, NOPD was in disarray following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Public outcry over officers’ actions had resulted in intense scrutiny from the outside and low morale on the inside. Recruiters needed to find people willing to wear the badge. According to the Justice Department, NOPD began lowering hiring standards and performing less rigorous background checks.

In his application, Vicknair disclosed to the department that he’d previously been charged with disturbing the peace and aggravated assault. Just the year before he applied, deputies from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office were called when Vicknair reportedly brandished a knife at his ex-girlfriend and beat a man she was dating.

Citing the “potential for future violence, as well as threats made by Mr. Vicknair in the presence of deputies,” law enforcement seized Vicknair’s knife and his gun before taking him to jail, according to a police report included in his background check.

The charges were eventually dropped. Vicknair’s ex-girlfriend, Denise Trower, told The

that she asked authorities to stop pursuing the case because she was afraid of what Vicknair might do if she didn’t. During their relationship, she said, Vicknair choked her and held a loaded gun to her head.

“He had threatened that he would make sure somebody did something to my son,” Trower said.

Without calling Trower to learn more about what happened, the NOPD background investigator wrote that the arrest “should not reflect poorly” on Vicknair’s application.

The incident was not the only time Vicknair had been charged with a serious crime. In 1987, he was convicted in Ascension Parish of simple battery on a juvenile — a part of his past he did not disclose to NOPD. He was sentenced to $50 in fines or 10 days in jail.

Three of Vicknair’s family members told The Post that he was charged after he had what they described as a sexual relationship with a minor. Vicknair was 20 years old. The girl, whom The Post is not identifying, was a preteen at the time. She did not respond to interview requests.

There is no indication that the background investigator looked into the simple battery conviction; he didn’t appear to know it existed. Though The Post obtained a record of Vicknair’s conviction from the court, the background investigator reported in his notes that Vicknair had no criminal record in Ascension Parish.

Records show the NOPD background investigator also did not contact anyone in Vicknair’s family.

Vicknair’s sister, Kim Vogel, said that if she had been contacted, she would have told the department not to hire her brother. She described him as loyal, generous and eager to help other people. But she also said his history of anger and violence still gives her nightmares.

“I don’t think he should have been a police officer, and I hate even bringing that out there,” Vicknair’s sister said. “But I also blame that on the police department, because I know they do background checks, they do psychological tests and all that. And they missed all of it.”

Vicknair did undergo a computerized voice-stress analysis, a type of lie detector test.

“Did you intentionally withhold any information from your employment application?” the examiner asked.

Vicknair answered no. The NOPD investigator rated his application as “acceptable.” He was hired onto the force in March 2007.

During the next 12 years, he was internally investigated for allegations of misconduct a dozen times, according to NOPD records.

In eight of the cases, which included accusations of unauthorized force, theft of $1,000 and drug possession, the department found no evidence of misconduct, could not determine whether the wrongdoing occurred or deemed his actions justified. Vicknair was not disciplined.

Records show he was formally punished twice for reckless driving and twice for acting inappropriately toward women who claimed he had mocked or harassed them while on duty. The most severe consequence he received was a five-day suspension.

In 2016, he was promoted to become a mentor to new officers while he patrolled the neighborhood where he would meet Nicole.

After the swabbing was over, after she stopped hyperventilating, after she stayed at the hospital to ensure she didn’t hurt herself, Nicole was discharged. Then she called Officer Vicknair.

“Let me know when back home and I’ll come check on you,” Vicknair texted the 14-year-old on May 26, 2020. He’d started messaging her the night he met her, by sending a GIF of a waving puppy.

In the weeks that followed, he began showing up at her house in uniform. He’d sip a Dr Pepper while talking about the headlines on Fox News. He’d lecture Nicole about staying out of trouble.

Nicole’s mother, Rayne, witnessed it all. Rayne — The Post is identifying her by her first name to protect Nicole’s privacy — had grown up with a sheriff’s deputy for a grandfather. She trusted law enforcement and raised her daughter to feel the same way.

So Rayne encouraged Vicknair to follow up on his idea to take Nicole out for ice cream. She called him when Nicole was having a breakdown. She invited him to visit Nicole on her 15th birthday.

Rayne didn’t worry when she discovered that the 53-year-old officer was talking to her daughter on the phone late at night that summer. She was grateful that Nicole, who had become silent and surly in the weeks following her sexual assault report, was finally opening up to someone. Someone who could be a role model.

“She would be like, ‘Oh, I had the best talk with Rodney last night, Mom. He’s so nice,’” Rayne remembered.

The interest Vicknair was taking in her daughter was so different from how NOPD first responded. On the morning in May when Rayne discovered her daughter on the couch with her 17-year-old friend, two other patrol officers were the first to be dispatched to a report of attempted rape at her house.

It was 5:21 a.m. The teenage boy had already fled. Records show the officers spent 11 minutes at the house before leaving. They appeared to take no further action.

Their response was exactly what the federal government had spent years trying to fix at NOPD. As a part of the 2012 consent decree, the Justice Department’s investigators found that officers were repeatedly mishandling reports of sexual assault. NOPD’s investigations were “seriously deficient, marked by poor victim interviewing skills, missing or inadequate documentation, and minimal efforts to contact witnesses or interrogate suspects.”

Years later, NOPD’s special victims unit continued to be understaffed and overwhelmed. According to a recent Justice Department report, the unit closed out 3 percent of cases in 2022.

Several hours after the first officers left Nicole’s house, her therapist called to report the assault a second time. NOPD sent Vicknair and two other patrol officers to her house. Then a special victims detective, Kimberly Wilson, arrived. Body-camera footage shows she spent a total of four minutes with Nicole before saying she had somewhere else to be.

She left Vicknair and another officer to drive and sit with the teen at the hospital. Wilson stopped by later that afternoon, but didn’t interview Nicole until two days later.

“I told him to stop,” Nicole said about the 17-year-old. “He said ... ‘No, let me get it over with.’ ”

Wilson declined to comment on her investigation. There is no record that Wilson ever interviewed the 17-year-old, and it is unclear from the case file whether Nicole’s rape kit DNA was tested by the crime lab.

Instead of progress in her case, Nicole got visits from Vicknair.

The first time Vicknair came over when her mother wasn’t home, Nicole remembered, he asked if she owned any booty shorts.

“What was running through my mind at that time was ‘Oh, he’s just a guy,’ ” Nicole said. “You know, that’s how guys think.”

The more he came over and called, the more he learned about what Nicole had been through in her life. Rayne told the officer that her daughter was the “textbook poster child for daddy issues.” Nicole told him about sneaking into bars on Bourbon Street while her mom worked nights — and about the older men who bought her drinks there.

Vicknair began warning her, Nicole said later, that he could report her mom for child endangerment and get her thrown in jail. He told Nicole he could arrest anyone. He whacked her with his baton.

She’d been taught to be afraid of strangers who might want to kidnap her, not adults in positions of authority who increasingly tested her boundaries.

So she told no one when Vicknair’s texts shifted from “Lion King” GIFs to tongue emojis. Or when he confided in her about his own childhood trauma, then asked her to send nudes. Or when he went from telling her he wanted to touch her to actually doing it.

“I passed your house earlier,” Vicknair texted Nicole on Sept. 7, three and a half months after he met her.

“Stalker,” she replied.

“You like it,” he texted back.

Later, she would wish she had told him to leave her alone. “I just kept going along with shit,” Nicole remembered. “He knew where we lived, you know?”

Vicknair would admit to investigators after he was arrested that he visited Nicole at her house at least a dozen times.

But it wasn’t anyone within NOPD who raised concerns about Vicknair’s behavior. It was Nicole’s mother, who in September found a photo on her daughter’s phone. In it, Vicknair’s tattooed arms were wrapped around Nicole, pressing the back of her body into the front of his.

Nicole told her mom only that Vicknair once followed her in his police cruiser while she was on a run, yelling “Nice ass!” out the window. Rayne consulted with Nicole’s therapist. They both worried there was more going on.

How, Nicole’s mother began to wonder, do you report the police to the police?

On Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, nearly four months after Vicknair met Nicole, the head of the New Orleans Police Department received a text.

