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1 injured, juvenile arrested after shooting in Zachary

1 injured, juvenile arrested after shooting in Zachary

Yahoo30-01-2025

BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — The Zachary Police Department has arrested a juvenile suspect in connection to a possible shooting on Florida Street that happened Wednesday night.
Officers were called to the scene around 7:30 p.m. and initiated an investigation at the Garden View Apartments.
ZPD said a shooting victim was found and was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
'A juvenile suspect has been arrested and was transported to EBR Juvenile Detention Center,' ZPD said.
ZPD said no other details will be released.
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Plan to shift juvenile detention center to the sheriff's office draws opposition
Plan to shift juvenile detention center to the sheriff's office draws opposition

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Plan to shift juvenile detention center to the sheriff's office draws opposition

Elected officials and police reform activists are pushing back on the proposal to transfer control of Knox County's troubled juvenile detention center to the sheriff's office. Richard Bean was forced out as the facility's superintendent last week after he fired a whistleblower. The chain of events laid bare the longstanding problems at the facility under Bean's 53 years of leadership. Some commissioners are quickly exploring alternative oversight models instead of the sheriff's office takeover favored by Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs. Their concerns are heightened by the death of an adult inmate earlier this year at the Knox County jail overseen by the sheriff's office: the man was beaten by jail staffers who did not recognize he was suffering from untreated meningitis. He died the next day. Commissioners will discuss and could vote June 23 on transferring oversight to the sheriff. Democrats on the board and criminal justice reform advocates are asking for another way to care for juveniles who are arrested or convicted. Knox County Commissioner Damon Rawls wants to see an audit of the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Detention Center to document any potential problems or solutions. That will help determine the best type of oversight, he said. "There needs to be an understanding of what issues truly exist there and a fix, a true fixing of those issues. I would prefer for an outside entity to take a look to say, maybe it's board oversight or maybe it's a restructuring of the organization," Rawls said. Rawls said he would not be opposed to a temporary, short-term shift of power to the sheriff's office while an evaluation took place. "I'd like for us to take some time to look at alternatives. Things are up in the air now. So, originally, I would say if we were saying we needed to move for the sake of time, and this move was temporary, then I would be OK with the move being temporary. I just think we need to take a look at the greater landscape and see what would be best for the Richard Bean Center," Rawls said. Overall, he wants it to best serve kids through a structure focused on rehabilitation instead of retribution. "I want to see that the kids are taken care of, treated in a humane manner, and helped to be rehabilitated," Rawls told Knox News. Knox County Commissioner Shane Jackson also wants a potential transfer to the sheriff's office to be temporary. "I agree that we must transition the management of the detention center ‒ either to the state, the sheriff's office or other option ‒ as soon as it is practicable, but on a temporary period," Jackson wrote in a message to other commissioners. He hopes the scrutiny goes beyond who's put in charge. "I think that this is an opportunity for the county commission to review the procedures and policies at the juvenile detention center and look at what the future holds and what is the best way to set up and provide oversight to the juvenile detention center in the future," Jackson told Knox News. Knox County Commissioner Courtney Durrett agrees more research and evaluations should be a first step. "So my thoughts are just mainly I want to know how other detention facilities operate in the state and how similar or unsimilar ours is, comparatively speaking and just go from there because honestly, we're all kind of just thrust into this. So I definitely want to find out more information about other detention facilities in the state and how they operate and who has oversight, etc.," Durrett told Knox News. Knox News asked Mike Donila, Jacobs' spokesperson, if alternatives were considered or if the move would be temporary until the community has time to explore what options it prefers. Donila sent Knox News a statement from Dwight Van de Vate, chief operating officer for Jacobs. "We remain in ongoing conversations with state and local officials about how best to move forward. We are appreciative of the spirit of cooperation everyone continues to show, and we are confident of a good long-term outcome for the facility and the youth it serves," Van de Vate said in his written response. Republican Knox County Commissioner Gina Oster told Knox News that "it's definitely up to each commissioner" to decide what approach they support, and she expects a robust discussion when the issue comes up in front of the commission for debate on June 16 and a vote on June 23. State Rep. Sam McKenzie does not have a vote on the matter, but is using his influence to urge commissioners to make the best decision for teens at the facility. "You can't let one person have so much control over something so valuable, or how we deal with children, and our way with children speaks to as we are as a culture," McKenzie said. He said the problems stemmed from giving one person with limited oversight control over the kids. That shouldn't happen again, he said. "I think we need to hit the pause button. Let's figure out what's wrong, bring in some outside experts. We don't have the only juvenile detention center in the country. Let's figure out how other organizations, other entities in the state, have run and how we can do this better. Because this isn't working," he said. Shifting oversight to the sheriff's office is the easy solution, he said, instead of doing hard research and collective soul-searching. "What (Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs) wants to do is to sweep it under the rug. He wants to say, just transfer it to the sheriff. And I just don't think that's the answer without a clear understanding of what's going on in the current situation," McKenzie said. Police reform activist Nzinga Amani told Knox News they are extremely concerned about what a juvenile detention center would look like under the Knox County Sheriff's Office. "There's no trust for the Knox County sheriffs. There's no accountability for that institution," Amani told Knox News. Detention centers can focus on rehabilitating young people instead of punishing them. Amani wants the oversight board restructured. "If you look at this board, the board needs to be transformed to actually represent the communities and people who are impacted by that system. So a larger board, more directly affected people on the board, more transparency, public records," Amani told Knox News. Imani Mfalme-Shu'la, executive director of the Community Defense of East Tennessee social justice organization, said the facility's documented track record of isolating kids shows a complete overhaul is needed. "They were in solitary confinement under the current administration. Not getting the education they need. I know this personally because I had a family member there. And the stuff that children are being put in solitary for is absolutely ridiculous," Mfalme-Shu'la told Knox News. The juvenile detention center was built in 1930 and is guided by an independent board of trustees. In 1972, Bean began his tenure as superintendent of the facility, named the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Detention Center in his honor, with minimal oversight. Bean is well-known for his old-fashioned way of operating the facility. That was manifested in outdated recordkeeping practices and the disciplinary methods he uses on the kids confined to the facility, who are ages 12 to 17. Myron Thompson covers public safety for Knox News. Email: This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Plan to shift juvenile detention center to the sheriff's office draws opposition

