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      Read the Justice Department’s Report

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      E. MPD Unnecessarily Escalates Encounters with Children.
      We have serious concerns about MPD’s treatment of children and the lasting impact of
      police encounters on their wellbeing and resilience. 42 During interactions with children
      regarding minor issues, MPD officers escalate the encounters with aggressive and
      demeaning language and, at times, needless force.
      At times, MPD aggressively escalates encounters with children who have committed no
      crime or where the child is a victim. In one incident, officers handcuffed and used force
      against a 16-year-old Black girl who called MPD to report she had been assaulted.
      Before arriving at the precinct to give a statement, officers handcuffed the girl after she
      refused to give them her phone. When she became agitated and reactive, the officers
      responded with insults and threats, telling her, “When [the handcuffs] do come off . . .
      Ooh, I’m itching,” “I leave my gloves on when I fight,” and “If I gotta whip your ass, I will.”
      After three hours, officers removed the handcuffs to reposition them. As she complained
      that her hands were hurt and swollen and tried to move her wrists, the officers grabbed
      her and pushed her face down onto the ground to handcuff her again. The girl was then
      arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
      MPD has escalated interactions when enforcing laws that are intended to keep children
      safe. After two Black boys (ages 15 and 16) ran from an officer who was citing them for
      a curfew violation, officers demeaned the boys and threatened violence. When one boy
      asked if they were going to jail, the officer responded, “If it’s my decision, hell yeah . . .
      I’d have so much damn fun rolling your ass down to jail. I’d love doing that shit.” Another
      officer threatened to assault the boys when he worried that he may have lost his MPD
      mobile device during the foot pursuit: “I am fucking these little kids up, man… I am
      fucking you all up, I just wanted to let y’all know that.”
      MPD officers have mistreated children in crisis, even when it is clear the child has
      significant disabilities. In one incident, a CIT officer threatened to take a 14-year-old
      Black boy to adult jail because the boy ran away from home. The boy was diagnosed
      with autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and developmental delays and had the intellectual
      functioning of a four-year-old. The boy’s mother had called the police after the boy, who
      had been released from a mental health facility that day, got upset at bedtime, threw a
      garbage can and a chair, and ran from home. After the boy was found, a CIT officer
      raised his Taser toward the boy, who was calm and compliant, and told him, “I don’t
      want to use it on you, but if you don’t listen to me, I can.” Officers planned to take the
      boy to the hospital for psychiatric treatment. But the CIT officer continued to threaten
      him, saying that he would take the child to jail “with the big boys,” and “If I have to come
      42 Interactions with the police can lead to damaging and lasting outcomes for children, especially Black
      and Latinx teens, including post-traumatic stress, increased levels of depression, diminished academic
      performance, and increased chances that a child will engage in delinquent behavior in the future.
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      Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math

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      A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.“Math is power” is the tag line of a new documentary, “Counted Out,” currently making the rounds at festivals and community screenings. (It will have a limited theatrical release next year.) The film explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy. And it delves into how an understanding of math, or lack thereof, affects society’s ability to deal with its most pressing challenges and crises — health care, climate, misinformation, elections.“When we limit access to the power of math to a select few, we limit our progress as a society,” said Vicki Abeles, the film’s director and a former Wall Street lawyer.Ms. Abeles was spurred to make the film in part in response to an anxiety about math that she had long observed in students, including her middle-school-age daughter. She was also struck by the math anxiety among friends and colleagues, and by the extent to which they tried to avoid math altogether. She wondered: Why are people so afraid of math? What are the consequences?One of many mathematicians who share their perspectives in the film is Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He is also the author of “Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps and Representation.”Dr. Volic grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that in the early 1990s went through “a horrific war,” he said. “I am familiar with what collapse of democracy can lead to.” He saw parallels between what happened in Bosnia and what was happening in the United States and around the world. “That has driven me in the last few years, understanding the mechanics of democracy, the infrastructure of democracy, which is very much mathematical,” he said.The following conversation, conducted by videoconference and email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Is First to Be Charged in New York With Wearing a Mask in Public