“It’s about potential sexual abuse of a minor by an officer,” read the message to then-Superintendent Shaun Ferguson.

The text was sent by Susan Hutson, then the city’s independent police monitor, a civilian oversight agency created after Hurricane Katrina. Hutson’s job included listening to citizens’ complaints about police and trying

When the interview was over, investigators did not immediately seek a warrant for Vicknair’s arrest. Instead, they asked Nicole to call the officer who she had just said assaulted her — and ask him if he would do it again.

She was deeply uncomfortable. But she did as she was told. She pulled up “Officer Rodney” on her phone.

[Excerpt from call]

Nicole:

Can we do what we did in your truck again?

Vicknair:

Um.

In the background, a girl’s voice can be heard saying, ‘Love you, Dad!’

Nicole:

Can we?

Vicknair:

I don’t know if it’s your phone or my phone, it’s breaking up.

[Vicknair ended the call.]

Vicknair already knew that Nicole was going to the child advocacy center for a forensic interview that day. Nicole told him the interview was about another man, one she’d met on Bourbon Street.

Now, Nicole feared, Vicknair knew what was going on.

Less than an hour after Vicknair hung up on Nicole, he got into his Toyota Tundra, the same vehicle Nicole said she’d been assaulted in two nights earlier. He was followed by an officer who’d been sitting outside his house, conducting surveillance.

The officer quickly lost sight of Vicknair’s truck.

When the truck returned, it was gleaming, with fresh gloss on the tires and exterior. The officer wrote in his surveillance report that it appeared Vicknair had gone to get his vehicle detailed.

If there was any evidence — or underwear — remaining in the truck, it had just been washed away.

to get something done about them.

Often, that meant contacting NOPD’s version of internal affairs, known as the Public Integrity Bureau. While some police departments turn to outside agencies to conduct investigations when one of their officers is suspected of committing a serious crime, NOPD investigates its own.

Hutson notified Ferguson and then-integrity bureau leader Arlinda Westbrook that same Friday evening. Sgt. Lawrence Jones, a criminal investigator with the public integrity bureau, did not begin looking into Vicknair until the following Monday, Sept. 21. (Jones and Westbrook did not respond to interview requests from The Post. Ferguson, who retired in 2022, declined to comment.)

Jones first spoke with Nicole and her mother that Monday. Sitting in on the call was Stella Cziment, the deputy police monitor at the time.

Listening to Nicole talk, Cziment later told The Post, she could tell the girl was afraid to speak honestly about Vicknair. She called him her friend, and was clearly trying to protect him. They weren’t certain that sexual abuse had already occurred. But the red flags about the officer’s behavior were obvious, Cziment said. She assumed that NOPD would act to remove Vicknair from duty as quickly as possible.

“What we were scared of was the amount of access he had to the child,” Cziment said.

But Vicknair was not removed from active duty that day, even after Jones, the investigator, visited Nicole’s house and saw the photo of Vicknair, in uniform, pressing Nicole into his body and texts in which the officer called her sweetie, honey, buttercup, baby girl and boo.

Vicknair remained on patrol the next day, even after Jones reviewed the body-camera footage from when Vicknair took Nicole to the hospital and showed her photos of a nearly naked woman.

The entire week, Vicknair kept his job, his badge, his gun. Not until Friday, Sept. 25, seven days after the text to the head of police, was Nicole interviewed by someone specially trained in child abuse at the New Orleans Child Advocacy Center.

“I try to keep him happy,” Nicole told the forensic interviewer, according to a videotaped recording obtained by The Post. “He’s a cop, so it’s not like he’s going to get in trouble for any of this.”

The last time she’d seen Vicknair, she said, was just two days earlier. He’d come to her house while on duty, then returned after his shift. She went out to his truck and got inside.

“Did something happen?” the interviewer asked.

Nicole squirmed in her chair, her Converse high-tops shaking.

“I just can’t say it,” she said.

“I’m not gonna put words in your mouth,” the interviewer said.

“Fine,” Nicole said. “He stuck his finger in my, in my — ”

She pointed downward. At 15, she was too embarrassed to name her own body parts. The interviewer asked her one more time, and then her story came rushing out. How weird it felt. How scared she was.

She tried to hug him goodbye, she said, but then, “He stuck his finger in one more time and was like, ‘Just one more taste.’ ”

That night in Vicknair’s truck, Nicole said, he asked her for a favor. He wanted to keep her underwear.

He still had them, she said.

By 2 a.m. the next day, Vicknair was inside an interview room, handcuffed to a table.

“Rodney, first of all, I want to thank you for sitting down and talking with us,” said Jones, seated across from his colleague.

“I didn’t have much choice,” Vicknair balked.

Sheriff’s deputies had knocked on the door of Vicknair’s home just before 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 26.

Vicknair came out in only his boxer briefs and lit a cigarette. He kept smoking as they cinched cuffs behind his back.

When he learned during his recorded interview that his arrest was related to Nicole, he laughed.

“On her?” he said. “Okay.”

Over the next hour and a half, Vicknair switched between denials and explanations for what he couldn’t deny. Yes, he’d gone to Nicole’s house just before midnight two nights earlier — but only because she’d asked him to sniff her to see if she smelled like weed, he said. Yes, he had sexual photos of her on his phone — but he’d only taken screenshots of her Snapchats “in case something ever did happen,” he said. Yes, he told her which of her thongs were his favorite and that she had “a nice ass for your age.”

“If that was inappropriate, then so be it. It was inappropriate,” he said. “But there was never nothing sexual.”

Vicknair was adamant that he did not penetrate her or take her underwear.

“I care about her the same way I cared about several other girls and boys that I’ve given my business cards to and talked to them,” Vicknair said.

He accused Jones of trying to “make a case or something of a disturbed child.”

“The issue is that we have a 52-year-old, 15-year, veteran police officer who’s seeing … this 15-year-old girl regularly,” Jones said.

“That ain’t nothing,” Vicknair said. “I talk to a lot of younger people four or five times a week.”

At no point during the interview did Jones ask for the names of the other young people Vicknair claimed to be talking to, including a runaway girl he mentioned specifically. There is no indication in the internal case records that NOPD ever conducted a review of other children Vicknair had interacted with.

“We just hope,” Jones told Vicknair, “none of them come calling here.”

Charged with sexual battery, indecent behavior with a juvenile and malfeasance in office, Vicknair spent a week in jail before posting a $55,000 bond.

He submitted a letter of resignation to the police department in January 2021.

His wife of five years filed for divorce. He suffered three heart attacks and a stroke.

The Justice Department, which took over his prosecution from Orleans Parish, charged him with deprivation of rights under the color of law, the same federal charge often filed against officers who use excessive force. In November 2022, Vicknair agreed to plead guilty.

In his plea, he signed a statement admitting that he made sexual comments, requested and received sexually explicit photos and touched Nicole’s genitals under her clothing without her consent inside his locked vehicle.

In exchange, prosecutors asked the judge to send him to prison for seven years.

On March 8, 2023, Vicknair shuffled into a federal courthouse for his sentencing hearing using a cane. For the first time since the night in his truck, he was in the same room as Nicole.

She was 17 years old. She wouldn’t stick with therapy. She and her mother fought so often that she’d moved with a boyfriend to California. There, she reasoned, she would never have to see an NOPD cruiser again.

She spent her days sleeping and watching documentaries about sex crimes and murders, telling herself that what happened to her wasn’t as bad as what happens to other girls. She spent her nights playing “Call of Duty” online with strangers, nearly all of them boys and men. She shot and swore and screamed at them, and reminded herself that none of them knew where she lived.

“Is there something you would like to say to the court?” the judge, Lance Africk, asked her.

She stood at a microphone in a stiff white button-down shirt she’d purchased just hours before. She hoped it would make the judge take her seriously.

All day, people had been telling her how “strong” she was. She thanked them, saying nothing about her recurring nightmare in which uniformed, tattooed arms were wrapping around her again. Or the knife she kept in her closet in case they ever did.

“To her, he appears as a helping hand, but little does she know he had other plans,” Nicole said, reading a poem she’d written as her victim impact statement.

