"One of our top priorities is addressing youth violence. As I’m sure many of you would agree, this is one of the most complex and intractable problems in criminal justice. And because it is so complex, we’ve learned over time that tackling it involves many people – stakeholders from all sectors and from all levels of government," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Leary.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that the deadline for submitting written comments on their recent Patent Assertion Entity Activities Workshop has been extended from March 10, 2013 to April 5, 2013.

Alexis Candelario-Santana, 41, faces life in prison following his conviction of murdering eight people and an unborn child and attempting to murder 19 others during a mass shooting at a Puerto Rico pub in 2009.

The Justice Department announced that late yesterday a federal court in San Francisco entered an order authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to serve a John Doe summons seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who may hold offshore accounts at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce FirstCaribbean International Bank.

A Pennsylvania man was sentenced today to serve 12 years in prison for coercing and enticing a minor and possessing child pornography.

Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today released its letter of findings determining that the city of Miami Police Department (MPD) has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive use of force through officer-involved shootings in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced research findings showing that, on average, inmates who participated in correctional education programs had 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than inmates who did not.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) will provide $2.5 million in funding to the Connecticut State Police, the Newtown, Conn., Police Department and their partner agencies that provided assistance in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year.

Alexis Candelario-Santana, 42, was sentenced today to life in prison for murdering eight people and an unborn child and attempting to murder 19 others during a mass shooting at a Puerto Rico nightclub in 2009.

Gustave Drivas, M.D., 58, of Staten Island, N.Y., was sentenced to serve 151 months in prison for his role as a “no show” doctor in a $77 million Medicare fraud scheme. The State of New York revoked Dr. Drivas’s medical license earlier this year.

The Attorney General issued the following statement today in the wake of the tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard.

David Kalai and Nadav Kalai face additional charges after a federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned a second superseding indictment yesterday.

David Oquendo-Rivas, 29, was sentenced today to life in prison for his role in the murder of eight people and an unborn child during a mass shooting at a Puerto Rico nightclub in 2009.

Five Banks Directed to Produce Records for Accounts at Zurcher Kantonalbank, The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited and Affiliates

An Alabama man pleaded guilty yesterday in a federal court in Gulfport, Miss., to knowingly shooting a dolphin, the Justice Department announced.

Today the District Court in the District of Columbia dismissed a challenge filed by the Florida Bankers Association and Texas Bankers Association challenging 2012 amendments to the Department of the Treasury’s interest-reporting regulations.

Today the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced its letter of findings determining that prison officials at the Alabama Department of Corrections and the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women violate women prisoners’ constitutional rights by failing to take reasonable steps to protect them from harm due to sexual abuse and sexual harassment caused by correctional staff.

Joshua Vandyk, a U.S. citizen, and Eric St-Cyr and Patrick Poulin, Canadian citizens, were indicted for conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, the Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service announced today.

Daniel Sutterfield, 35, Chief of the Bull Shoals Police Department, was arrested yesterday on charges related to his use of excessive force in the arrest of a Bull Shoals resident and a related false report.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement Monday regarding the tragic shootings in Kansas yesterday.

Following the recent tragedies at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas and at Ft. Hood, Attorney General Eric Holder urged Congress Tuesday to approve $15 million in funding for active shooter training for law enforcement officers to ensure they have the tools they need to effectively respond to threats, protect themselves, and save innocent lives.

A few days ago, many of you observed the beginning of Passover, marking the start of a long and difficult journey from tyranny and persecution toward freedom in the Promised Land. Today, this community begins its own journey of healing. And although the road ahead will not be easy, I promise you that I, and millions of others throughout our nation, will be here to walk alongside you – not only today, but always. We will never stop fighting for justice. And we will never forget the names, or the stories, of those we lost.

Josef Dörig, 72, of Switzerland, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in connection with his work as the owner of a trust company in Switzerland.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold a joint public workshop to explore the economic and legal analysis of conditional pricing practices among firms in a supply chain.

"This case shows that no financial institution, no matter its size or global reach, is above the law. When the Department of Justice conducts investigations, we will always follow the law and the facts wherever they lead."

"While today’s action is a significant milestone in our law enforcement efforts, our work in the offshore area is far from done, and we expect additional public actions in this area in the coming months."

"The central mission of the Tax Division is to enforce our nation’s tax laws fairly and consistently. This is a responsibility that we owe to every honest taxpayer who pays his or her fair share. As part of this mission, we are committed to using all enforcement tools against those who seek to avoid their legal obligations, and their responsibilities to their fellow citizens and taxpayers, by hiding their assets in foreign bank accounts."

