What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 17, 2018
I’m most excited this week about a weird limited series called Maniac from Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation, True Detective, It). Emma Stone and Jonah Hill star as patients in a “mindbending pharmaceutical trial gone awry.” It looks like they hallucinate themselves into a lot of wacky situations, allowing for lots of different costumes, wigs and prosthetics, which is always a good time.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least point out that Tony Danza and Josh Groban star as a father-son duo in The Good Cop. Tony’s the “crooked but kindhearted dad,” Josh plays a “pathologically honest detective.” What hijinks could possibly ensue?
Arriving This Week
A * denotes a Netflix original. Links go to Netflix trailers and watch pages.
Monday, September 17
- The Witch
Tuesday, September 18
- American Horror Story: Cult
- D.L. Hughley: Contrarian*
Friday, September 21
- Battlefish*
- DRAGON PILOT: Hisone & Masotan*
- Hilda*
- Maniac: Limited Series*
- Nappily Ever After*
- Quincy*
- The Good Cop*
Sunday, September 23
- The Walking Dead: Season 8
Leaving This Week
Nothing’s leaving this week!
Article via: What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 17, 2018
Trial begins Monday for Chicago officer accused of murdering black teen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – The trial of white Chicago policeman Jason Van Dyke, accused of murder in the 2014 shooting of a black teen, was set to begin on Monday in a decisive case for race relations and policing in the United States’ third-largest city.
A soundless dashboard camera video released in 2015 showed police gunning down 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. It spurred protests, fed a national debate over the use of excessive force by police against minorities and led to the ousting of local officials.
The officer, now 40, opted for a jury trial on Friday following the selection of a 12-person jury and five alternate jurors.
The jury of four men and eight women includes seven white people, three Hispanic people, one black person and one Asian person, based on appearances, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Opening statements were expected later on Monday.
Van Dyke’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, on Monday morning asked Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan to dismiss the jurors, saying “the negative and inflammatory rhetoric” surrounding the case had made it impossible for them to be impartial, but the judge rejected that argument. Gaughan also denied a defense motion to move the trial out of Chicago.
Van Dyke, who was suspended without pay after he was first charged in 2015, pleaded not guilty to murder and has said he felt threatened by McDonald.
McDonald was armed with a knife when he was shot. Van Dyke faces six counts of first-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated battery – the same number of times prosecutors say McDonald was shot – and one count of official misconduct. Van Dyke is the first Chicago police officer to face a murder charge for an on-duty incident in decades.
The deaths of mostly unarmed black men at the hands of police officers across the United States in recent years have led to protests and sometimes violence in major U.S. cities. The killings, some of which were captured on video, helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and became an issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
The video, released by the city more than a year after the shooting in response to a freedom of information lawsuit, sparked days of protests in Chicago. Former Chicago police Superintendent and mayoral hopeful Garry McCarthy was fired, voters ousted the prosecutor who charged Van Dyke, and activists called for the resignation of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel said on Sept. 4 he would not seek a third term after facing widespread criticism over his handling of the city’s gun violence. He did not specifically cite McDonald in his announcement.
A U.S. Department of Justice investigation that began after the video’s release found that Chicago police routinely violated people’s civil rights, citing excessive force and racially discriminatory conduct.
Three Chicago Police Department officers were indicted in June 2017 for conspiring to cover up McDonald’s shooting. They have not yet been tried.
Article via: Trial begins Monday for Chicago officer accused of murdering black teen
MS-13 is suspected of killing her daughter. Now she is dead in a dispute over the memorial.
Almost exactly two years ago, mourners gathered at Brentwood High School on Long Island to remember teenagers Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, who were allegedly killed by suspected MS-13 gang members. The night was pierced with hundreds of candle flames marshaled on the football field, though the two friends dreamed of playing professional basketball.
Kayla’s mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, organized another vigil for Friday to mark precisely the two years since Kayla’s body was recovered from a wooded area off Ray Court, a verdant cul-de-sac.
The family put together a memorial along the street for Kayla, whose slaying President Trump invoked in his State of the Union address in January.