Vicknair, coughing behind a mask, was watching her.

“He tears her down and makes her suffer, yet she comes out 10 times tougher. Now every night the light stays on, scared he will return. She hopes he has had a change in heart and that he has learned.”

The judge told her she was strong. He told her mother not to feel guilty. Then he began to narrate, in graphic detail, everything Vicknair had done to Nicole.

“I guess he was thinking: Who is going to believe a 14- or 15-year-old over me, a New Orleans police officer?” the judge said. “He served himself, not this young, trusting child.”

But the child he was talking about was no longer there. The moment the judge began describing it all again, Nicole ran out of the courtroom in tears.

While she hovered over a bathroom sink, trying not to vomit, the judge announced that he was refusing to accept the plea. He believed seven years was not enough time. He told both sides to come back the next week.

When they did, Africk agreed to a new deal. He sentenced Vicknair to prison for 14 years, Nicole’s age when he met her.

Two months later, Nicole was scrolling on her phone when she started to shake. She rubbed her eyes, thinking she must be imagining the notification that had just appeared on her screen.

A Snapchat account with a familiar name was trying to contact her.

A bitmoji of a dark-haired man was waving at her, surrounded in confetti.

“Officer Rodney,” the notification said, “added you as a friend.”

Vicknair was not yet in prison. The judge had granted him time to seek medical care before he turned himself in.

Vicknair’s heart problems had become something more. After he was sentenced, doctors had discovered a fast-growing tumor in his brain. It appeared that Vicknair was trying to contact Nicole from his hospital bed. She did not reply.

Vicknair had two brain surgeries before his brother and ex-wife drove him to Massachusetts to report to federal prison. He continued to deny to his family members that he had sexually abused Nicole. He continued to be paid police retirement benefits of more than $2,700 per month, records show. Louisiana has no law that automatically disqualifies police officers convicted of serious crimes from receiving their pensions.

Days after Nicole’s 18th birthday, Vicknair was rolled into prison in a wheelchair.

Most of his sentence was spent at a federal prison medical facility in North Carolina, where he received chemotherapy and radiation.

He served less than six months. Vicknair died on Jan. 1, 2024.

Nicole was at a restaurant in California when she heard the news from an attorney in her civil rights lawsuit. She wanted to feel relieved. Instead, she kept thinking about how little time Vicknair served. And how, before he died, he’d given a deposition in her civil case. Under oath, he returned to denying that he’d ever assaulted her.

Now, it felt like not a single adult was taking responsibility for what happened to her. If she gave up her lawsuit against the city, no one ever would.

She’d already endured a day-long deposition in December, when an attorney representing New Orleans asked her questions such as, “Was there any sexual meaning to him hitting you with the baton?” In January at a settlement conference, she listened to the lawyers debate just how much her trauma was worth.

The same city that had once charged Vicknair with sexual battery and malfeasance in office was now claiming his assault was “wholly unrelated” to his job.

But a judge disagreed, ruling in February that the city was, in fact, liable for Vicknair’s actions. It would still be up to a jury to decide how much New Orleans owed Nicole — and whether NOPD was at fault for hiring Vicknair in the first place.

As the March trial date crept closer, Nicole’s stomach started to ache. The pain kept getting worse, until it was so agonizing that she couldn’t sleep. But for days, she refused to go to the emergency room.

When she finally gave in, she reminded herself that this ER was different. That she was no longer 14. That Vicknair was not beside her. She still hyperventilated through every exam.

She learned that what could have been a relatively minor issue had become a serious kidney infection. It would take weeks for her to recover.

While she waited for the pain to ebb, her attorneys in New Orleans prepared for her trial by deposing the city’s police officials. Why, they asked, had the city hired someone with a history of arrests? Why had no one flagged an officer repeatedly returning to the home of a child who had reported a sexual assault? Why hadn’t Vicknair been pulled from active duty as soon as the photo surfaced of his body pressed against Nicole’s?

They wanted to understand what NOPD was doing to ensure that what happened to Nicole didn’t happen to another child. But when the sergeant in charge of all department policies was asked that question, he could not cite a specific policy or training method that had changed because of the case.

“You don’t know of anything NOPD has done differently,” the attorney confirmed, “to prevent another Officer Vicknair?”

The sergeant’s answer was one word:

“Correct.”

URL

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2024/new-orleans-police-child-sexual-abuse-rodney-vicknair/

Title: MagnifiqueNoir < https://www.brishouldbewriting.com/ >

Artist: Briana Lawrence

List of Briana Lawrence post

https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?q=briana lawrence&quick=1&type=core_statuses_status&author=richardmurray&updated_after=any&sortby=newest&search_and_or=and

In Detroit, Why There's No Black Democrat on the Ballot for Congress
Clyde McGrady
Mon, October 24, 2022 at 2:25 PM·9 min read

State Rep. Shri Thanedar, a 67-year-old Indian American multimillionaire and political newcomber, in Detroit, Aug. 27, 2022. (Sylvia Jarrus/The New York Times)

DETROIT — On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon in a neighborhood park in the middle of this sprawling city, residents were distributing free backpacks for students heading back to school. Girls sat patiently under a pop-up tent to get their hair braided, while other children gleefully leaped and collided in an inflated bounce castle.

One person stood out in the mostly African American crowd: a slim, 67-year-old Indian immigrant in a white T-shirt and dark pants, hopping from tent to tent and chatting with parents and neighbors, who seemed excited to see him.

The man, state Rep. Shri Thanedar, had beaten eight Black candidates in a primary to become the Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District — meaning that for the first time in almost 70 years, the nation’s largest majority Black city is unlikely to have a Black representative in Congress.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

His victory set off waves of anxiety among Detroit’s Black political leaders, who tried desperately to prevent Thanedar from winning. (A primary win in such a heavily Democratic district is tantamount to being elected.) Black leaders describe it as “embarrassing” and “disappointing,” and argue that Detroit should have representation that reflects its population, which is 77% Black. Three-quarters of Detroit voters supported a Black candidate.

The outcome is also testing the limits of racial representation in a city with a long tradition of Black political power — at a time when that power is being challenged and drained on other fronts. In Los Angeles, the City Council was recently shaken by the release of secret recordings of racist remarks and efforts by Latino leaders to shrink Black influence in the city.

Detroit began sending two Black delegates to Congress in the 1960s, and elected its first Black mayor in 1973. By the 1980s, Black membership and status in the state legislature was rising, and half the City Council was Black.

Now, the challenge to Black political power in Detroit comes from divisions within its own leadership and from constituents. Reapportionment cost Michigan a House seat last year, and the newly redrawn district maps reduced the number of Black voters in the 13th District. After years of severe economic insecurity and a string of political scandals, some residents are showing a willingness to try something new.

In 2013, Detroit elected Mike Duggan, its first white mayor since the 1970s — the same year that a former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was convicted of charges including racketeering and extortion. Five years later, Rashida Tlaib became the first woman of Palestinian descent to be elected to Congress, when she won the seat once occupied by John Conyers Jr. — a towering figure in Detroit politics who resigned over sexual harassment allegations.

Those victories and Thanedar’s point to an emerging sense among some Black constituents that the psychic, emotional and symbolic benefits of racial representation may not have materially improved their lives.

“Well, let’s go back years and years and years, and see that when we had those people in office, they all didn’t meet up to what they said they met up to,” said Kimball Gaskinsel, a 58-year-old Black man who helped organize the backpack giveaway in the park. He said of Thanedar, “Let’s give the man a chance.”

Detroit’s population has fallen by more than 1 million since 1950, and for decades, its leaders have been promising a renaissance. Since emerging from bankruptcy in 2014, the city’s core has managed an impressive revival: Its downtown sparkles with new restaurants, shops and hotels. But Detroit’s comeback is limited and uneven, highlighting racial and economic disparities that have long frustrated residents.

Between 2010 and 2020 the city lost about 93,000 Black residents, many of whom departed for metro area suburbs, while gaining slightly more Asian and white residents, and people who identify by more than one race.