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      Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo was frisked and charged with knife possession after the police stopped him for wearing a ski mask.A man on Long Island has been arrested and charged with possessing a knife and wearing a face mask in public, a milestone moment in the debate over whether to criminalize masks in New York State.The push to ban masks in some public settings began in June after some pro-Palestinian demonstrators covered their faces during protests. They said that they had done so to avoid online harassment, though some activists used the anonymity provided by their masks to harass people or to engage in acts of vandalism.The man arrested on Sunday, Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo, 18, the first to face charges under a mask ban passed this month in Nassau County, N.Y., was not engaged in protest. He was walking down Spindle Road, a residential street of tidy lawns and single-family homes in Hicksville, wearing dark clothes and a ski mask in August, the county police said in a statement.Christopher Boyle, a spokesman for the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who championed the anti-mask law, said Mr. Castillo “was on the street corner, and somebody called in a suspicious person.”When police officers arrived, they frisked Mr. Castillo and discovered a 14-inch knife in the waistband of his pants, the department said in a statement on Tuesday. He was charged on Monday with several crimes, including criminal possession of a weapon and a violation of the mask law.“Our police officers were able to use the mask ban legislation as well as other factors to stop and interrogate an individual who was carrying a weapon with the intent to engage in a robbery,” Mr. Blakeman said in a statement. “Passing this law gave police another tool to stop this dangerous criminal.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids

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      A Latino civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into a series of raids conducted on Latino voting activists and political operatives as part of sprawling voter fraud inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters.In a statement last week, Mr. Paxton, a Republican, described the raids, carried out in counties near San Antonio and South Texas, as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that began two years ago to look into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. His office has said that it will not comment on the investigation because it is still underway.That investigation is part of a unit, the election integrity unit, which was created as Republican-led states sought to crack down on supposed voter crime after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Experts have found that voter fraud remains rare.For 35 years, Ms. Martinez has been a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens, instructing Latino residents stay engaged in politics.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“I’ve been involved in politics all of my life,” Ms. Martinez said.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ACLU Must Reinstate Employee Falsely Accused of Racist Language, Court Rules

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      The case put the legal group on the spot for taking positions on free speech and workers’ rights that seemed at odds with its mission.The American Civil Liberties Union lost a case about offensive speech and workers’ rights — over its own workplace.A judge ruled on Wednesday that the A.C.L.U. had illegally fired an employee, Kate Oh, from her job as senior policy counsel. The group had accused her of using language that was racist and that singled out people of color in the office.Michael A. Rosas, an administrative law judge, said that the A.C.L.U.’s accusation that she had targeted people of color “is not borne out by the facts.” He noted that her complaints were not about colleagues but superiors within the organization, and that she had also complained about white managers.Ms. Oh never uttered a racial slur or invoked race, court filings showed. She said that she considered herself a whistle-blower and advocate for other women in the office, drawing attention to an environment she said was rife with sexism and fear. Her frequent, sometimes intemperate, complaints irritated her bosses, she argued, so they retaliated by firing her.The case placed one of the nation’s leading defenders of workers’ rights under scrutiny for violating the very workplace protections it typically seeks to enforce.The judge ordered the A.C.L.U. to reinstate Ms. Oh, who was fired in May 2022, and to give her back pay.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Japanese American Civil Rights Group Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire

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      The Japanese American Citizens League, one of the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organizations, called on Thursday for a negotiated cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, following months of pressure from younger members who believed the group had a duty to advocate for Palestinians.The organization’s leaders and some older members were reluctant to take a position on the war, in part because of the league’s longstanding ties with prominent Jewish civil rights groups in the United States. In the 1970s, the American Jewish Committee was the first national organization to endorse the push by Japanese Americans for reparations for their incarceration during World War II. But younger members of the Japanese American group said that Palestinians were suffering from human rights violations and that their organization had long stood up for such victims.The league, in a statement on Thursday, pointed to the conflict’s “staggering” death toll of Palestinians and Israelis and the immense and continuous humanitarian crisis in Gaza.As a group “dedicated to safeguarding the civil liberties of not only Japanese Americans but all individuals subjected to injustice and bigotry,” the group said, “we must denounce these egregious human rights violations.”The organization did not call for an unconditional cease-fire, but instead said it wanted Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement and urged President Biden to advance such negotiations.The rift within the league was another example of how the Israel-Hamas war has cleaved cultural, academic and political institutions far beyond the Middle East, and not just among groups with direct ties to the region. As in many organizations, the divide within the league has mostly been along generational lines.In its cease-fire statement, the group did not address one of the young activists’ primary demands: cutting ties with Jewish organizations they labeled “Zionist.” David Inoue, the league’s executive director, said in an interview on Thursday that the group was not considering that option.“That’s not how we work in coalition,” Mr. Inoue said. “I think it’s inherently unfair for anyone to make demands like that.” More