At one point Friday afternoon, someone came out of a house on the street to dismantle the memorial, CBS New York reported, with one witness telling the station a woman was popping balloons at the display. Rodriguez and Kayla’s father, Manny Cuevas, grew furious and yelled at a woman behind the wheel of a white Nissan Rogue, captured in a tense video by News 12 Long Island.
Then, the woman tried to speed away. Rodriguez was struck by the vehicle, and she was later pronounced dead at a hospital, the Suffolk County Police Department said. Homicide detectives are investigating, the department said in a statement, but a spokeswoman on Saturday declined to say if the driver will face charges. The woman was a relative of a resident on the street, police said.
Rodriguez, 50, had channeled her grief and sorrow over her daughter’s slaying to become perhaps the most visible advocate for MS-13 victims, earning a seat in the gallery at the State of the Union address and the recognition by Trump during his speech.
“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school,” the president said as the girls’ parents wiped away tears. They rose for a standing ovation.
MS-13 is suspected of killing her daughter. Now she is dead in a dispute over the memorial.
Woman whose daughter was allegedly murdered by MS-13 is struck, killed by car
Evelyn Rodriguez, 50, was struck by a vehicle and killed on Sept. 14 in Long Island, N.Y., two years after her daughter, Kayla Cuevas, was murdered.
Almost exactly two years ago, mourners gathered at Brentwood High School on Long Island to remember teenagers Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, who were allegedly killed by suspected MS-13 gang members. The night was pierced with hundreds of candle flames marshaled on the football field, though the two friends dreamed of playing professional basketball.
Kayla’s mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, organized another vigil for Friday to mark precisely the two years since Kayla’s body was recovered from a wooded area off Ray Court, a verdant cul-de-sac.
The family put together a memorial along the street for Kayla, whose slaying President Trump invoked in his State of the Union address in January.
At one point Friday afternoon, someone came out of a house on the street to dismantle the memorial, CBS New York reported, with one witness telling the station a woman was popping balloons at the display. Rodriguez and Kayla’s father, Manny Cuevas, grew furious and yelled at a woman behind the wheel of a white Nissan Rogue, captured in a tense video by News 12 Long Island.
Then, the woman tried to speed away. Rodriguez was struck by the vehicle, and she was later pronounced dead at a hospital, the Suffolk County Police Department said. Homicide detectives are investigating, the department said in a statement, but a spokeswoman on Saturday declined to say if the driver will face charges. The woman was a relative of a resident on the street, police said.
Rodriguez, 50, had channeled her grief and sorrow over her daughter’s slaying to become perhaps the most visible advocate for MS-13 victims, earning a seat in the gallery at the State of the Union address and the recognition by Trump during his speech.
“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school,” the president said as the girls’ parents wiped away tears. They rose for a standing ovation.
Dozens of slayings on Long Island since 2013 have rocked communities there and transformed the debate over immigration policy. Trump has used brutal killings such as Kayla’s to raise the specter of the transnational gang as an existential threat, and he has argued for tougher immigration laws in response.
Data has shown immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.
Trump on Friday evening noted Rodriguez’s death. “My thoughts and prayers are with Evelyn Rodriguez this evening, along with her family and friends,” he wrote on Twitter.
Rodriguez sued Kayla’s high school for $110 million, saying her daughter had been bullied and accosted there by an alleged gang member who Rodriguez said still attended the school, even after she complained to administrators.
“She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school. It’s like they’re everywhere,’ ” Rodriguez said.
After a confrontation at Brentwood, federal prosecutors say, MS-13 put a “greenlight” — or kill order — on Kayla, and members made a “throat slicing gesture” toward her at school, the lawsuit says.
A week later, she was walking home one evening with Nisa, a basketball teammate one day shy of her 16th birthday, when MS-13 members spotted them and attacked with a machete and baseball bats, according to prosecutors.
[MS-13 is ‘taking over the school,’ one teen warned before she was killed]
Federal prosecutors believe thousands of primarily Central American immigrants are members of MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha, across the United States. It began as a street gang in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
Four members were charged in connection with Kayla’s and Nisa’s slayings, prosecutors said in March 2017. They were apprehended as part of a wider dragnet of 13 members charged in seven murder cases, among other charges. Convictions could lead to the death penalty.