In 2021, the unemployment rate among Black residents of Detroit was 20%, compared with 11% among white residents, according to research based on census data. The median Black household earned a little less than $35,000, when rising rents and inflation began to eat into family budgets.

“It kind of irritates me to see downtown being built up and the neighborhoods being neglected,” said M. Lewis Bass, a 71-year old tenant organizer.

Bass, who is Black, voted for Thanedar in the primary. He said he liked Thanedar’s tendency to pop up at community events. “It shows a genuine interest in the citizen,” he said. Bass expressed hope that Thanedar would work to curb landlord power and address rising rents and evictions.

Other Detroiters say that residents will be worse off. “It’s disgusting” for the city to be without a Black representative, said Stevetta Johnson, 73. A retired social worker who leads the Trade Union Leadership Council, Johnson said she was concerned that a representative of another race wouldn’t look out for Black Detroiters when it comes to bringing money and resources into the city.

On the surface, Thanedar, who arrived in the United States in 1979 and later started a successful chemical business, might seem to be an unlikely politician to represent the newly redrawn 13th District, whose population is now 45% Black.

He is a wealthy man who lived in Ann Arbor before moving to Detroit three years ago. He spent $10.6 million of his own money on an unsuccessful run for governor in 2018, and he has so far spent around $6 million from his own pocket on his congressional campaign.

Activists and voters in the district’s poor and working-class neighborhoods point to how Thanedar seems to show up everywhere — at jazz concerts, at tenant meetings — repeatedly, and sometimes unannounced.

At the backpack giveaway, Thanedar told a mostly Black audience that students deserve a quality education “no matter what ZIP code they live in,” because “we are all children of the same God.” He encouraged voters to hold him to his promises. “You can have my cellphone number,” he said. “Call me.”

He ended his talk with, “I love you all.” The small crowd erupted in applause.

Thanedar often reminds Detroit voters of his humble beginnings. He said he wants to increase Black entrepreneurship, close the racial wealth gap and improve the quality of education.

For Leslie Ford, 50, a born and raised Black Detroiter who runs a nonprofit group, racial representation isn’t much of a concern. “It’s all about the person that’s showing that they care for real,” she said.

Thanedar’s supporters say that financing his campaign himself shows how much he cares, and that he isn’t beholden to special interests. “He did everything with his own money,” Ford said.

Thanedar says he is not naive about the challenges he would face in representing such a diverse district. It includes part of Detroit, several white, working-class “Downriver” communities, and the wealthier suburbs of the Grosse Pointes, with tree-lined streets of brick houses with lawns as manicured as Centre Court on the first day of Wimbledon.

He said he contacted the Congressional Black Caucus about joining once he is elected, but he learned that the caucus’ bylaws allow only Black members to join, a restriction that he says he understands.

Political observers say that many factors contributed to Thanedar’s victory. The district’s newly drawn boundaries take in some whiter, more conservative communities outside Detroit. Low voter turnout and a crowded primary allowed Thanedar to squeak through with just 28% of the ballots cast. Even so, political leaders say ignoring Thanedar’s ability to appeal to Black voters would be a mistake.

“I don’t think we can say, ‘Next time, if it’s just one Black person and Shri, it’ll be different,’ said Portia Roberson, a former Obama administration Justice Department official who lost to Thanedar in the primary. “I think that’s naive on our part.”

Detroit elected Charles Diggs to be Michigan’s first Black member of Congress in 1954, and stood by him even after he was charged with taking kickbacks from employees. Since then, the city has elected Black leaders who became major figures in national and state politics, like Conyers, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick and Brenda Lawrence, all of whom represented parts of Detroit. In Washington, Black leaders from Detroit became prominent in the Civil Rights movement. At home, Conyers led the political establishment, selecting candidates and wielding influence over party loyalists and voters.

But corruption scandals and years of economic stagnation left many voters disappointed with machine politics and open to letting pragmatism rather than loyalty sway their choices.

Much of that sentiment came from the downfall of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was first elected in 2001 and resigned in 2008 following a bribery scandal.

“Kwame Kilpatrick broke my heart. I can’t take another chance,” state Sen. Adam Hollier recalled a voter telling him. Hollier, who came in second to Thanedar in the primary, said he tried to position himself as someone other young Black men could look up to.

The lack of a clear succession plan when Brenda Lawrence decided to retire from her seat in Congress led to some disarray among the city’s political establishment.

As candidates leaped into the race, competing camps backed two different contenders, in an effort to whittle the field. Only one candidate dropped out, and the endorsement process inflamed tensions over gender dynamics.

The Legacy Committee for United Leadership, a coalition of religious, business and political leaders, endorsed Hollier. But Lawrence and the local Democratic Party organization threw their support behind Roberson, the former Obama administration official.

The fracture helped Thanedar win the primary. It left the Republican nominee, Martell Bivings, as the only Black candidate for the seat in the general election.

Bivings, 35, has been making the case that Black representation matters, in ways both subtle and explicit. He poses questions on his Facebook page like “Do you play spades?” and has tweeted that he’s the only candidate who “knows what it feels like to be Black in America.”

Bivings said in an interview that his message is being well-received by Black voters, and centers on “family values, praying in schools” as well as gun rights and lower taxes. “Your auntie supports all of those,” Bivings said. He said he supports reparations for slavery (as does Thanedar) and school choice.

The odds are heavily stacked against Bivings. In 2020, both Tlaib and Lawrence beat their Republican challengers in Detroit with more than 90% of the vote.

Do any of Detroit’s Black leaders plan to back Bivings? The Rev. Wendell Anthony, a member of the committee that backed Hollier, laughed heartily at the question, before revealing that Bivings had reached out about a meeting. “I’ll talk to anybody,” Anthony said.

This month, the conservative editorial page of The Detroit News endorsed Bivings, writing: “African Americans argue that this predominately Detroit seat should be held by someone most familiar with Detroit’s challenges. We agree.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Article
https://news.yahoo.com/detroit-why-theres-no-black-182550365.html
 

MY THOUGHTS

... MLK jr would say, judge him by the content of his character

Marcus Garvey would say, leave the USA to him, and take everybody you can with you to a different place, even if it isn't better on day one. 

The Free Blacks who fought for the United Kingdom against creating the USA would say, attack the USA federal government and Michigan and detroit with him in it.

My point is, depending on yourself, your relationship to the usa government, to white people, to various factors you will relate to this story, no position is wrong. 

I will add one thing, It's funny how a city that the article deems is seventy seven percent Black who feels black elected officials of the party of andrew jackson or abraham lincoln has failed, don't seem to have anyone suggesting a black party in detroit.

IN AMENDMENT

What do you think of a Black party of governance LINK

The following is spike lee's list of films to watch, he provide to his students. 
How many have you seen? What are your favorites? 
I reply below

