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    Kenyan Police Officer Deployed to Tackle Gangs in Haiti Killed

    The officer’s death appeared to be the first among the Kenyan forces that were sent to Haiti last year as part of an international effort to subdue gang violence.A Kenyan police officer was fatally injured in Haiti on Sunday in an operation that was part of the international effort to help combat gang violence and restore order to the Caribbean nation, officials said.It appears to be the first death of a Kenyan officer working as part of the Multinational Security Support Mission, the international contingent that has been deployed in the Caribbean nation since June. The force is mostly made of Kenyan officers.The officer was injured during an operation in the Artibonite region, north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Sunday, the Multinational Security Support Mission said in a statement on social media. The officer, who was not identified, was airlifted to the hospital but died later in the day, the mission said.Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have been stationed in Haiti since June as part of a U.S.-sponsored mission to restore order. Since 2022, Haiti’s prime minister had appealed for a foreign armed intervention to help stop the rampant gang violence that has upended the nation.The Multinational Security Support Mission, which also includes officers from Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador, was deployed to Haiti to try to wrest control of Port-au-Prince from well-armed and highly organized Haitian gangs that had seized control of much of the capital.This is a developing story that will be updated. More

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    Alabama Grand Jury Calls for Police Force to Be Abolished After Indicting 5 Officers

    The grand jury said that the Hanceville Police Department, which had eight officers as of last August, had been operating “as more of a criminal enterprise.”A grand jury in Alabama is calling for a small police department to be abolished after recently indicting its chief and four other officers as part of a sweeping corruption investigation, saying that the department had operated “as more of a criminal enterprise than a law enforcement agency.”The Hanceville Police Department, which serves a city of roughly 3,000 residents about 45 miles north of Birmingham, employed just eight officers as of last August, when the chief, Jason Marlin, was sworn in.On Wednesday, the chief’s mug shot was projected onto a screen at a news conference announcing the arrest of the chief and four officers on felony and misdemeanor charges. The wife of one of those officers was also indicted.Champ Crocker, the district attorney of Cullman County, said that corruption in the department had become so pervasive that it had compromised evidence in many cases and had created unsafe conditions at the local jail — and was even connected to the overdose last year of a 911 dispatcher at the department.“With these indictments, these officers find themselves on the opposite end of the laws they were sworn to uphold,” Mr. Crocker said. “Wearing a badge is a privilege and an honor, and that most law enforcement officers take seriously. A badge is not a license to corrupt the administration of justice.”During the half-hour news conference, the district attorney spoke in general terms about the nature of the misconduct the chief and the other officers are accused of. Court records offered some additional details about the accusations, which include the mishandling of evidence, use of performance-enhancing drugs and unauthorized access to a law enforcement database.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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    Munich Car Attack: What We Know

    At least 36 people were injured when an Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a union march. The police said the driver confessed.On Thursday morning, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee drove into a union demonstration in central Munich, injuring nearly 40 people. The police say they are investigating whether the driver, who confessed to a deliberate attack, acted alone. The attack happened just 10 days before federal elections that have been focused on migration, and the crash could loom large in the campaign’s final days.What happened during the attack?At around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, officers in a police cruiser at the tail end of a union march in central Munich noticed a two-door Mini Cooper coming up from behind. The car sped up to pass the cruiser and plowed into the back of the marchers. Witnesses said they heard the Mini rev up as it drove into the crowd. The police fired a single shot as they went to arrest the driver.Ambulances and a helicopter arrived at the scene. Police set up a temporary post in a nearby restaurant, where they asked witnesses to come forward, and set up an online portal for uploading any video or pictures of the attack. Officers also used dogs to search the car.By evening the damaged car was lifted onto a flatbed tow truck and impounded.Who were the victims?On Friday, the police said that 36 people had been injured, including several children. A 12-year old girl, who was severely inquired, was still in intensive care.From right, Markus Söder, governor of Bavaria; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, president of Germany; and Dieter Reiter, mayor of Munich, placing roses on Friday at the crash site.Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated PressThe car plowed into a crowd of union members and supporters and their families. Verdi, one of the biggest unions in Germany, had called a one-day strike for some public sector workers, including those employed in day care, garbage collection and city administration.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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    Girl, 6, Is Dead After Being Found in a Water-Filled Bathtub, Police Say