Rodriguez, who appeared with Trump in a roundtable discussion on immigration policy in May, told lawmakers last year that parents feared seeing their children playing outside with other children.
“The MS-13 gang is so unpredictable you just don’t know who is who with them,” Rodriguez said. “MS-13 is a new breed of murderers, they are children, kids killing kids, and as they continue to grow, so does their techniques of recruiting helpless kids into their wicked actions.”
READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST
Ariana Grande: Tribute to Ex-BF Mac Miller
Ariana Grande is looking for ways to deal with Mac Miller‘s death, and one way she found is to embrace her ex-boyfriend’s own words.
Ariana posted a tribute to Mac Saturday, saying she was listening to one of the cuts from his album, Swimming.
The track — “Ladders” — has the lyric, “Somehow we gotta find a way/no matter how many miles it takes.”
Grande posted the artwork from the album, but added storm clouds … clearly for emotional effect.
TMZ broke the story … Mac died of an apparent OD earlier this month. He had been with friends the night before he died and law enforcement believes drugs took his life.
Article via: Ariana Grande Tribute to Ex-BF Mac Miller
Watch: The Music World Mourns Mac Miller+ Ariana Grande Turns Off Her IG Comments
From 13,000 in Tacoma to 100 million nationwide needle exchange proves worth over 30 years
Rebecca Ford remembers keeping $500 in bail money in her freezer, just in case.
Ford’s father, the late Dave Purchase, is widely regarded as not just the father of syringe exchange in Tacoma and Pierce County but across the nation. This week, the program Purchase started celebrated its 30th anniversary.
Back in 1988, however, when Purchase famously set up his television tray and folding chair downtown and started handing out clean needles to individuals battling intravenous-drug addiction, he was breaking new ground, breaking down barriers and stereotypes — and potentially breaking the law.
While Purchase had secured the support of Tacoma Police Chief Ray Fjetland, who agreed to suspend the enforcement of local paraphernalia laws to give Purchase’s idea a chance to succeed, the early incarnation of what would soon become the first legally sanctioned and publicly funded needle exchange in the country was fraught with legal risk for the man behind it.
“The public just thought it was his way of promoting drug use, and promoting everything that people are afraid of — drug use, and drug users,” Ford, now 56, said. “The general public thought it was an annihilation of their town. Even though there was this problem in Tacoma, it just was ignored, and he just knew people were dying.”
The problem was the HIV and AIDS epidemic, and back in 1988 it was building to a crescendo.
According to the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control at the time, by December 1988 there had been nearly 83,000 cases of AIDS reported across the country.
A year later, in December 1989, that number would reach nearly 118,000.
By December 2000, the number would climb to 774,467, with 448,060 confirmed deaths.
That’s why Purchase, a Stadium High School grad with the beard of a biker and the rare ability to navigate both the halls of bureaucracy and the back alleys where those in the depths of addiction often congregated, took it upon himself to act when he did.
In short order, those efforts would lead to the creation of the Point Defiance AIDS Project — which is now an umbrella organization for the Tacoma Needle Exchange, and the nonprofit North American Needle Exchange Network (NASEN). From its inconspicuous office on Dock Street, NASEN helps provide guidance, expertise and millions of needles every year to syringe exchange programs in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to Dr. Don Des Jarlais, a professor of epidemiology at the NYU College of Global Public Health, there are about 300 needle exchange programs across the country. In the world of public health, needle exchange programs are widely regarded as an effective way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases amongst IV drug users.
Des Jarlais, who traveled to Tacoma to study the impacts of Purchase’s program in its early stages, says much of the credit for the proliferation and acceptance of needle exchange programs goes to Purchase, who died in 2013.
In Purchase’s obituary, published in The New York Times, Des Jarlais said, “The efforts of Dave and people like him have literally saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“(Purchase) was really the driving force, more than anyone else, in terms of expanding syringe exchange throughout the country,” DesJarlais said today.