I saw: Rashomon<one of my favorite kurosawa>, Yojimbo, Ran, Rear Window<jimmy stewart>, Vertigo<the woman who loves jimmy stewart when she dresses as the love interest>, North by Northwest<stuntwork>, Bonnie and Clyde<>, Ace in the hole<one of my favorite newspaper movies, kirk douglass is great:)>, Bridge on the river kwai<a great period piece, a little untrue but...>, lawrence of arabia<what happened to lawrence in that turkish officer's camp>, On the waterfront<I could had been a contender>, La Strada <anthony quinn:)>, godfather I and II, PAtton <george c scott is his character actor best>, MAd MAx I And II<I am surprised for this entry, but the action is lovely, and the fiction is a genre starter, how many apocalyptic movies is merely mad max, the Night rider!!!>, The battle of algiers <this is what river kwai isn't, much rawer>, The Last Detail <very few films deal with the military police like this film, honest end too, very honest>, West Side Story <Anita, stick with your own kind, if only the world heard her>, The Train <Jon VOigt and Eric Roberts, the end is a painting, the film is very visual, you feel the environment>, The Maltese Falcon <The stuff dreams are made of>, The treasure of sierra madre <this is one of my favorite films and in terms of mineral movies, put this next to there will be blood and they both ring very true>, MArathon man <Not a fan , but the performances are strong>, Boyz in the hood <the first film he placed that has a majority black cast, wouldn't be my first choice and I am not a fan of the film but ok, for me, daughters of the dust has to be near first as a mandatory, I think ceddo as well from sembene, but ok again>, Black Orpheus <it is a film in portuguese , and in brasil it is not as well known, though the soundtrack reverberated all over the world, white man wrote it but it is a fantasy film, and that is underrated>Raging bull <not a fan, but loved the performance by the brother who played sugar ray robinson>, apocalypto <still one of the most honest films about indigenous people in the american continent and the coming doom of their world at the hands of immigrants>, casablanca <here's looking at you kid, campy at some level, nice romance>, thief<like rollerball, this movie was ahead of its time, the thief character and the environment is just never before seen and immitated after>, cooley high <the third majority black cast on his list, a comedy, Many black people in the usa love comedy, I am neutral>, I Am cuba <who is betty:) it is in spanish, the shot for the revolutionary procession, taken without breaking from that distance is magic>, one flew over the cuckoo's nest<a 70's classic, the look inside insane asylums is blunt and honest>, district 9 <south african, but white not black... it will make you think a little of alien nation but a twist in that it deals with an extra challenge of immigration but in a way you may not expect>, in the heat of the night <some honesty, the detective story is the best part, at the end, both cops are united as cops which in itself is interesting>, white heat <I saw it but I have forgotten>, to kill a mockingbird <when you see brock peters in this compared to the pawn broker it is revealing to his greatness as a thespian>, chinatown <how many ships can you buy? what is it you want you don't already have?.. the answer is magic>, Black Rain <it is rare japan is viewed from this angle in a hollywood film, reminds you of japanese films, dealing with law enforcement>, singing in the rain <lovely dance numbers, and the female lead was in her first film i think >, PAths of glory <one of my personal favorite military movies, wonder if das boot is in this, paths of glory is still blunt in a way few military films are>, spartacus <I'll tell him who his father was, that voice:) >, Dr STrangelove <its a screwball parady on war movies that is quietly serious, that is the pary that makes it a rare gem, it is trying to be funny, but it is also trying to be serious>,  kung fu hustle <when helen of troy screams:) you will know what I mean if you saw this film>, Close encounters of the third kind <open hand, tilt hand, close hand, open hand, tilt hand>, empire of the sun <not a fan of this film , but a rare appearance of japanese>, Cool hand luke <the chain gang sheriff in this film has become a standard parody character, the penal system in the usa is dirty though and this film does reflect some of it and also the connection many have in it, as they are poor or desperate or destitute>, badlands <Like a baby between silence of the lambs and bonny and clyde, the end is shocking at some level, makes perfect sense in the usa, but also alittle shocking in some ways>, the wizard of oz <funny it came out the same year as gone with the wind and harvey and a host of others.. was adud until t.v showed it to families, judy garland's voice, magic>, an american in paris <the dance routines, lovely>, lust for life <I oppose this film as an artist, I have nothing against van gogh but I oppose this film and it is brilliant, the performances, the honesty about artists loneliness, frictions with other artists, but I oppose this film >... my final assessment is no daughters of the dust. No Ceddo. No Oscar Micheaux. Wow! Spike, no micheaux. "Body and Soul" is a must for black cinema. "City of Joy" can get a shout, love om puri. his choices but I say ahh, I think he gave some directors too much or repeated too much. No horror in there. Where is "eyes without a face" or "diabolique" I think "Mississippi MAssala" deserves a shout. but hmmm 
https://likewise.com/list/Spike-Lees-Watch-List-The-Greatest-Films-Ever-Made-5c4788b29d2f4319981925af

truth on the statian empire- I just love the fact that he is honest about the usa as an empire, I find so few, including Amanpour the interviewer seem unable to say the usa is an empire, like admitting it is a sin or some truth that if said destroys the peace in the world or something. 
amanpour with lawrence wilkerson 
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/09/10/amanpour-wilkerson-9-11.cnn 

NO TRanscript but I will try to remember

To Afghan women

“The Other Afghan Women” | Video | Amanpour & Company | PBS

Transcript

WELL, YOU KNOW, WHEN WE THINK ABOUT THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, WE TEND TO HAVE A VERY VAGUE IDEA OF IT, BUT IN FACT ON THE GROUND THE WAR IS ONLY FOUGHT IN PART OF THE COUNTRY AND THAT'S IN THE RURAL, SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN, AND SO I WAS REALLY CURIOUS TO SEE WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING, IN SOME CASES THROUGH FOUR DECADES OF CONFLICT.

SO I DECIDED TO TRAVEL THIS SUMMER TO INTERVIEW DOZENS OF WOMEN TO TRY TO FIND OUT.

I'M JUST CURIOUS, HOW DID YOU FIND THESE WOMEN AND WERE THEY OPEN TO SPEAKING WITH YOU?

I KNOW YOU SPENT A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME WITH A WOMAN NAMED SHAKIRA, WHO SEEMS SURPRISED SHE SHARED HER NAME WITH ONE OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST POP STARS.

MANY OF THESE WOMEN HAVE NOT MET FOREIGNERS.

SHAKIRA TOLD ME SHE HASN'T MET A FOREIGNER WHO WASN'T CARRYING A GUN.

SO THEIR ONLY EXPERIENCE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS THROUGH VIOLENCE, THE MILITARY.

SO IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO ACTUALLY MEET THEM AT FIRST.

I HAD TO GO THROUGH GRANDMOTHERS BECAUSE IN THESE VERY CONSERVATIVE, TRADITIONAL AREAS IT'S VERY UNUSUAL FOR MEN, UNRELATED MEN TO SPEAK WITH WOMEN, UNRELATED TO THE TALIBAN.

IT'S BEEN THIS WAY FOR A LONG TIME.

SO I FIRST MET WITH SOME GRANDMOTHERS AND THEY REFERRED ME TO OTHER PEOPLE AND EVERY SINGLE TIME I MET SOMEBODY, I ASK THEM, TELL ME YOUR LIFE STORY FROM THE BEGINNING.

WHEN THEY DID THAT, I WAS REALLY SHOCKED, EVEN AS SOMEBODY MYSELF WHO HAS BEEN COVERING THIS CONFLICT FOR A DECADE, I WAS SHOCKED BY THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE THEY HAD SEEN.

WHETHER IT'S AIR STRIKES OR ROADSIDE BOMBS OR KIDNAPPINGS OR WHAT NOT.

YES, BECAUSE SO MUCH OF WAR, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE THAT DON'T LIVE THROUGH IT, THE TOLD THROUGH THE LENS OF THE GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS.

ONE WOULD ASSUME OBVIOUSLY THAT THE GOOD GUYS WOULD BE THE AMERICANS AND ALLIES THAT COME IN AND SUPPORT THE AFGHAN ARMY AND IT'S NOT AS SIMPLE OF THAT.

THIS IS REALLY WHAT GETS TO THE CRUX OF YOUR PIECE HERE.

I WANT TO JUST READ ONE VERSE FROM IT.

YOU WRITE THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER HAS RESTORED ORDER TO THE CONSERVATIVE COUNTRYSIDE, WHILE PLUNGING THE LIBERAL STREETS OF KABUL INTO FEAR AND HOPELESSNESS.

THIS BRINGS TO LIGHT THE UNSPOKEN PREMISE OF THE PAST TWO DECADES.

IF U.S. TROOPS KEEP BATTLING THE TALIBAN IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, THEN LIFE IN THE CITIES COULD BLOSSOM.

THIS MAY HAVE BEEN A SUSTAINABLE PROJECT, BUT WAS IT JUST?

CAN THE RIGHTS OF ONE COMMUNITY DEPEND IN ON THE RIGHTS OF ANOTHER?

IS IT REALLY AS BINARY OF A CHOICE AS THIS?

DO THESE WOMEN FEEL THEIR LIVES ARE BEING SACRIFICED FOR THE LIVES AND FREEDOMS OF WOMEN IN LARGER CITIES?

YOU KNOW, EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I MET I ASKED THEM ABOUT WOMEN'S RIGHTS.