John Cote, formerly of Danielson, Connecticut, was sentenced today to serve 46 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have issued the agenda for their joint public workshop, which will be held on June 23, 2014, to explore the economic and legal analysis of conditional pricing practices among firms in a supply chain.

Joshua Vandyk, a U.S. citizen, and Eric St-Cyr and Patrick Poulin, Canadian citizens, have each pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder monetary instruments, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced today

"My Brother's Keeper is about letting young people take responsibility for themselves and realizing success on their own terms. Those of us in positions of leadership -- we need to do our part to make sure you have a fair shot at your dreams; that you're not being held back by bias and discrimination; that the justice system designed to protect your rights is treating you fairly. That's our job."

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have extended the deadline for submitting comments on their recent Conditional Pricing Practices Workshop from Aug. 22, 2014, to Sept. 22, 2014

A North Carolina couple pleaded guilty for leading a Costa Rican sweepstakes fraud scheme that defrauded hundreds of elderly Americans

Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement Monday regarding the shooting incident that took place Saturday afternoon in Ferguson, Missouri

Joshua Vandyk, an investment advisor, was sentenced today to serve 30 months in prison for conspiring to launder monetary instruments, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service announced.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has sickened over 3.25 million people and has killed 233,014 people, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

At Engredea 2018 in March in Anaheim, CA, OmniActive will be highlighting the latest addition to its ginger ingredient range, Gingever 10% powder, expanding its application to tablets, capsules and beverages.

A study demonstrated Wellmune® may protect intestinal barrier function in adults when faced with stress.

ChromaDex Corp. announced NIAGEN® nicotinamide riboside prevented neurological damage and improved cognitive and physical function in a new mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.

Natural product brands can boost trade show ROI by investing in PR to work with trade press via press releases and onsite interviews.

Obese mice with unhealthy lifestyles gain significantly less weight and avoid type 2 diabetes when they receive bacteriophages from the faeces of a lean mouse, according to a new University of Copenhagen study.

Sites frequently want to know how they can stand out to Sponsors and CROs to win more studies.
Our advice: Implement internal QC procedures.

Sponsors and CROs we work with consider a tight quality control program to be evidence that a site can be counted on to produce reliable data. It shows that managing quality at your site is a continual process, and doesn’t wait for monitors to arrive. In a risk-based monitoring environment, this is an increasingly compelling attribute.

Where to Start: The Usual Suspects
It makes sense for you to focus your QC efforts on those areas where you’ve historically had the most problems. If the phrase “trend analysis” makes you want to jump through a window -- it's okay -- you can climb back inside. You don't have to do a trend analysis. We've identified 3 areas in which audit findings are common and how you can avoid them.



Adverse Events (AEs) and Concomitant Medications (ConMeds). Often two sides of the same coin, AE and ConMed documentation needs to tell a consistent story. If source documents indicate a study participant had a sinus infection, it must be documented on an AE page, and any associated medications documented on the ConMeds page. A medication noted on the AE page must have a corresponding notation on the ConMed page. And all start and end dates must match across the source, AE, and ConMeds pages.

Drug Accountability Records. Calculating compliance percentages and counting pills are positively uninteresting tasks, easy to mess up, and involve math (which for some people triggers terrifying flashbacks of word problems about trains leaving stations). Is it any wonder that drug accountability records are frequent sources of error? Do some spot-checking: verify that the number of returned tablets matches the tallies recorded for them and recheck compliance calculations.

Essential Documents. Maintaining a complete, organized, uniform set of essential documents is an important, yet decidedly unsexy task. That’s why it’s a good indicator of your commitment to quality; a site that is disciplined enough to keep tight control over its essential documents is likely to carry that control into all aspects of trial execution. Make sure to file all documents associated with protocol amendments, such as IRB approvals and revised informed consent forms -- our auditors find these are the items most frequently missing from the essential document set. 

Write It All Down
Document your QC procedures in an SOP. It will serve as training material for site staff and a repository for worksheets and checklists.

There’s no magic organization for this QC SOP. A general set of instructions could outline how reviewers can verify that all documents follow ALCOA principles. For example, on (paper) source documents, are all pages and required signatures present? Are entries legible? Are corrections initialed, dated, and explained? Does the data make sense and lie within expected ranges? Have all data elements been populated? (Tip: turn the paper upside down to catch missing data.)

