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OCTOBER
Oct. 4
The Washington Post website reported that Isaias Salgado, a 31-year-old Hispanic man armed with a brick, was shot dead by police in Riverview, Florida.
Oct. 5
The USA Today website said in an article that more than 160,000 children in 19 states are the victims of corporal punishment in schools each year, according to a new research released by the Society for Research in Child Development. African-American children in a few southern school districts are more likely than white students to be smacked or paddled by a school worker. Black children in more than half of school districts in Alabama and Mississippi, for instance, are at least 51 percent more likely to receive corporal punished than white children, while in one-fifth of districts in both states, black children are more than 500 percent, or five times as likely, to be spanked or paddled. Using data issued periodically by the federal government's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), researchers found that black students in several other southern states -- Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee -- are also more likely to get corporal punishment.
On the same day, the USA Today website reported that a coalition of community activists and parents of students in the Indian River School District is suing the district in federal court, contending its leaders operate one special-education school as a "dumping ground" for African-American students who would be treated better if they were white. The lawsuit alleges George Washington Carver Academy is effectively a segregated school within the district, a "punitive dumping ground for African-American students." White students who bring cellphones to district schools, the lawsuit claims, usually see them confiscated for a day. But when an African-American student was seen with a phone in her backpack, a referral to Carver followed, the lawsuit says. Indian River, the lawsuit alleges, makes a habit out of "removing them [black students] from its mainstream schools and sending them to Carver in disproportionate numbers on flimsy pretexts, segregating them at Carver on arbitrary grounds and for arbitrary periods of time, and neglecting their educational needs."
Oct. 11
A CNN report said that the U.S. Supreme Court grappled with a case concerning racial bias in jury deliberations, as the justices considered the case of a juror in Colorado who urged other jurors to find a man guilty "because he's Mexican and Mexicans take whatever they want." The case pits secrecy rules in jury deliberations against the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a fair and impartial jury. Justice Elena Kagan noted there was "screaming race bias" in the jury room. Lawyer Jeffrey Fisher called racial bias a "stain" on the entire judicial system.
Oct. 14
The Associated Press and the USA Today website reported that during the first six months of 2016, minors died from accidental shootings -- at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults -- at a pace of one every other day, far more than limited federal statistics indicate.
Oct. 16
USA Today website said in an article that homelessness is everywhere in the United States, but there are often no enough shelters for them. Lorraine Yarbrough, executive director of Day By Day Warming Shelter, said that there are more than 60,000 people who are homeless in Wisconsin but lack of transitional housing hinders anti-homelessness efforts.
Oct. 19
The Washington Post reported that police officers who kill civilians rarely face criminal charges. About 1,000 civilians are killed by police each year, but since 2005 only 77 officers have been charged with manslaughter or murder in connection with those deaths. And criminal investigations in these cases usually drag on for months or years before the community and the victims' family members know whether charges will be filed.
Oct. 28
The New York Times website reported that the Justice Department has branded the Baltimore Police Department's response to sexual assault cases "grossly inadequate." Baltimore officers often disregarded some complaints filed by sexual assault victims and sometimes humiliated women who tried to report sexual assault. There were even complaints that some officers target members of a vulnerable population -- people involved in the sex trade -- to coerce sexual favors from them in exchange for avoiding arrest, or for cash or narcotics.
On the same day, the Los Angeles Times website reported that one in three homeless people in Los Angeles County are women, according to government figures released in 2016. The total of more than 14,000 women is a 55 percent increase from 2013. The number of women camped out in RVs, tents and lean-tos doubled in the last three years. Homeless women face staggering levels of violence. A survey released by the Downtown Women's Action Coalition found that nearly half of skid row women had been attacked in the previous 12 months; more than a quarter of them were sexually assaulted.
NOVEMBER
Nov. 6
The Washington Post website reported that David Contreras, a 33-year-old Hispanic man, was shocked with a stun gun and shot dead by police on November 6, 2016, in Santa Ana, California.
Nov. 8
The CBS website reported that Americans who were running for federal elective offices spent about 6.8 billion U.S. dollars, more than what consumers spent on cereal (six billion). The nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics estimated spending on the Clinton-Trump contest at more than 2.65 billion U.S. dollars.
Nov. 9
According to the website of the Los Angeles Times, U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed eight civilians, including three children, in the Iraqi village of Faziliya, north of Mosul, late last month.
Nov. 14
The FBI National Press Office released the Hate Crime Statistics 2015, saying that law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 5,850 criminal incidents and 6,885 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity in 2015. There were 5,818 single-bias incidents involving 7,121 victims and 32 multiple-bias hate crime incidents involving 52 victims.
Nov. 15
According to the website of the Christian Science Monitor, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said in a report that U.S. armed forces and the CIA may committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan. The report added that "the victims were deliberately subjected to physical and psychological violence, and that crimes were allegedly committed with particular cruelty and in a manner that debased the basic human dignity of the victims."
Nov. 16
The Independent website reported that a spy base named Titanpointe located in a windowless Manhattan skyscraper with sheer concrete walls that could reportedly survive an atomic explosion appeared to be a secrete location used for NSA surveillance program, using equipment of the company AT&T and spying on phone calls, fax messages and internet data. The NSA took advantages of satellite antenna of the skyscraper to intercept satellite data including emails, chats, Skype calls, passwords, and internet browsing histories. It targeted at least 38 countries including U.S. allies, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