I SAID, YOU KNOW, THE UNITED STATES SAYS THAT ONE OF THE REASONS WHY THEY'VE INVADED AFGHANISTAN AND THEY SUPPORT THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT IS TO BRING RIGHTS TO WOMEN

Meghan Fitzmartin has placed Robin on a sexual journey. I say this based on her words. She never said strictly Tim Drake is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. She said he is on a journey of self discovery. The endpoint does not have to be what anyone thinks. 
I Quote the author in double brackets
<<
When Dave [Wielgosz] (my editor for Batman: Urban Legends) reached out about doing another Tim story, I was thrilled, ...We talked about where Tim Drake has been vs where he was at the time and came to the conclusion that it needed to be a story about identity and discovery. What was next for Boy Wonder?... Look, I don’t know if this is something that can happen, but this is the story, because it’s the only story it can be. ... I fully sat on the floor of my apartment for a solid two minutes in happiness as it sunk in. Ultimately, this wouldn’t have happened without champions at DC, like Dave and James Tynion IV, and I hope it is as meaningful for others as it has been for me. ...The greatest thing about working with an established IP, ...is that there are so many story decisions for characters that have already been made for you (often by people much smarter than you). [“Sum of Our Parts”] happened because this is who Tim is. I love this character very much, and as I went back to reread as much as I could to do Robin justice, it became clear this is the story Tim needed to tell. ... I wanted to pay tribute to the fact that sexuality is a journey, ... To be clear, his feelings for Stephanie have been/are 100% real, as are his feelings for Bernard. However, Tim is still figuring himself out. I don’t think he has the language for it all... yet.
>>
She has not written this to pabelize tim drake, even though all the articles seemed to do that. 

I quote the article in double brackets
<<
Kate Kane is the most prominent canonically queer member of the sprawling Bat-family. She debuted as Batwoman in 2006 in the company’s year-long weekly-TV style series 52, and immediately garnered shock headlines — even though she ultimately had a fairly minor role. Gotham City has slowly become a much queerer place since her introduction, but mostly with villains and secondary characters. The subtext of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy was finally allowed to be text in the early 2010s. Before she (nearly) married Batman, Catwoman briefly had a girlfriend. Midnighter became a recurring supporting character in Nightwing stories. Police detectives Renee Montoya and Maggie Sawyer and the young vigilante Bluebird/Harper Row flitted in and out of continuity.
>>
I wonder, did Bob Kane leave any diaries or explicit thoughts to the world he created. I am not suggesting any artist should had been restricted. I am not suggesting any artist need to be behind a block. But, I wonder. Many artists after Bob Kane turned many members of Bob Kane's world into LGBTQ+ members, I am not certain Kane wanted that. 

SUB ARTICLE 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/11/batmans-sidekick-robin-comes-out-as-lgbtq-in-new-comic
SOURCE ARTICLE
https://www.polygon.com/comics/22617395/robin-gay-queer-batman-dc-comics

Marvel and DC face backlash over pay: ‘They sent a thank you note and $5,000 – the movie made $1bn’
SUB ARTICLE 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/09/marvel-and-dc-face-backlash-over-pay-they-sent-a-thank-you-note-and-5000-the-movie-made-1bn

PRH < Penguin Random House>  and Amanda Gorman Launch Creative Writing Award for Poetry SHARE FOLKS
This year, we are thrilled to announce that we are adding the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry to our program. This award is one of five creative writing awards given by Penguin Random House. Other categories include fiction/drama; personal essay/memoir; and the Maya Angelou Award for spoken-word. In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area. Full press release here.

The 2022 competition will launch on October 1. If you are a current high school seniors who attends public schools in the United States, including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories, and are planning to attend college – either a two-year or four-year institution – in the fall of 2022, please check back in October to apply.

Contact us at creativewriting@penguinrandomhouse.com

SUB ARTICLE
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/87124-prh-and-amanda-gorman-launch-creative-writing-award-for-poetry.html
RULES
https://social-impact.penguinrandomhouse.com/our-awards/u-s-creative-writing-awards/

Dolly Parton to publish her first novel in 2022
The country music superstar has teamed up with the novelist James Patterson to write Run, Rose, Run, which will be published in March

I love the title

SUB ARTICLE
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/11/dolly-parton-to-publish-her-first-novel-in-2022

John Le Carré's final novel is coming in October — see the first look- I love the cover, very film noiry:) 

Le Carré wrote Silverview alongside his final two novels (Agent Running in the Field and A Legacy of Spies) and left his body of work in the care of his children. This last novel will follow Julian Lawndsley as he flees the big city for a job at a bookstore in a small town; meanwhile, a London spy chief arrives to the seaside enclave to investigate a potential leak. When it hits stands, Silverview will include an afterword from Cornwell, paying tribute to his father — along with his siblings and an archivist, he's currently cataloguing all of le Carré's work.

"This is the authentic le Carré, telling one more story," his son Nick Cornwell — a novelist who writes under the pen name Nick Harkaway — says in a statement. "The book is fraught, forensic, lyrical, and fierce, at long last searching the soul of the modern Secret Intelligence Service itself. It's a superb and fitting final novel."

Jonny Gellar, the author's longtime literary agent, adds that the new novel feels like a gift left for his legions fans: "Silverview is as urgent and alive as any of his past work."

SUB ARTICLE
https://ew.com/books/john-le-carre-posthumous-novel-silverview/
BOOK PAGE
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/703350/silverview-by-john-le-carre/

I Quote the article in double brackets 

<<
...
In July, the Hungarian government imposed an $830 fine on the distributor of the Hungarian translation of Lawrence Schimel’s children’s book What a Family!, citing a law that bans the depiction of homosexuality and gender reassignment in material aimed at minors. The book tells the story of two families with young children—one with two fathers and the other with two mothers.

That incident follows another in Hungary, in October 2020, when a member of parliament put a copy of Meseorszag mindenkie (A Fairy Tale for Everyone), which also features LGBTQ characters, through a shredder. “So the publisher reprinted it as a board book” said Schimel, whose book had the same Hungarian editor.
...
Schimel, an American living in Madrid, has published dozens of LGBTQ-themed works for children and adults. “It’s important for all families, not just those who are LGBTQ, to see and read these books which show just how normal these families are,” he said. What a Family! is now sold in Hungary with a sticker, warning readers that it depicts families “outside the norm.” It was originally published as two books in Spanish, and Orca Book Publishers is releasing it as two books in the U.S. in September.

Russia led the way in overt European LGBTQ censorship with the passage of its “anti-LGBTQ propaganda” law in 2012. Today, LGBTQ books are routinely suppressed there, and those that make it to market are sold with warning stickers.

“The campaigns by the populist governments in Europe, such as in Hungary and Poland, against the LGBTQ community are in direct violation of the principles of inclusion and the celebration of diversity,” said Michiel Kolman, chair for inclusive publishing at the IPA. He noted that in Poland, several towns have declared themselves LGBTQ-free zones, forcing LGBTQ residents to move, while in Hungary the transgender community was first targeted, and after that the broader LGBTQ community.

“The policies manifest themselves through censorship of books and other media that directly contradict the freedom-to-publish mission of the IPA,” Kolman told PW. He added that the Hungarian laws are likely an effort to deflect attention from the country’s dismal economic and Covid-19 track record.

Following the news of the attack on Schimel’s book in Hungary, the IPA, the Federation of European Publishers, and the European and International Booksellers Federation all reaffirmed their support for Hungarian publishers and readers, and their solidarity with LGBTQ communities in Hungary.

Also in July, the government of Belarus moved to dissolve the local branch of PEN after the freedom of speech organization released a report showing 621 instances of human rights violations, including arrests and imprisonments, against culture workers in the first six months of 2021. Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, was among those around the world who issued a statement in support of PEN Belarus. “When a government silences and stomps on its writers, it reveals a level of shame and decay that leaders are aiming to hide, but instead only expose,” Nossel wrote. “Belarus’ leaders may think they can suppress the truth by muzzling those who dare tell it, but the story of the will of the people and the scale of brutal repression will find its way to the world. We stand in solidarity with the writers of PEN Belarus and are determined to ensure that their vital voices are heard and their rights to express themselves vindicated.” As recently as last week, a dissident journalist from Belarus who disappeared was found dead in Ukraine.