The point is the point
Today, according to Des Jarlais, there is virtually no scientific debate about the effectiveness or importance of syringe programs.
“Within the public health community, syringe exchange is just totally accepted and supported as a necessary measure for dealing with injecting drug use,” Des Jarlais said. “Certainly within the public health field, syringe exchange is seen as absolutely critical.”
It’s a stark contrast from the climate Purchase had to navigate when he started Tacoma’s syringe exchange program.
At the time, Purchase, who had a history as a drug counselor, was alarmed by the number of individuals he regularly interacted with on the job being stricken by HIV and AIDS. After he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident — hit by a drunk driver — the long recovery process gave him time to think about a way to respond.
Eventually, Purchase used money from the insurance settlement he received to start his fledgling needle exchange program, which as the New York Times documented in 1989, started by distributing clean needles along with “condoms, bottles of bleach and alcohol swabs.”
As The New York Times reported, Purchase handed out 13,000 needles in his first five months on the street.
Perhaps even more impressive, the effort quickly earned the support of not just the local police chief, but the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, which by 1989 was helping to fund the program.
Terry Reid remembers it well. At the time, Reid managed the county’s AIDS and substance abuse programs. Now retired, he looks back on helping Purchase’s needle exchange program get off the ground and calls it “the highlight of my 35 years in public health.”
Of course, the success didn’t come without challenges, and winning support wasn’t always easy. While Reid recalls the “ground being softened” at the health department, thanks to previous street outreach and HIV prevention efforts, the idea of distributing clean needles to IV drug users was still highly controversial and politically charged.
“There was definitely a majority of people who were against needle exchange,” Reid said. “I’ll bet it would have been 70 percent against it (in a public poll).
Still, community unease didn’t stop Purchase and the ardent group of supporters he’d attracted along the way, including Reid, then-County Councilman Dennis Flannigan and Lyle Quasim, who worked as the state director of mental health and later with Safe Streets, from persisting.
“I had seen one of the methadone treatment clients with AIDS, who had transferred from a San Francisco program and literally withered away and died in our program,” Reid said. “I was also plugged in to some of the research taking place on the East Coast, particularly New York, where the number of AIDS cases were just exploding relating to IV drug use.
“I thought, ‘My god, we’re in a position where we could do something about that.”
So Reid agreed to help.
“It was an opportunity, and fortunately I was sort of in the right place, and brave enough — and careless enough with my career — to forge ahead,” he said. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Challenges to the program have been a near constant throughout its three decades. Nearly seven years after it began, then City Councilman Steve Kirby spearheaded an effort to try to drive it out of Tacoma.
As The News Tribune’s Barbara Clements and Elaine Porterfield reported in 1995, Kirby’s crusade struck themes that were surely familiar to Purchase — arguing that syringe exchange promoted crime and condoned illegal drug use.
“I don’t believe we should be handing out needles to addicts,” Kirby told The News Tribune 23 years ago. “I think we ought to be arresting them and getting them off the street.”
Reached this week, Kirby couldn’t help but chuckle when presented with his past bluster. In many ways, Kirby’s evolution is indicative of the way society’s perception of needle exchange and preventative public health have changed over the years.
“Those were times when I was quite the big crime fighter and neighborhood activist. I would do whatever it took to defend my neighborhood and neighborhoods throughout Tacoma,” Kirby said, acknowledging that there was likely some political posturing behind his remarks from the time.
“I would not be surprised I that’s exactly what I said. If you guys wrote it, it was true” Kirby continued. “For the record, if I ever believed that, I don’t believe it now. I think it’s a dumb idea to arrest drug addicts and throw them in jail.
“I haven’t heard a complaint about the needle exchange in I don’t even know how long — decades.”
Quasim also can’t help but be surprised by what the effort accomplished, and the societal shift it helped inspire.
“The environment, on a scale to 1 to 10, the sympathy in our community was maybe running around a 2 or 3 at best. People really seemed to have their minds made up about (AIDS) being a disease that was the fault of the person who had it, or that they’d engaged in nefarious behavior and it was punishment,” Quasim recently recalled.