Checklists that are focused on particular types of documents should be as specific as possible. For example, QC reviews of source documents for screening visits would verify that the correct informed consent form was used, administration of consent was documented, medical release forms were sent if required, demographics were correct, all labs were received, reviewed and signed, all protocol assessments were completed, and all inclusion/exclusion criteria were met and documented.

A Virtuous Cycle
While designed to control quality, performing QC over time may actually improve quality. Results of QC reviews often suggest revisions you should make to your tools and operations to reduce error in the future.

Okay, you can climb back through the window again -- no one said CAPA. (But wouldn't that be impressive?)


Showcasing Site QC Processes
Does implementing a QC program require resources and time? Yes, and that’s the point. It’s evidence to Sponsors and CROs of your commitment to running a quality study. Not only that, but it demonstrates a proper respect for your study participants by ensuring their data can be used.

Oh, and make sure you highlight your QC program on feasibility questionnaires. It’s something to brag about.

________________________________________________________________________
A version of this article originally appeared in InSite, the Journal of the Society for Clinical Research Sites

On Friday, 21 emerging medical device companies will present their technologies and business plans to a group of local investors at the annual MedTech Showcase, hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council. More than 300 venture leaders and business leaders are expected to attend the event tomorrow, Oct. 28 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Westin Waltham, 70 Third Ave. As a main event, John McDonough, president and CEO of Lexington-based T2 Biosystems (Nasdaq: TTOO), will be interviewed…

Objective responses seen in 29% of patients with locally advanced basal cell carcinoma (BCC)

Moderna announces it has partnered with Lonza with the aim of producing one billion doses annually.

by Alice Wilder, WNYC

Presidential lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has largely fallen out of the public eye since his starring role in President Donald Trump’s impeachment. But Giuliani hasn’t gone silent.

Instead, he’s in his home, doing a call-in radio show and a podcast — “Common Sense” — during which he has repeatedly gone on bigoted rants about China and its government.

“They have no morals,” he said on his April 28 radio show. “They’re amoral in the sense that human life means something in Western civilization, it means a lot. Human life doesn’t mean the same thing to them.”

Giuliani has also speculated that the spread of the coronavirus may be a plot by the Chinese government.

For example, Giuliani has raised the possibility that China purposely released the virus from a biological lab in Wuhan. “We have to say accidentally,” Giuliani said in a recent radio broadcast. “But I don’t think as responsible investigators we can rule out that it wasn’t done deliberately.”

Experts say there’s no public evidence the virus came from the lab. Amid a reported White House push, U.S. intelligence agencies have said they are investigating the origins of the virus.

Giuliani is also fixated on the idea that the Chinese government sent sick people overseas. In an April 27 episode of his podcast, he said that China allowed “over a million people from Wuhan travel to us, to the United States, to England to France to Italy to Germany.” He added, “I hope the people there have the same reaction we have to the value of human life and the loss of human life.”

“When they found out about this terrible virus that escaped, assuming they didn’t do it on purpose,” Giuliani said a day later on his radio show, “they were going to make sure the West suffered as much if not more than they did and jumped on top of an opportunity, it’s not a big assumption to make. And there isn’t a contrary explanation.”

The New York Times found that thousands, not millions, of people flew internationally out of Wuhan.

Asked about his comments, Giuliani did not respond.

The comments by Giuliani have come as discrimination against Asian Americans has spiked. And they reinforce the White House’s emerging push to blame China for the pandemic.

Giuliani has said he’s spoken to the president a number of times about the coronavirus. Two days after Giuliani said he was sure the virus came from the Wuhan lab, Trump said he has evidence of the same. (The president declined to give the evidence, saying it’s secret.)

Giuliani appears to have found a receptive wider audience too. An advertising executive at 77 WABC, which airs Giuliani’s radio show, said “feedback has been amazing” and online listening has “skyrocketed.”

The station’s parent company, Red Apple Media, did not respond to a request for comment.

In an April 23 radio show, Giuliani interviewed Gordon Chang, a conservative pundit who frequently predicts the collapse of the Chinese government. Chang said if China released the virus accidentally — for which, again, there’s no evidence — it then decided to create a global pandemic. “I think what Xi Jinping did was he decided he was going to spread the virus so that he would level the playing field so that China would not be in such a hole,” Chang said, referring to China’s president.