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      Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Dies in Prison, Russian Authorities Say

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      Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, died Friday in a prison inside the Arctic Circle, according to the Russian authorities. His death was announced by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, which said that Mr. Navalny, 47, lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the prison where he was moved late last year. He was last seen on Thursday, when he had appeared in a court hearing via video link, smiling behind the bars of a cell and making jokes.Footage from the Russian news outlet SOTA shows Aleksei Navalny laughing and making jokes behind bars during his last court appearance via video link.SOTAVISION, via ReutersLeonid Volkov, Navalny’s longtime chief of staff, said he was not yet ready to accept the news that Mr. Navalny was dead. “We have no reason to believe state propaganda,” Volkov wrote on the social platform X. “If this is true, then it’s not ‘Navalny died,’ but ‘Putin killed Navalny,’ and only that. But I don’t trust them one penny.”Mr. Navalny had been serving multiple sentences that would most likely have kept him in prison until at least 2031 on charges that his supporters say were largely fabricated in an effort to muzzle him. Despite increasingly harsh conditions, including repeated stints in solitary confinement, he maintained a presence on social media, while members of his team continued to publish investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite from exile.Mr. Navalny was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a nerve agent the previous August. In March 2022, he received a nine-year sentence for embezzlement and fraud in a trial that international observers denounced as “politically motivated” and a “sham.” And in August 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elecciones en El Salvador: lo que hay que saber

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      Este domingo, Nayib Bukele se dispone a reelegirse con facilidad. Sus medidas enérgicas contra las pandillas, a costa de la restricción de las libertades civiles, le han acarreado un enorme apoyo.En las elecciones presidenciales de El Salvador de este domingo, no hay una verdadera competencia: se espera que Nayib Bukele, el presidente milénial que reconfiguró el país con una serie de medidas enérgicas contra las pandillas y las libertades civiles, gane la reelección de forma aplastante.Los juristas afirman que Bukele, de 42 años, está violando una prohibición constitucional al buscar un segundo mandato consecutivo, algo que a la mayoría de los salvadoreños parece no importarle.Las encuestas muestran que los electores apoyan de manera abrumadora la candidatura de Bukele y que probablemente consolidarán la supermayoría de su partido en la Asamblea Legislativa el domingo, lo que extendería el control irrestricto del presidente sobre cada rama del gobierno durante años.“Quieren demostrar que pueden hacerlo, que tienen el apoyo popular para hacerlo, y quieren que todos simplemente se resignen a ello, sin importar lo que diga la Constitución”, afirmó Ricardo Zuniga, que fungió como enviado especial del Departamento de Estado de EE. UU. a Centroamérica durante la presidencia de Biden. “Es una demostración de poder”.Casi el 80 por ciento de los salvadoreños afirmó en una encuesta reciente que apoyaba la candidatura de Bukele. La misma encuesta reveló que su partido, Nuevas Ideas, podría obtener hasta 57 de los 60 escaños de la Asamblea Legislativa, después de que se realizaron cambios en la composición del órgano legislativo que, según los analistas, beneficiaron al partido de gobierno.El argumento más fuerte de la candidatura de Bukele ha sido los casi dos años de estado de excepción que su gobierno impuso luego de que las pandillas criminales que hacía mucho tiempo dominaban las calles cometieron una ola de asesinatos en marzo de 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More