While Purchase had secured the support of Tacoma Police Chief Ray Fjetland, who agreed to suspend the enforcement of local paraphernalia laws to give Purchase’s idea a chance to succeed, the early incarnation of what would soon become the first legally sanctioned and publicly funded needle exchange in the country was fraught with legal risk for the man behind it.
Hence the stack of cash in his daughter’s freezer.
Just in case.
“The public just thought it was his way of promoting drug use, and promoting everything that people are afraid of — drug use, and drug users,” Ford, now 56, said. “The general public thought it was an annihilation of their town. Even though there was this problem in Tacoma, it just was ignored, and he just knew people were dying.”
The problem was the HIV and AIDS epidemic, and back in 1988 it was building to a crescendo.
According to the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control at the time, by December 1988 there had been nearly 83,000 cases of AIDS reported across the country.
A year later, in December 1989, that number would reach nearly 118,000.
By December 2000, the number would climb to 774,467, with 448,060 confirmed deaths.
That’s why Purchase, a Stadium High School grad with the beard of a biker and the rare ability to navigate both the halls of bureaucracy and the back alleys where those in the depths of addiction often congregated, took it upon himself to act when he did.
In short order, those efforts would lead to the creation of the Point Defiance AIDS Project — which is now an umbrella organization for the Tacoma Needle Exchange, and the nonprofit North American Needle Exchange Network (NASEN). From its inconspicuous office on Dock Street, NASEN helps provide guidance, expertise and millions of needles every year to syringe exchange programs in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to Dr. Don Des Jarlais, a professor of epidemiology at the NYU College of Global Public Health, there are about 300 needle exchange programs across the country. In the world of public health, needle exchange programs are widely regarded as an effective way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases amongst IV drug users.
Des Jarlais, who traveled to Tacoma to study the impacts of Purchase’s program in its early stages, says much of the credit for the proliferation and acceptance of needle exchange programs goes to Purchase, who died in 2013.
In Purchase’s obituary, published in The New York Times, Des Jarlais said, “The efforts of Dave and people like him have literally saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“(Purchase) was really the driving force, more than anyone else, in terms of expanding syringe exchange throughout the country,” DesJarlais said today.
The point is the point
Today, according to Des Jarlais, there is virtually no scientific debate about the effectiveness or importance of syringe programs.
“Within the public health community, syringe exchange is just totally accepted and supported as a necessary measure for dealing with injecting drug use,” Des Jarlais said. “Certainly within the public health field, syringe exchange is seen as absolutely critical.”
It’s a stark contrast from the climate Purchase had to navigate when he started Tacoma’s syringe exchange program.
At the time, Purchase, who had a history as a drug counselor, was alarmed by the number of individuals he regularly interacted with on the job being stricken by HIV and AIDS. After he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident — hit by a drunk driver — the long recovery process gave him time to think about a way to respond.
Eventually, Purchase used money from the insurance settlement he received to start his fledgling needle exchange program, which as the New York Times documented in 1989, started by distributing clean needles along with “condoms, bottles of bleach and alcohol swabs.”
As The New York Times reported, Purchase handed out 13,000 needles in his first five months on the street.
Perhaps even more impressive, the effort quickly earned the support of not just the local police chief, but the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, which by 1989 was helping to fund the program.
Terry Reid remembers it well. At the time, Reid managed the county’s AIDS and substance abuse programs. Now retired, he looks back on helping Purchase’s needle exchange program get off the ground and calls it “the highlight of my 35 years in public health.”
Of course, the success didn’t come without challenges, and winning support wasn’t always easy. While Reid recalls the “ground being softened” at the health department, thanks to previous street outreach and HIV prevention efforts, the idea of distributing clean needles to IV drug users was still highly controversial and politically charged.
“There was definitely a majority of people who were against needle exchange,” Reid said. “I’ll bet it would have been 70 percent against it (in a public poll).