“Wow,” Giuliani responded. “So he saw an opportunity, if that theory is correct, and it wasn’t a bioweapon to start with, he saw an opportunity that was sort of accidentally presented to him, and then he took advantage of it. It was opportunistic.”

Chang acknowledged, “We can’t know what was in Xi Jinping’s mind for sure.” But then he went on, “It looks more like they were deliberate and malicious and that means Mr. Mayor ... this is a crime against all of humanity.”

Giuliani ended the interview by inviting Chang to be a guest on his other show, the podcast.

Giuliani has also said he’d use his access to help guests on his show move ahead with exploratory treatments. Talking with one pharmaceutical executive on his show in late March, Giuliani told his guest, “I’ll use whatever my yelling and screaming can do to do it faster, to help you.”

As the Times reported, the executive’s company received initial trial approval from the Food and Drug Administration soon after. (The FDA has said the application was subject to “internal scientific review.” And Giuliani has said he has no business connection to the company.)

“I don’t lobby the government,” Giuliani emailed in response to a request for comment. “I do hope, however, that they and others are successful.”

Giuliani appears to have strong feelings about the government’s process for approving drugs.

In an April 23 broadcast, Mark, a pharmacist from New Jersey, called in to report on his “informal study” of the patients who have used a drug cocktail that includes hydroxychloroquine — the anti-malaria drug that Trump long has touted.

Giuliani was excited when Mark reported that none of his patients had been hospitalized: “Why doesn’t this count with all these geniuses in Washington? The double blind study and the triple blind study and this study and that study, we don’t have time for that, we’ve got to go to people like Mark in New Jersey!”

In fact, the FDA has warned against widespread use of the drug, noting that it can cause heart problems.

The discussions with his listeners, though, often come back to China.

One caller to Giuliani’s radio show, identifying himself as “George from Bay Ridge,” went on a rant against Chinese people, likening them to serial killers with “no conscience” who are attempting to take over businesses all over the world.

Giuliani responded, “George, I’ve been getting complaints about this for a long time.” He added: “It almost reminds me of the Mafia. You know, they say, if you do business with America it’s one thing. If you do business with China you don’t realize, all of a sudden you start owing them too much and they believe they own you.”

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by Joshua Kaplan and Benjamin Hardy

On April 17 in Toledo, Ohio, a 19-year-old black man was arrested for violating the state stay-at-home order. In court filings, police say he took a bus from Detroit to Toledo “without a valid reason.” Six young black men were arrested in Toledo last Saturday while hanging out on a front lawn; police allege they were “seen standing within 6 feet of each other.” In Cincinnati, a black man was charged with violating stay-at-home orders after he was shot in the ankle on April 7; according to a police affidavit, he was talking to a friend in the street when he was shot and was “clearly not engaged in essential activities.”

Ohio’s health director, Dr. Amy Acton, issued the state’s stay-at-home order on March 22, prohibiting people from leaving their home except for essential activities and requiring them to maintain social distancing “at all times.” A violation of the order is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. Since the order, hundreds of people have been charged with violations across Ohio.

The state has also seen some of the most prominent protests against state stay-at-home orders, as large crowds gather on the statehouse steps to flout the directives. But the protesters, most of them white, have not faced arrest. Rather, in three large Ohio jurisdictions ProPublica examined, charges of violating the order appear to have fallen disproportionately on black people.

ProPublica analyzed court records for the city of Toledo and for the counties that include Columbus and Cincinnati, three of the most populous jurisdictions in Ohio. In all of them, ProPublica found, black people were at least four times as likely to be charged with violating the stay-at-home order as white people.

As states across the country attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, stay-at-home orders have proven instrumental in the fight against the novel coronavirus; experts credit aggressive restrictions with flattening the curve in the nation’s hotbeds. Many states’ orders carry criminal penalties for violations of the stay-at-home mandates. But as the weather warms up and people spend more time outside, defense lawyers and criminal justice reform advocates fear that black communities long subjected to overly aggressive policing will face similarly aggressive enforcement of stay-at-home mandates.

In Ohio, ProPublica found, the disparities are already pronounced.

As of Thursday night in Hamilton County, which is 27% black and home to Cincinnati, there were 107 charges for violating the order; 61% of defendants are black. The majority of arrests came from towns surrounding Cincinnati, which is 43% black. Of the 29 people charged by the city’s Police Department, 79% were black, according to data provided to ProPublica by the Hamilton County Public Defender.

In Toledo, where black people make up 27% of the population, 18 of the 23 people charged thus far were black.