Nossel told PW that this type of activity is an attempt by authoritarian governments to control the narrative, both at home and abroad, in a world where information is fast moving, freely available, and difficult to suppress. She cited China and the closures of bookstores and publications that express dissent in Hong Kong as particularly egregious examples of censorship. “[The Chinese] are reaching down to destroy the remnants of any challenge to their authority,” she said. “For organizations like PEN, fighting this is an ongoing battle.”

Nicholas Lemann, director of Columbia Global Reports, a publisher that offers short books on hot political and social justice topics, noted his house has been vigilant in covering the rise of authoritarianism, the curtailing of press freedoms, and China. In May, Columbia Global Reports published The Politics of Our Time by John Judis, a one-volume contemporary history of populism, nationalism, and socialism.

Lemann, the former dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, said he routinely gets reports from former students about the rise in persecution of journalists. “In recent years, I have heard more and more often from journalists in India about Narendra Modi and in Brazil about Jair Bolsonaro and what they are doing to limit press freedoms,” he noted. “At the turn of the millennium, we thought that the triumph of the American economic system inextricably went along with the triumph of the American freedom of expression system. And we thought these would be globalized. Well, that didn’t happen,” Lemann said.

It has long been known that the Chinese government keeps a close eye on which books are distributed there and maintains control of the issuing of ISBNs. Officially, censorship is not a state policy. Publishers have long held that if a book does not become too popular or influential in China, it will be tolerated. But unofficial policy is flexible, and recent trends have shifted toward a narrowing of what is considered acceptable. For example, there’s been a crackdown in recent years on what can be published on China’s wildly popular writing websites, such as China Literature, and works that are deemed too “salacious” have been removed. Last year, Fang Fang, who lives in Wuhan and published a blog about the early days of lockdown during the pandemic, was vilified by the government. Her blog entries were collected into the book Wuhan Diary, published by HarperCollins.

In July, the Chinese government outlawed foreign direct investment in education companies. The law is aimed at companies that offer tutoring to Chinese students—a business that has ballooned to an estimated $100 billion per year. The law is likely to impact numerous foreign education publishers that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the sector. “The government is operating with the idea that liberal Western ideas may be damaging the children,” Nossel said.

Different countries have different means of controlling book publication and exerting censorship. In Turkey, authorities require that any book sold in bookstores has a government “banderol”—a sticker testifying to its “authenticity.” The government claims this is necessary to combat piracy, but in effect it acts as a means of regulating publishers.

In Venezuela, officially, publishers can publish anything—but they may not be able to acquire paper and ink to print certain books. The same happens in Russia, where a printer might suddenly become reticent to produce a potentially objectionable book for fear of government blowback.

IPA fights for the freedom to publish

The IPA maintains a committee that monitors freedom-to-publish issues around the world and presents an annual award, the Prix Voltaire, honoring courageous publishers that have faced oppression. To reinforce its mission to support global publishing during the pandemic, the IPA also recently launched a program to promote publishing, dubbed INSPIRE (International Sustainable Publishing and Industry Resilience). Two of the tenets of the program’s charter are maintaining that “freedom to publish is a prerequisite for diversity, creativity, prosperity, tolerance, and progress” and that “copyright and freedom to publish are mutually reinforcing fundamental rights that are essential to the practice and preservation of political culture, education, scholarship, and socioeconomic development.” The charter has garnered signatures from more than 100 organizations around the world, including Publishers Weekly.

“Many countries have introduced special laws to deal with the Covid-19 crisis,” said Kristenn Einarsson, chair of the IPA’s Freedom to Publish committee and former managing director of the Norwegian Publishers Association. “There is a growing concern that these might be maintained in the future, after the crisis has ended, and that some of them could be used to limit the freedom to publish and freedom of expression.”

Einarsson said in some authoritarian states, censorship can be internalized and become self-censorship. “The same fears that can affect publishers and lead them to self-censor can also infect authors, booksellers, and librarians. In the end, if these fears delay or stop the creation or publication of such reports and works, then it is we, the readers, who are deprived. Any discussion about what should be published is of course welcomed, but it is important that publishers stand firmly to defend the publishing of all that they deem worthy of publication, even—and perhaps especially—if those works challenge the boundaries established by the society they operate in.”
>>

MY thoughts... first, governments do have the right to ban anything. all governments ban artistic content. all governments. Sequentially, suggesting any government is bad or criminal based on banning requires all governments in humanity to be imprisoned. But, communities require rules. Individualism has functional limits when one does not live alone, and each human or humanity has never been alone on earth. 

Schimel's point encapsulates the problem. In most communities in humanity, the entire LGBTQ+ experience as a collection of communities or in parts is not common or public. Artist like him who want to make the activities public or common in the collective mindset have an automatic enemy in those who do not. In any community where most do not, opposition grows to where people have lgbtq+ free zones. In the usa, I don't recall any publicly touted lgbtq+ free zones. 

The problem with the word populist is it means of the people. IF a government in populists and you dislike its position. You are stating you want the position that most people have under a government to be opposed. If Majority doesn't rule then who does? If minority rules, how long will the majority allow before extreme violence hits? 

I wish people will stop using sars-cov-2 for everything. Every country that is doing something someone does not like is referred to in media as doing it because of the sars-cov-2 in some fashion. I wish modern media will kill that interpretation.

One thing I learned in the Ken Burns vietnam war documentary on PBS was that during the 1960s the polls was in favor of staying in the vietnam war. What is my point? Modern media makes it seem like most people didn't want to be in the vietnam war. But that is a lie. The problem with many governments in humanity is global media, global media defined as media between countries, is dominated by the usa and creates a narrative that most of the people in a country are opposed to the actions. Are most people in china, opposed to the actions by the chinese government toward HOng Kong? I don't know. I am not suggesting I support or oppose the chinese governments actions. But, I know I am not certain they are not what the majority of people in china want. And again, if the majority isn't in control, then the minority is, and how long will the majority be nonviolent to the in control minority? If the majority is in control then... what is wrong? If ninety-nine people are happy and one is not. The one person can't be in control over the other 99. The one person has to leave if they want things their way, or eat crow. 

Nicholas Lemann need to define who is we, when he said :"we thought that the triumph of the American economic system inextricably went along with the triumph of the American freedom of expression system. And we thought these would be globalized. Well, that didn’t happen" 
We didn't include the native american. We didn't black folk in black towns in the usa. If anything, Lemann proves why people like him failed, cause people like him assumed his agenda was similar to other people. Second, Lemann has to describe what the Statian economic system is. The USA financial model is simple. Kill a people for their land, enslave a people for their labor, and then maintain a system to maintain wealth in your community. He talks about freedom of expression. But if most black people, native americans, women in the usa circa 1865 couldn't read or write then outside talking who was expressing anything? Most of said people did not have the money<fiscal poor> or time<laborer> or situation<prison> to be at a pulpit. Lemann is wrong, Statian economic system or system of expression did become globalized. People like Lemann was confused as to what the usa was exporting.

The USA is the king of using unrelated things to cover agendas. Freedom was the cover for the financially profitable drugs or arms trading zone called vietnam. Improvement of non white europeans or peace in the USA was the cover for white financed negative anti native education camps called boarding schools for native american children or the white financed colleges or associations that were fiscal class covens for black people who demand nonviolence to all in the black community against all other black people. Sars-Cov-2 is the cover for an agenda of raising the cost of living, or making media more narrower through streaming channels, deemed as the best activities to keep people safe from a virus that only a person living in a viral blockading suit can be.  