    The girl was unconscious when officers found her in a Brooklyn apartment Friday afternoon, officials said.A 6-year-old girl died on Friday after being found unconscious in a bathtub filled with water at a Brooklyn apartment, the police said.The cause of the girl’s death was unclear. She had blood clots in her eyes when the officers found her, suggesting the possibility of a struggle, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.Officials did not identify the girl, and the police said Friday night that the investigation into her death was continuing. The medical examiner’s office was conducting an autopsy, a spokeswoman said.Officers answering a 911 call for help at a home on Elton Street in the Highland Park section found the girl at around 1:30 p.m., the police said. Her parents were home at the time, the police said.Emergency services workers took the girl to Brookdale Hospital, where she was pronounced dead just before 3 p.m., the police said.Several hours later, two officers stood watch in the darkness outside the gated entrance to the small, two-story brick duplex where the girl had been found, on a residential block not far from the elevated J train tracks.Investigators filed in and out of the building’s basement unit through an entrance under a staircase. A small Christmas tree was visible through a front window.Helen Cunningham, who lives across the street, said she had seen officers and emergency workers arrive at the home at around 2 p.m. After a while, she said, they had brought out a small girl on a stretcher, her head visible from beneath the sheet covering her.“I don’t know if she was alive,” Ms. Cunningham, 74, said.She said that the man she knew as the girl’s father had climbed into a second ambulance that followed the one carrying the girl. Some time later, she said, she saw the police leading a young woman away in handcuffs. She said it was the second time in the past week she had seen officers at the address.Ms. Cunningham said she knew the family as neighbors but not by name. “We’re not friends,” she said. She said that two or three children lived at the home and that she had seen the man taking them to school.She said the family had moved into the home within the past few months from a building across the street.The man Ms. Cunningham identified as the father worked at a Bravo supermarket around the corner, according a manager there, Emmanuel Pichardo.Mr. Pichardo said that the father, who has worked at the store for two years and whom he knew only as George, had texted him in Spanish shortly after 4 p.m. to say he would not be coming to work because his daughter had been killed.“I’m going crazy,” the father said in the messages, which Mr. Pichardo shared with a reporter. “I’m here until God gives a miracle. I don’t know what to do.”Chelsia Rose Marcius More

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    Sweden Plans Tighter Gun Laws After Orebro Mass Shooting

    The changes would make it harder to access semiautomatic weapons, and enhance police and medical checks in license applications.Sweden will tighten its already strict gun laws, the government said on Friday, days after a lone gunman killed at least 10 people in an attack the prime minister has called the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.New legislation was already being planned, based on the findings of a 2022 inquiry. After the mass shooting on Tuesday, at an adult education center in the central city of Orebro, it has been fast-tracked.The proposal has not been formalized, but it will likely strengthen the basic requirements for acquiring a gun license, instructing the police to take into account age, weapons knowledge and skills as well as the person’s criminal history. It will also likely call for broader checks on the applicant’s medical history.The new rules would make it more difficult to access semiautomatic assault weapons such as AR-15-style rifles. The firearm, lightweight and compatible with large magazines, has been permitted as a hunting rifle in Sweden since 2023. Under the new act, access to the weapon and similar types of firearms will be greatly restricted.“The rules on gun possession are about balancing society’s interest in preventing crime and accidents involving firearms and the interest in individuals and organizations having the opportunity to possess firearms in justified cases,” the government said in a statement.“We want to ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the Swedish news agency TT while on a working visit to Latvia.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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    Drone Sightings Reported in New Jersey and New York: What We Know