Lt. Kellie Lenhardt, a spokeswoman for the Toledo Police Department, said that in enforcing the stay-at-home order, the department’s goal is not to arrest people and that officers are primarily responding to calls from people complaining about violations of the order. She told ProPublica that if the police arrested someone, the officers believed they had probable cause, and that while biased policing would be “wrong,” it would also be wrong to arrest more white people simply “to balance the numbers.”

In Franklin County, which is 23.5% black, 129 people were arrested between the beginning of the stay-at-home order and May 4; 57% of the people arrested were black.

In Cleveland, which is 50% black and is the state’s second-largest city, the Municipal Court’s public records do not include race data. The court and the Cleveland Police Department were unable to readily provide demographic information about arrests to ProPublica, though on Friday, the police said they have issued eight charges so far.

In the three jurisdictions, about half of those charged with violating the order were also charged with other offenses, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct. The rest were charged only with violating the order; among that group, the percentage of defendants who were black was even higher.

Franklin Country is home to Columbus, where enforcement of the stay-at-home order has made national headlines for a very different reason. Columbus is the state capital and Ohio’s largest city with a population of almost 900,000. In recent weeks, groups of mostly white protesters have campaigned against the stay-at-home order on the Statehouse steps and outside the health director’s home. Some protesters have come armed, and images have circulated of crowds of demonstrators huddled close, chanting, many without masks.

No protesters have been arrested for violating the stay-at-home order, a spokesperson for the Columbus mayor’s office told ProPublica. Thomas Hach, an organizer of a group called Free Ohio Now, said in an email that he was not aware of any arrests associated with protests in the entire state. The Columbus Division of Police did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

Ohio legislators are contemplating reducing the criminal penalties for violating the order. On Wednesday, the state House passed legislation that would eliminate the possibility of jail time for stay-at-home violators. A first offense would result in a warning, and further violations would result in a small fine. The bill is pending in the state Senate.

Penalties for violating stay-at-home orders vary across the country. In many states, including California, Florida, Michigan and Washington, violations can land someone behind bars. In New York state, violations can only result in fines. In Baltimore, police told local media they had only charged two people with violations; police have reportedly relied on a recording played over the loudspeakers of squad cars: “Even if you aren’t showing symptoms, you could still have coronavirus and accidentally spread it to a relative or neighbor. Being home is being safe. We are all in this together.”

Enforcement has often resulted in controversy. In New York City, a viral video showed police pull out a Taser and punch a black man after they approached a group of people who weren’t wearing masks. Police say the man who was punched took a “fighting stance” when ordered to disperse. In Orlando, police arrested a homeless man walking a bicycle because he was not obeying curfew. In Hawaii, charges against a man accused of stealing a car battery, normally a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail, were enhanced to a felony, which can result in 10 years in prison, because police and prosecutors said he was in violation of the state order.

The orders are generally broad, and decisions about which violations to treat as acceptable and which ones to penalize have largely been left to local police departments’ discretion.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal organization focused on racial justice, said such discretion has opened the door to police abuse, and she said the U.S. Department of Justice or state governments should issue detailed guidelines about when to make arrests. That discretion “is what’s given rise to these rogue practices,” she told ProPublica, “that are putting black communities and communities of color with a target on their backs.”

In jails and prisons around the country, inmates have fallen ill or died from COVID-19 as the virus spreads rapidly through the facilities. Many local governments have released some inmates from jail and ordered police to reduce arrests for minor crimes. But in Hamilton County, some people charged with failing to maintain social distancing have been kept in jail for at least one night, even without any other charges. Recently, two sheriff’s deputies who work in the jail tested positive for COVID-19. “The cops put their hands on them, they cram them in the car, they take them to the [jail], which has 800 to 1400 people, depending on the night,” said Sean Vicente, director of the Hamilton County Public Defender’s misdemeanor division. “It’s often so crowded everyone’s just sitting on the floor.”

Clarke said the enforcement push is sometimes undercutting the public health effort: “Protecting people’s health is in direct conflict with putting people in overcrowded jails and prisons that have been hotbeds for the virus.”

Court records show that the Cincinnati Police Department has adopted some surprising applications of the law.

Six people were charged with violations of the order after they were shot. Only one was charged with another crime as well, but police affidavits state that when they were shot, they were or likely were in violation of the order. One man was shot in the ankle while talking to a friend, according to court filings, and “was clearly not engaged in essential activities.” Another was arrested with the same explanation; police wrote that he had gone to the hospital with a gunshot wound. The Cincinnati Police Department did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

In Springfield Township, a small, mostly white Cincinnati suburb, nine people have been arrested for violating the order thus far. All of them are black.