City dismantled Black community for urban renewal. Decades later, it still hasn't happened
City dismantled Black community for urban renewal. Decades later, it still hasn't happened

Indianapolis Star

timean hour ago

  • Indianapolis Star

City dismantled Black community for urban renewal. Decades later, it still hasn't happened

ELKHART, Ind. — The red brick pavers covered by overgrown weeds near South 6th Street and Dr. MLK Jr. Drive are some of the last remnants of a community that once thrived in this part of Elkhart. This area, called Benham West, was the civic, cultural and commercial hub for Black residents who settled south of the train tracks, the dividing line that separated them from the rest of the city even decades after desegregation. Residents called this area the "Village" because, literally and figuratively, this was their community at a time when many of the Northern Indiana city's predominantly White residents were hostile to the color of their skin. But the tight-knit community is long gone. The city incrementally and systematically bulldozed the neighborhood over more than two decades of aggressive urban renewal. The work uprooted families. Lifelong business owners lost their livelihoods. Homeowners were forced to move to other parts of the city where they were not welcome. Older residents found themselves starting anew, burdened with heftier mortgages they had little time left to pay off, said Steve Millsaps, who grew up in the neighborhood and whose relatives owned homes and businesses there. Officials spent millions of dollars in city and federal funds to buy and raze properties. When residents lost their homes and businesses, they also lost a level of self-sufficiency and assets they could've passed on to their descendants, said Nekeisha Alayna, an Elkhart resident who helped create a documentary about the neighborhood's history. After people dispersed, the neighborhood's community leaders also left, creating a "big vacuum," she said. After all of that, the promised urban revitalization never happened. Politics, the economy and, some argued, bigotry got in the way. "They just screwed us out of our land," Millsaps said. The historical dismantling of neighborhoods is not exclusive to Elkhart or any one city. Urban renewal projects cleared low and middle-income housing in cities nationwide, including Indianapolis, beginning in the 1950s, often targeting neighborhoods where Black residents built their own communities because discriminatory practices of the era kept them from buying or building homes elsewhere. In Elkhart, a manufacturing hub 160 miles north, Benham West became one of the city's most underdeveloped and impoverished neighborhoods after years of disinvestment. Some see the dismantling of Benham West as part of the city's ugly history with racism. The neighborhood and its surrounding areas were also plagued with troubling policing practices by a group of rogue officers known as the Wolverines, who systematically targeted Black citizens for harassment and false arrests. "Benham West and what occurred in Benham West was a failure on multiple levels," said Rod Roberson, who grew up near the neighborhood and was elected the city's first Black mayor in 2019. "But it also failed an entire city and community as well." Roberson said the city now has a long-term plan to revitalize Benham West and surrounding areas, launched a few years ago with the opening of a large community center just outside the neighborhood. But the 55-acre swatch of Benham West still remains a patchwork of empty and overgrown lots, dotted with vacant buildings, a smattering of businesses, a thrift store that also provides beds for the unhoused, a church and some housing. On 6th Street and Dr. MLK Jr. Drive — the old neighborhood's main thoroughfare where homes and businesses once stood — is an auto body shop. Across the street is a big empty lot that was recently remediated to get rid of contaminants. In its heyday, Benham West was a community of single-family homes with well-maintained yards on walkable streets where children played. Businesses, including restaurants, bars, barbershops and barbecue joints, were beloved because they were owned by families and friends. A neighborhood church and a community center — originally called the Colored Community Center and later renamed after Booker T. Washington — helped families raise children. On holidays, residents traded cakes and pies. That's how Jackie Small, who grew up in Benham West, remembers the neighborhood. "I tell my grandchildren," she said, "'I wish you could've lived in the era that I lived in.'" But the community also seemed excluded from the rest of the city. Roberson, whose family was among those that migrated from the South in the 1950s, recalled riding his bicycle out of Benham West and to a sporting goods store downtown when he was 10 years old. Once he passed the underpass beneath the train tracks, he knew he was not welcome. "There were a couple of teenagers who were a little bit older than I was and let me know that I wasn't in the right place," Roberson said. "And so you realize that you're outside of your community." By the 1960s, Benham West had become a priority for urban renewal. City officials sought federal financing and allotted local dollars to buy and demolish properties they believed were substandard. Residents initially resisted because they did not want to lose the bonds of their community and their only church. As the Black population was pushed out of Benham West, "one can easily observe 'for sale' signs on the lawns of white homeowners," according to a 1965 article that cited a report by the Elkhart Urban League. Jamie Pitts, a professor at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary who studied the neighborhood's history, said fears that the redevelopment would entail moving Black residents into White neighborhoods prompted city officials to essentially push Benham West residents into another concentrated area even further south of the train tracks. Some did move north of the tracks — and some of them were met with trepidation and threats. Plez and Brenda Lovelady left Benham West in the 1970s and moved to a house a few miles north, where residents were predominantly White. One day, they found a cross burning in their yard. Many of the houses in Benham West had been razed by then. In their place was a public housing complex the city built a few years earlier for low-income residents. Crime, a problem that older residents said was not a huge problem before all the houses were torn down, plagued the "virtually deserted" area, according to a 1974 newspaper article. By the 1980s, the