Still, community unease didn’t stop Purchase and the ardent group of supporters he’d attracted along the way, including Reid, then-County Councilman Dennis Flannigan and Lyle Quasim, who worked as the state director of mental health and later with Safe Streets, from persisting.
“I had seen one of the methadone treatment clients with AIDS, who had transferred from a San Francisco program and literally withered away and died in our program,” Reid said. “I was also plugged in to some of the research taking place on the East Coast, particularly New York, where the number of AIDS cases were just exploding relating to IV drug use.
“I thought, ‘My god, we’re in a position where we could do something about that.”
So Reid agreed to help.
“It was an opportunity, and fortunately I was sort of in the right place, and brave enough — and careless enough with my career — to forge ahead,” he said. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Challenges to the program have been a near constant throughout its three decades. Nearly seven years after it began, then City Councilman Steve Kirby spearheaded an effort to try to drive it out of Tacoma.
As The News Tribune’s Barbara Clements and Elaine Porterfield reported in 1995, Kirby’s crusade struck themes that were surely familiar to Purchase — arguing that syringe exchange promoted crime and condoned illegal drug use.
“I don’t believe we should be handing out needles to addicts,” Kirby told The News Tribune 23 years ago. “I think we ought to be arresting them and getting them off the street.”
Reached this week, Kirby couldn’t help but chuckle when presented with his past bluster. In many ways, Kirby’s evolution is indicative of the way society’s perception of needle exchange and preventative public health have changed over the years.
“Those were times when I was quite the big crime fighter and neighborhood activist. I would do whatever it took to defend my neighborhood and neighborhoods throughout Tacoma,” Kirby said, acknowledging that there was likely some political posturing behind his remarks from the time.
“I would not be surprised I that’s exactly what I said. If you guys wrote it, it was true” Kirby continued. “For the record, if I ever believed that, I don’t believe it now. I think it’s a dumb idea to arrest drug addicts and throw them in jail.
“I haven’t heard a complaint about the needle exchange in I don’t even know how long — decades.”
Quasim also can’t help but be surprised by what the effort accomplished, and the societal shift it helped inspire.
“The environment, on a scale to 1 to 10, the sympathy in our community was maybe running around a 2 or 3 at best. People really seemed to have their minds made up about (AIDS) being a disease that was the fault of the person who had it, or that they’d engaged in nefarious behavior and it was punishment,” Quasim recently recalled.
Rebecca Ford remembers keeping $500 in bail money in her freezer, just in case.
Ford’s father, the late Dave Purchase, is widely regarded as not just the father of syringe exchange in Tacoma and Pierce County but across the nation. This week, the program Purchase started celebrated its 30th anniversary.
Back in 1988, however, when Purchase famously set up his television tray and folding chair downtown and started handing out clean needles to individuals battling intravenous-drug addiction, he was breaking new ground, breaking down barriers and stereotypes — and potentially breaking the law.
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While Purchase had secured the support of Tacoma Police Chief Ray Fjetland, who agreed to suspend the enforcement of local paraphernalia laws to give Purchase’s idea a chance to succeed, the early incarnation of what would soon become the first legally sanctioned and publicly funded needle exchange in the country was fraught with legal risk for the man behind it.
Hence the stack of cash in his daughter’s freezer.
Just in case.
“The public just thought it was his way of promoting drug use, and promoting everything that people are afraid of — drug use, and drug users,” Ford, now 56, said. “The general public thought it was an annihilation of their town. Even though there was this problem in Tacoma, it just was ignored, and he just knew people were dying.”
The problem was the HIV and AIDS epidemic, and back in 1988 it was building to a crescendo.
According to the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control at the time, by December 1988 there had been nearly 83,000 cases of AIDS reported across the country.
A year later, in December 1989, that number would reach nearly 118,000.
By December 2000, the number would climb to 774,467, with 448,060 confirmed deaths.
That’s why Purchase, a Stadium High School grad with the beard of a biker and the rare ability to navigate both the halls of bureaucracy and the back alleys where those in the depths of addiction often congregated, took it upon himself to act when he did.