Springfield Township Police Chief Robert Browder told ProPublica in an email that the department is “an internationally accredited law enforcement organization” and has “strict policies ... to ensure that our zero tolerance policy prohibiting bias-based profiling is adhered to.”

Browder said race had not played a role in his department’s enforcement of the order and that he was “appalled if that is the insinuation.”

Several of the black people arrested in Springfield Township were working for a company that sells books and magazine subscriptions door to door. One of the workers, Carl Brown, 50, said he and five colleagues were working in Springfield Township when two members of the team were arrested while going door to door. Police called the other sales people, and when they arrived at the scene, they too were arrested. Five of them, including Brown, were charged only with violating the stay-at-home order; the sixth sales person had an arrest warrant in another state, according to Browder, and police also charged her for giving them false identification.

Brown said one of the officers had left the group with a warning: They should never come back, and if they do, it’s “going to be worse.”

Browder denied that the officers made such a threat, and he said the police had received calls from residents about the sales people and their tactics and that the sales people had failed to register with the Police Department, as required for door-to-door solicitation.

Other violations in Hamilton County have been more egregious, but even in some of those cases, the law enforcement response has stirred controversy. On April 4, a man who had streamed a party on Facebook Live, saying, “We don’t give a fuck about this coronavirus,” was arrested in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, the setting of a 2001 riot after police fatally shot an unarmed black man.

The man who streamed the party, Rashaan Davis, was charged with violating the stay-at-home order and inciting violence, and his bond was set at $350,000.

After Judge Alan Triggs said he would release Davis from jail pretrial because the offense charged was nonviolent, local media reported, prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor and said they would focus on the charge of inciting violence, a felony.

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office declined to comment on Davis’ case.

In Toledo, there’s been public controversy around perceived differences in the application of the law. On April 21, debate at the Toledo City Council meeting centered around a food truck. Local politicians discussed recent arrests of young black people at house parties, some contrasting them with a large, white crowd standing close together in line outside a BBQ stand, undisturbed by police. Councilmember Gary Johnson told ProPublica he’s asked the police chief to investigate why no one was arrested at a party he’d heard about, where white people were congregating on docks. “I don’t know the circumstances of the arrests,” he said. But “if you feel you need to go into poor neighborhoods and African American neighborhoods, you better be going into white neighborhoods too. … You have to say we’re going to be heavy-handed with the stay-at-home order or we’re going to be light with it. It has to be one or the other.”

Toledo police enforcement has not been confined to partygoers. Armani Thomas, 20, is one of the six young men arrested for not social distancing on a lawn. He told ProPublica he was sitting there with nine friends “doing nothing” when the police pulled up. Two kids ran off, and the police made the rest stay, eventually arresting “all the dudes” and letting the girls go. He was taken to the county jail, where several inmates have tested positive, for booking and released after several hours. The men’s cases are pending.

“When police see black people gathered in public, I think there’s this looming belief that they must be doing something illegal,” RaShya Ghee, a criminal defense attorney and lecturer at the University of Toledo, told ProPublica. “They’re hanging out in a yard — something illegal must have happened. Or, something illegal is about to happen.”

Lenhardt, the police lieutenant, said the six men were arrested after police received 911 calls reporting “a group gathering and flashing guns.” None of the six men were arrested on gun charges. As for the 19-year-old charged for taking the bus without reason, she said police asked him on consecutive days to not loiter at a bus station.

With more than 70,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus, government officials have not figured out how to balance the threat of COVID-19 with the harms of over policing, Clarke said. “On the one hand, we want to beat back the pandemic. That’s critical. That’s the end goal,” she told ProPublica. “On the other hand, we’re seeing social distancing being used as a pretext to arrest the very communities that have been hit hardest by the virus.”

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Supplies of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, sertraline, are returning to stock after manufacturers reported “industry-wide” supply challenges, exacerbated by export bans and border closures implemented as a result of COVID-19. 

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A manufacturer has announced plans to move production of hydroxychloroquine — currently being trialled as a COVID-19 treatment — to the UK from abroad to combat potential shortages.

To read the whole article click on the headline

The latest information about the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China, and advice on how pharmacists can help concerned patients and the public.

To read the whole article click on the headline