    Reports of flying objects continue to occur throughout the region. State and local officials say they do not pose a threat but have provided few answers.Bright lights floating or flying in the night sky above New Jersey have captivated residents for nearly a month. Now the sightings, which many observers believe to be drones, have spread throughout the region.Federal authorities investigating the sightings have provided few answers about what the objects are or their origin, leaving residents unsettled and local leaders frustrated.U.S. officials on Thursday said that they had been unable to corroborate the reported drone sightings, and suggested that many of the objects might in fact be manned aircraft, such as airplanes or helicopters.But assurances from state and federal officials that the sightings do not indicate a threat to residents have done little to allay public concerns. Lawmakers have expressed frustration with the lack of information, and are urging the federal government to share more about its investigation.By Friday, drone sightings had been reported in several states across the region. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was investigating the matter with federal law enforcement agencies, as local officials received numerous reports of possible drones flying overhead.The governor, however, assured the public that there was nothing to fear. “At this time, there’s no evidence that these drones pose a public safety or national security threat,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement on social media.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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    Mount Vernon Police’s Strip Searches Were Unconstitutional, U.S. Says

    A report by federal prosecutors found that a Westchester County police department violated the Fourth Amendment “on an enormous scale.”Two women, 65 and 75 years old, were taken to a police station in Mount Vernon, N.Y., after a traffic stop in 2020. Officers instructed both women to undress. Then they were told to bend over and cough.Neither woman was arrested, and an investigation determined there had been no basis for the traffic stop in the first place. One of the women said she had been left “very humiliated” and “on the verge of fainting” from fear after the invasive search, commonly used in drug arrests.The encounter is just one example of a long-running pattern of improper strip searches conducted by the police department in Mount Vernon, in Westchester County, according to a report released Thursday by the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.In the 34-page report, investigators outlined “significant systemic deficiencies” at the very core of the police department that they said had resulted in unnecessarily violent encounters and improper arrests. The report also raised “serious concerns about discriminatory policing in predominantly Black neighborhoods,” according to a statement from the Department of Justice.According to the report, “highly intrusive” strip searches and cavity searches were “deeply ingrained” standard practices in the department. Investigators said that the department had acknowledged that officers performed strip searches on everyone they arrested until at least October 2022, a practice that the report said amounted to a “gross violation of the Fourth Amendment on an enormous scale.”Sometimes, these searches occurred before people were even arrested and were performed even when an officer had no reason to believe the person had drugs or other contraband, according to the report. Several people told investigators that officers had searched them repeatedly even when they had been in custody and under police observation “at all times” between the searches.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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    F.B.I. Is Investigating Whether Crime Group May Be Targeting Athletes’ Homes

    The homes of a handful of N.B.A. and N.F.L. players in the Midwest have been burglarized since September. The F.B.I. believes “South American Theft Groups” could be responsible, according to one memo.The F.B.I. is investigating whether a transnational organized crime group may be responsible for a handful of recent burglaries at the homes of professional athletes in the Midwest, according to local police agencies and professional sports league memos.Since September, there have been break-ins at the homes of N.B.A. and N.F.L. players in Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio, according to local police departments. The most recent burglary occurred at the home of the Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback Joe Burrow on Monday while he was in Dallas playing the Cowboys, according to Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. The county police did not confirm if the burglary at Mr. Burrow’s home is included in the federal investigation.The F.B.I. would not confirm or deny that an investigation was taking place. But in a memo last month, the N.B.A. said that the F.B.I. had briefed its security team and that it had “connected many of the home burglaries to transnational South American Theft Groups” or S.A.T.G.s. The F.B.I. described these as “well-organized, sophisticated rings that incorporate advanced techniques and technologies, including pre-surveillance, drones, and signal jamming devices,” according to the N.B.A. memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.These transnational groups go after cash and “items that can be resold on the black market, such as jewelry, watches, and luxury bags,” according to the memo.In most cases, the memo said, home alarm systems were not activated and most of the homes were unoccupied at the time. Local police agencies said that in most cases burglars entered through back windows or sliding doors.Bobby Portis, the Milwaukee Bucks forward, playing against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Nov. 2, 2024. His home was burglarized that same night.Morry Gash/Associated PressWe 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