In short order, those efforts would lead to the creation of the Point Defiance AIDS Project — which is now an umbrella organization for the Tacoma Needle Exchange, and the nonprofit North American Needle Exchange Network (NASEN). From its inconspicuous office on Dock Street, NASEN helps provide guidance, expertise and millions of needles every year to syringe exchange programs in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to Dr. Don Des Jarlais, a professor of epidemiology at the NYU College of Global Public Health, there are about 300 needle exchange programs across the country. In the world of public health, needle exchange programs are widely regarded as an effective way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases amongst IV drug users.
Des Jarlais, who traveled to Tacoma to study the impacts of Purchase’s program in its early stages, says much of the credit for the proliferation and acceptance of needle exchange programs goes to Purchase, who died in 2013.
In Purchase’s obituary, published in The New York Times, Des Jarlais said, “The efforts of Dave and people like him have literally saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“(Purchase) was really the driving force, more than anyone else, in terms of expanding syringe exchange throughout the country,” DesJarlais said today.
The point is the point
Today, according to Des Jarlais, there is virtually no scientific debate about the effectiveness or importance of syringe programs.
“Within the public health community, syringe exchange is just totally accepted and supported as a necessary measure for dealing with injecting drug use,” Des Jarlais said. “Certainly within the public health field, syringe exchange is seen as absolutely critical.”
It’s a stark contrast from the climate Purchase had to navigate when he started Tacoma’s syringe exchange program.
At the time, Purchase, who had a history as a drug counselor, was alarmed by the number of individuals he regularly interacted with on the job being stricken by HIV and AIDS. After he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident — hit by a drunk driver — the long recovery process gave him time to think about a way to respond.
Eventually, Purchase used money from the insurance settlement he received to start his fledgling needle exchange program, which as the New York Times documented in 1989, started by distributing clean needles along with “condoms, bottles of bleach and alcohol swabs.”
As The New York Times reported, Purchase handed out 13,000 needles in his first five months on the street.
Perhaps even more impressive, the effort quickly earned the support of not just the local police chief, but the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, which by 1989 was helping to fund the program.
Terry Reid remembers it well. At the time, Reid managed the county’s AIDS and substance abuse programs. Now retired, he looks back on helping Purchase’s needle exchange program get off the ground and calls it “the highlight of my 35 years in public health.”
Of course, the success didn’t come without challenges, and winning support wasn’t always easy. While Reid recalls the “ground being softened” at the health department, thanks to previous street outreach and HIV prevention efforts, the idea of distributing clean needles to IV drug users was still highly controversial and politically charged.
“There was definitely a majority of people who were against needle exchange,” Reid said. “I’ll bet it would have been 70 percent against it (in a public poll).
Still, community unease didn’t stop Purchase and the ardent group of supporters he’d attracted along the way, including Reid, then-County Councilman Dennis Flannigan and Lyle Quasim, who worked as the state director of mental health and later with Safe Streets, from persisting.
“I had seen one of the methadone treatment clients with AIDS, who had transferred from a San Francisco program and literally withered away and died in our program,” Reid said. “I was also plugged in to some of the research taking place on the East Coast, particularly New York, where the number of AIDS cases were just exploding relating to IV drug use.
“I thought, ‘My god, we’re in a position where we could do something about that.”
So Reid agreed to help.
“It was an opportunity, and fortunately I was sort of in the right place, and brave enough — and careless enough with my career — to forge ahead,” he said. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Challenges to the program have been a near constant throughout its three decades. Nearly seven years after it began, then City Councilman Steve Kirby spearheaded an effort to try to drive it out of Tacoma.
As The News Tribune’s Barbara Clements and Elaine Porterfield reported in 1995, Kirby’s crusade struck themes that were surely familiar to Purchase — arguing that syringe exchange promoted crime and condoned illegal drug use.
“I don’t believe we should be handing out needles to addicts,” Kirby told The News Tribune 23 years ago. “I think we ought to be arresting them and getting them off the street.”
Reached this week, Kirby couldn’t help but chuckle when presented with his past bluster. In many ways, Kirby’s evolution is indicative of the way society’s perception of needle exchange and preventative public health have changed over the years.