Washington Gardens public housing complex was one of the most heavily policed parts of the city. The Wolverines, former officers said, used it as their playground. A few businessowners stood firm against the city's urban renewal plans. They had sunk their life savings into their businesses and wanted to be paid a fair price. "You're talking about taking away a livelihood and a community," said Charles Walker, who grew up in Benham West. "And you can't repay that." One of those businessowners was Millsaps' uncle, Marion "Monk" Scott, who operated Monk's Bar on Benham West's main thoroughfare for decades. It was one of the last businesses the city bought because Scott refused to give it up. He rebuilt his business a few blocks south, Millsaps said. Another businessowner was Small's father, Henry Otterbridge, who owned Henry's Pool Hall where, as she put it, "everybody gathered, good or bad." In the late 1980s, when much of the old neighborhood had been demolished, the city sued Otterbridge to force him to sell his property. Otterbridge ultimately sold his business to the city, but he was required to split the money with the previous owner of of the property, which used to be a car service station before it became a pool hall, Small explained. Then, city officials later told her father he had to pay to remove gas tanks that had sat underground for years, she said. After everything, Otterbridge was left with only $35,000 to start anew. "That broke my dad," Small said. Otterbridge opened another business further south, Henry's Grocery Store, but business was slow and people kept owing him money, Small said. In the early 1990s, somebody ransacked the store and set it on fire. "After that," she said, "my dad just said, 'I tried to do what I could do, but I can't do it no more.'" The city did intend to redevelop Benham West. In fact, there were many proposals. A green space. A park. A playground. A mix of residential, industrial and commercial developments. Consultants were hired. Studies were conducted. Sketches were drawn. Thousands of dollars were spent. Promises were made. But Benham West residents felt left out of the decision-making process. In the 1980s, then-Elkhart Mayor Eleanor Kesim proposed a 23-acre park, citing the urgency to fulfill the decades-long promise. But some City Council members preferred selling chunks of Benham West to industrial developers and were concerned that building a park would indefinitely lock the city into paying for maintenance costs. A years-long impasse over whether a predominantly Black neighborhood deserved a park consumed much of Kesim's time as mayor. "My belief in our responsibility to develop Benham West after the drastic urban renewal of the 1970s dismantled whole neighborhoods has not diminished nor has my concern about the not so veiled bigotry of some citizens of this community," Kesim said in 1982, when she proposed a cheaper park the City Council rejected. "Such bigotry is childish, pathetic and indicative of minds crippled by hatred." That same year, the City Council approved a spending plan that did not include the park. Benham West residents showed up in protest. One was quoted in the paper saying, "You are against our black skins." More ideas, like building a mini-college campus, were thrown around. Kesim's successor, Mayor James Perron, reached out to a few schools, but no one committed. It also became apparent that few industrial or commercial developers wanted to build in the neighborhood. The lack of progress became a joke. The first sentence of a 1987 newspaper story read: "Being an Elkhart city official hoping for the redevelopment of the Benham West property is like being a Chicago Cubs fun. You're always waiting for next year." Perron did make some progress, but almost none of those redevelopments lasted. A museum that opened with much fanfare later moved to a different location. A Veterans of Foreign Wars post also opened, but it later shut down and became an Ivy Tech facility. That too later closed, and the building is now empty. Right next to it is a vacant site with a "For Sale" sign. "You get politicians paying lip-service to the idea of redevelopment every 5 to 10 years without much follow through," said Pitts, the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary professor. "Around 2000, a city redevelopment official was quoted in the paper saying, more or less, 'I guess it wasn't enough to just tear things down, there should have been a plan.'" The city's poor track record has led to deep skepticism for some that Elkhart will ever fulfill its promise of revitalizing the area. "One of the bigger problems we have in this city is we have meetings, and at the end of the meetings, you know what we have?" asked former Benham West resident Plez Lovelady. "Nothing but a bunch of dirty coffee cups." When he was elected mayor six years ago, Roberson found there were comprehensive development plans for several areas of Elkhart. But there still was none for Benham West. "The lack of being able to provide a comprehensive plan in order to grow that area and to do the right things in that area is political failure," he said. "It's also the failure of a community to be engaged in the process as well. It's important that I'm held accountable to do what I should be doing in those areas. But it's also important for us to be able to give the community something that it can rally around." The city now has a long-term redevelopment plan in which stakeholders have a say in what they want their neighborhood to become, Roberson said. It involves creating community assets, both in Benham West and in the surrounding neighborhood south of the tracks, that would help raise property values and draw developers to the area. One of those assets is a new 30,000-square-foot center named after two Black community leaders. The Tolson Center for Community Excellence is equipped with two gyms, a dance and exercise room, a computer and arcade room, an art center, a cafeteria with an industrial kitchen and other venues that host various programs for children. There's ongoing construction outside for a soccer field, playground, and basketball and pickleball courts. About a mile south is another recently opened center that helps adults earn a high school diploma and provides job training. Next door is the neighborhood's new and only health center. The two facilities are located in a large shopping mall the city hopes to turn into a commercial and residential area. Rebuilding the area will be a long, "tedious process," Roberson said. "But it's one with a plan," he said. "And it's one that we're going to continue to stay with as long as I'm here."