SUB ARTICLE
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/87097-censorship-on-the-rise-worldwide.html
 International Publishers Association report "Freedom to Publish: Challenges, Violations and Countries of Concern" 
https://www.internationalpublishers.org/images/aa-content/ipa-reports/State_of_Publishing_Reports_2020/Freedom-to-Publish-Challenges-violations-and-countries-of-concern.pdf

Goodreads Ransoms, LGBTQ+ Robin, and Dolly’s Debut: This Week in Book News
MAIN ARTICLE
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/08/13/goodreads-ransoms-lgbtq-robin-and-dollys-debut-this-week-in-book-news/

100 Literary Jeopardy Clues from Real Episodes of Jeopardy!
By Emily Temple
https://lithub.com/100-literary-jeopardy-clues-from-real-episodes-of-jeopardy/

THE PI OF COLOR: WHEN IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN THE CRIME
JUNE 29, 2021 BY TRACY CLARK
"I had to acknowledge that diverse characters, in whatever genre, straddle a fence. One side of the fence represents who they are, the other represents how society sees and accepts them."

We all know the PI. You need only rattle off the names—Spade, Hammer, Marlowe, Archer—to conjure the picture. Tough, swaggering, fast-talking, busted nose, cigs, that Webley–Fosbery revolver.

They’re Bogie-like, usually, men sure of themselves and sure of their place in the world. They stand firmly at the top of society’s pecking order, even though they ply their shadowy trade by night, solo, down near the docks or in a dive bar, soaked in gin and regret.

But, thankfully, the world has grown a li’l bit since Hammett set Spade off in pursuit of “the bird.” The PI has grown up, too, broadened a bit. He, or she, is not as solitary, a lot of the gumshoeing is done from the comfort of their swivel chair, the gin is artisanal, not every last one of them by default looks like Bogie or Dick Powell.

More writers of color are writing PIs of color, which might explain the broadening. These non-Marlowes feel deeper, rounded, they’re often more complex than their Coolidge-era counterparts. And when these characters hit the page, they’re hitting it hard, bringing their communities, their identities, their unique perspectives on the world right along with them.
Here are the tropes for the classic PI. He’s an outsider scarred by life. He has his own code of ethics, often questionable. He doesn’t play well with others and wears sardonicism like a cheap suit. This guy fights the good fight, but he’s not above fighting it dirty. He defends the damsel in distress, thinking she’s Penelope Pitstop when she’s really Ursula, the sea witch. He’s a little thick, this PI, but he’s not dumb.

I was instantly drawn to the genre, I think, by the sheer stubbornness of all those slippery tecs. You were never quite 100 percent sure if they were good guys or bad ones, but I liked their tenacity, their bullheadedness. You could beat the stuffing out of a PI on Monday and Tuesday, and he’d be back bright and early Wednesday with a brace on his nose, talking smack, like he just KO’d Joe Louis.

When I sat down to write my PI, Cassandra Raines, I borrowed some of those tropes. She’s a bit of loner who doesn’t play well with others. She has her scars and flaws, which have been exciting to poke at as the series has progressed. She is headstrong, relentless, unapologetic, an outsider who thumbs her nose at authority, like a good PI should. I stopped short of the busted nose (I cringe just thinking about it). But when I made her Black and female, I was also acutely aware that I had firmly locked her into a specific worldview and had rooted her in a rich community. I knew that she would come to the page much differently than Spade came to Hammett’s. She would have to be an outsider by virtue of her profession but also by virtue of her sex and race. She was a woman in a man’s world, a Black woman in a society that looked at her as “other” everywhere but where she came from, regardless of how competent or intelligent I made her.

As a reader I can certainly put myself in Spade’s shoes, or Archer’s, and go along for the ride, but I know those shoes weren’t meant for me. My realm and theirs were worlds apart. So, as a writer, I created a PI that looked like me, who shared some of my experiences. I planted her in a community with the kind of people I was familiar with and gave her a place to live that looked and felt and sounded like the one I knew. Marlowe was great as far as Marlowe went, but I wanted my PI to “represent.”

Here’s where it got tough. What did that mean? What would representation even look like on the page? I didn’t want her to move through my book world having her race be the most defining thing about her. Who leaves their house every morning with a bullhorn and a proclamation on their lips? But her race isn’t an insignificant thing either. Could I tip a hat to the old PI, acknowledge the archetype, and then re-shape it so that it made sense for Cass?

I could make her capable, hard-driving, indefatigable. I could make her snarky like Spade, but I had to acknowledge that diverse characters, in whatever genre, straddle a fence. One side of the fence represents who they are, the other represents how society sees and accepts them. Cass has a foot planted firmly on each side of that fence. She’s a Black woman in 2021 up to her neck in “isms.” In contrast, Spade traveled around in a society that worked for him, one that was set up to work just that way. Things work differently down Cass’s way.

Justice, in principle, in execution, looks different to Cass than it does for Archer or Marlowe. Right and wrong might not be so black and white. Cass would understand the backstory on issues like grinding poverty, mass incarceration, the role of policing in black and brown communities, rampant homelessness, the ravages of drug addiction and the damage all these things cause to families and the home place, because she’s there where all this plays out, she’s in it. I can’t see any of those other fellas giving any of that all that much thought.

Where Cass comes from, Marlowe would be “other.” Marlowe may walk Cass’s streets, but he cannot know them like she knows them. The reverse is also true. But the fact that we now have stories about Cass’s streets and not just Marlowe’s is the change. A reader can now see things through a different set of human eyes. This change in perspective, in the way Cass thinks, based on who she is and what she knows, colors how she deals with the people she encounters. A junkie may be just a junkie to Marlowe; Cass may not think of addiction as a personal failing. Understanding goes a long way toward humanizing a character.
I didn’t invent this wheel. Writers of color have been writing PIs of color for decades. Take Rudolph Fisher’s “The Conjure-Man Dies” (1932), credited with being the first detective novel by an African-American author, or Chester Himes’s Harlem cycle of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Today, we have Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins and Gary Phillips’s Ivan Monk, Steph Cha’s Juniper Song, Rachel Howzell Hall’s Grayson Sykes, Cheryl Head’s Charlie Mack, Delia Pitts’ SJ Rook, Stephen Mack Jones’ August Snow. Black, biracial, Korean-American, male, female, straight, gay, each character is firmly planted someplace. Through their eyes we see a Detroit, Harlem, Los Angeles not many see and meet people we might never otherwise meet. No one knows these places, these people, better than the writers who write about them.

That knowledge, that familiar base, is important. Mosley’s Easy Rawlins comes out of the Watts area of L.A. Easy knows Watts better than Spade would know it. Alex Segura’s Cuban-American detective Pete Fernandez has Miami covered. Marlowe couldn’t know Miami as well as Pete knows it if he crammed for a thousand years. Spade would be lost in Cass’s Chicago, too, and I’m sure that if she encountered him there, she’d do all she could to ditch him in an alley. Who wants a swaggering Bogie-type trailing behind her? He’d stick out like a sore thumb!

In the end, I decided Cass didn’t have to represent, all she has to do was be. She lives on the page like most of us live off of it, matter-of-factly, eschewing the soapbox, the waving banners, quietly getting the job done. The story, like the play, is the thing (to paraphrase a line from Hamlet), and as I write her, I pair her toughness with empathy and her intelligence with compassion. The fence is not going anywhere, not for her, not for the other PIs, not for the rest of us out here in the real world. But there’s drama gold in the way she and all the non-Marlowes straddle it, and my job is to tell the truth about it.

So, the PI, yes, but not the old PI. Make fair use of the classic tropes? Why not? Who doesn’t like a good double-cross? But there’s a whole new world out there full of non-Marlowes now. Why not follow them home and see what they’re about?

https://crimereads.com/the-pi-of-color-when-its-about-more-than-the-crime/

Hungarian authorities have fined the distributor of a children’s book featuring same-sex parents.
By Walker Caplan
Hungarian authorities have fined the distributor of a children’s book for its depiction of homosexuality. The book in question, a two-part Hungarian translation of Early One Morning and Bedtime, Not Playtime! by Lawrence Schimel, portrays the daily routines of two children, who each have same-sex parents.
...
https://lithub.com/hungarian-authorities-have-fined-the-distributor-of-a-childrens-book-featuring-same-sex-parents/

MAIN ARTICLE
Delayed Discovery, Online SDCC, and Literary Jeopardy: This Week in Book News
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/07/09/delayed-discovery-online-sdcc-and-literary-jeopardy-this-week-in-book-news/