Month: January 2024

On Thursday, the Justice Department said that children’s lives may have been saved if officers had responded differently to a gunman who opened fire in the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, which killed 21 people, including 19 students. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a news conference that delays caused by a lack of leadership, training and tactics led to a police response “failure” in the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

While detailing the findings of the U.S. Justice Department’s critical incident review of the tragedy, Garland said “the law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, and in the hours and days after, was a failure that should not have happened … As I told families and survivors last night, the department’s review concluded that a series of major failures, failures in leadership, in tactics, in communication, in training and in preparedness were made by law enforcement and others responding to the shooting at Robb Elementary. As a consequence of failed leadership, training and policies, injured and scared students and teachers remained trapped in the classroom with the subject waiting to be rescued.”

The 600-page report, which documented a series of police missteps during the more than an hour that authorities waited to rush into the classroom, said that ooor coordination, training and execution of active shooter protocol contributed to a law enforcement response that can only be described as a “failure.” The investigation found that Uvalde police officers had received improper active shooter training in the months leading up to the attack, and they were erroneously taught that “an active shooter event can easily morph into a hostage crisis.”

The findings describe a chaotic scene that should have triggered several coordinated responses by law enforcement officers who first arrived at the school. Instead, a dearth of leadership contributed to officers failing to recognize an active shooter and waiting far too long to engage the gunman. The report said: “The resulting delay provided an opportunity for the active shooter to have additional time to reassess and reengage his deadly actions inside the classroom. It also contributed to a delay in medical interventions with the potential to impact survivability.”

The Justice Department collected more than 13,000 items for review and analysis, including policies, procedures and training materials from responding agencies; manuals; and hours of video, photos and interview transcripts. The DOJ said that there were at least 10 “stimulus events” over the span of more than an hour that could have driven law enforcement officers to take steps under active shooter protocols to “immediately stop the killing … During that period, no one assumed a leadership role to direct the response towards the active shooter, provide situational status to responding officers, establish some form of incident command, or clearly assume and communicate the role of incident commander.”

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Police said on Thursday that a suspect has been arrested in the murder of an American art dealer in Brazil, who was the co-owner of a prominent gallery in Manhattan. Brent Sikkema, 75, was found dead on Monday with 18 stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment.

Police in Rio de Janeiro arrested the suspect, identified as Alejandro Triana Trevez, near the city of Uberaba, in the neighboring state of Minas Gerais. The man, who according to local media is Cuban, was on the run and was found at a gas station. Detective Felipe Curi, who leads the state police homicide unit, told CBN Rio that the main line of investigation is theft leading to homicide, as Trevez allegedly took $3,000 from Sikkema’s home.  Curi said: “Initial findings of our investigation indicate that Alejandro (Trevez) came from Sao Paulo specifically to commit this crime.” He then returned to Sao Paulo, leading investigators to believe he had “some kind of privileged information.” Law enforcement obtained a 30-day prison warrant against Trevez, which Curi said would allow them to answer questions as to whether the two men knew each other.

Sikkema began his career in 1971 at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, where he worked as director of exhibitions. He opened his first gallery in 1976 in Boston.  He currently co-owned Sikkema Jenkins & Co., originally founded in 1991, which shows works by Jeffrey Gibson, Arturo Herrera, Sheila Hicks, Vik Muniz, Kara Walker and other artists, located on 22nd Street in New York near the Chelsea Piers.

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Kensington Palace announced that Kate, Princess of Wales, has been hospitalized after undergoingnplanned abdominal surgery. The Palace said in a statement Wednesday that Princess Kate was expected to remain in the hospital for ten to 14 days. While the statement did not specify what the surgery was for, it said that Kate, “hopes the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private.” The Kensington Palace statement included an apology from Kate for having to postpone her own upcoming engagements.

Shortly after the news of Kate’s hospitalization was revealed by Kate and her husband William, the Prince of Wales, Buckingham Palace released a statement saying that King Charles III (William’s father) would be admitted to a hospital next week for a procedure to treat enlarged prostate. The statement read in part: “In common with thousands of men each year, The King has sought treatment for an enlarged prostate. His Majesty’s condition is benign and he will attend hospital next week for a corrective procedure,” adding that the monarch would postpone his public engagements “for a short period of recuperation.”

Kensington Palace confirmed to multiple news outlets that Kate was not dealing with cancer, and that Prince William would miss some future engagements to be with his wife. They added that the “surgery was successful,” but “based on the current medical advice,” the Princess of Wales is “unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter” but that Kate “looks forward to reinstating as many (engagements) as possible, as soon as possible.”

Princess Kate’s husband, Prince William, is the eldest son of King Charles and next in line to inherit the British throne. The couple share three children, Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5.

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On Wednesday, a judge in Maine told state election officials they would defer a decision and wait for the Supreme Court to rule on Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential ballot. Trump had asked the judge to overturn a prior decision that removed him from the Maine ballot, but the judge declined to do so, until the Supreme Court weighs in. Wednesday’s decision means that Trump’s name is still on the ballot for the Maine GOP primary on March 5, aka Super Tuesday. Ratified after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection,” but the Constitution doesn’t say how to enforce the ban.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a similar case from Colorado early next month. Maine and Colorado are so far the only states to disqualify Trump based on his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. A group of voters filed a challenge in December and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump was ineligible for office; ballot challenges are first handled by the secretary of state under Maine law, and then can be appealed in state courts. Trump and his GOP allies have slammed Bellows, a Democrat, and have unsuccessfully tried to take her off the case.

Kennebec County Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy, who issued Wednesday’s ruling, was appointed to the state bench by a Democratic governor in 2007 and then re-appointed in 2015 by then-Gov. Paul LePage, an outspoken Republican and Trump supporter.

Trump and the challengers asked Judge Murphy to pause any final ballot decisions in Maine until a ruling from the Supreme Court. Murphy said it was “rare” to grant such a request, but “under these circumstances, it is appropriate … Because many of the issues presented in this case are likely to be resolved, narrowed, or rendered moot by the Supreme Court’s decision in (the Colorado case), the Court concludes that a remand is necessary … While it is impossible to know what the Supreme Court will decide, hopefully it will at least clarify what role, if any, state decision-makers, including secretaries of state and state judicial officers, play in adjudicating claims of disqualification brought under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

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