Donald Trump Jr weighs into LA crisis by suggesting protesters should be shot by ‘Rooftop Koreans'
Donald Trump Jr weighs into LA crisis by suggesting protesters should be shot by ‘Rooftop Koreans'

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Donald Trump Jr weighs into LA crisis by suggesting protesters should be shot by ‘Rooftop Koreans'

Donald Trump Jr has attempted to make light of the ongoing tensions in Los Angeles by calling for the city to 'Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!' Donald Trump's eldest son posted a meme on X of a Korean-American business owner inspecting a rifle on a rooftop in reference to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which erupted in response to the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers caught on video beating Black motorist Rodney King. The angry scenes that ensued saw some members of the local Asian diaspora take up arms to defend their businesses from looters and vandals. The Korean-Americans who took action to safeguard their livelihoods were both applauded as symbols of self-reliance and condemned for risking exacerbating existing racial animosity in their neighborhoods. Don Jr's post comes after protesters again took to the streets of the California city over the weekend to rail against his father's crackdown on illegal immigration, scenes that began on Friday when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents met with opposition from the public as they attempted to arrest alleged undocumented migrants living locally. The mass resistance saw vehicles set alight as protesters threw fireworks towards armed law enforcement officers, held aloft placards bearing hostile slogans and shouted 'Shame on you!' Officers in riot gear responded by firing tear gas and flash grenades to attempt to disperse the crowds. ICE operations across Los Angeles County have so far resulted in the arrests of 118 accused illegal immigrants despite the clashes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. President Trump responded to the situation by federalizing the California National Guard on Saturday, a step that was immediately condemned as 'unlawful' by the state's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who said the move was unnecessary as there were enough LAPD officers on the streets to control the demonstrations. Newsom accused Trump of attempting to 'manufacture a crisis' to distract from his other domestic controversies and of violating California's state sovereignty. 'These are the acts of a dictator, not a president,' he added. Newsom has since sued the administration and challenged Trump's border czar Tom Homan to arrest him, writing on X on Sunday: 'Come and get me, tough guy. I don't give a damn. It won't stop me from standing up for California.' Trump hit back at him on Truth Social, declaring: 'Governor Gavin Newscum and 'Mayor' [Karen] Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. 'These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists. Remember, NO MASKS!' More than 2,000 members of the state National Guard duly arrived in the city on Sunday to assist the LAPD in maintaining order. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has meanwhile threatened to send in the Marines if the chaos continues. At least 10 protesters were arrested on Sunday, following on from the 29 taken into custody on Saturday.

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