“Those were times when I was quite the big crime fighter and neighborhood activist. I would do whatever it took to defend my neighborhood and neighborhoods throughout Tacoma,” Kirby said, acknowledging that there was likely some political posturing behind his remarks from the time.
“I would not be surprised I that’s exactly what I said. If you guys wrote it, it was true” Kirby continued. “For the record, if I ever believed that, I don’t believe it now. I think it’s a dumb idea to arrest drug addicts and throw them in jail.
“I haven’t heard a complaint about the needle exchange in I don’t even know how long — decades.”
Quasim also can’t help but be surprised by what the effort accomplished, and the societal shift it helped inspire.
“The environment, on a scale to 1 to 10, the sympathy in our community was maybe running around a 2 or 3 at best. People really seemed to have their minds made up about (AIDS) being a disease that was the fault of the person who had it, or that they’d engaged in nefarious behavior and it was punishment,” Quasim recently recalled.
Purchase helped change that.
“Whether it was Dave’s karma, whether it was just rational thought or whether it was that the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars, I don’t know. But we had the police chief and the health department on board with this thing,” Quasim said. “It was a health issue. We stayed with it because it became a values proposition for us to continue the program.”
Through it all, Purchase remained the guiding force of the Point Defiance AIDS project and the Tacoma Needle exchange. Flannigan, who went on to serve on the Point Defiance AIDS Project’s board of directors, remembers Purchase as “the brightest ship in the country.”
Alisa Solberg worked for Purchase for 20 years and served as interim and acting executive director of the Point Defiance AIDS Project from shortly before his death until 2016.
“Dave would always say the point (a clean syringe) is the point,” Solberg recalled. “He could appeal to legislators and lawmakers and policy people and get them all marching in the same direction.
“He was also able to reach people who were unreachable, untrusting, invisible — people who you and I would not be able to reach,” she continued.
“And that’s just unheard of, for a person to move in all of those circles.”
A new challenge
Today, while the national AIDS crisis has subsided, current Point Defiance Aids Project executive director Paul LaKosky says needle exchange in Tacoma and Pierce County remains as important as ever.
There’s one big reason for that: the ongoing opioid epidemic, which has afflicted a new generation of IV drug users, with deadly consequences.
In this, the Tacoma Needle Exchange has been forced to evolve. While the Tacoma Needle Exchange’s work now includes both the prevention of HIV and AIDS and hepatitis, saving lives and alleviating other public health concerns associated with IV drug use remains the constant.
The quest still relies on swapping out dirty needles for clean ones at various locations around Tacoma — including the parking lot of the health department and the use of a van for rural deliveries of supplies. It also means connecting those suffering from addiction with essential services, and the distributing Naloxone, an emergency medication that can reverse the effects of an opiate overdose.
According to LaKosky, the Tacoma Needle Exchange distributed more than a million clean syringes throughout the city in the first six months of this year. Nationally, through NASEN, more than 100 million needles were handed out.
It’s a far cry from the 13,000 Purchase distributed from his television table downtown during the first five months of the program he created almost single-handedly.
LaKosky sees no slowdown in sight.
“The growth has been exponential, and even at that, we’re still not meeting the demand,” said LaKosky. “It’s kind of ironic, I think, that the 30th anniversary of the first legal syringe exchange in the United States also seems to converge with the emergence of a huge opioid epidemic.
“After 30 years, the services this organization has provided are even more necessary than ever.”
READ MORE THE TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
Texas Farm Bureau and Mississippi Dept. of Public Safety Ban Employees From Wearing Nikes
In a devastating blow to the apparel giant’s bottom line, two organizations comprised of people who never wore Nikes anyway, announced a ban on employees wearing Nikes because they love the flag, the troops, the national anthem and everything America has to offer except for the First Amendment of the Constitution. Well actually, they love that part too … except when black people use it. But other than that … ‘Murica!
KWTX reports that the Texas Farm Bureau, an organization that represents “the interests of agricultural producers and rural communities” informed employees that they could no longer wear Nikes to work. Upset that sporting goods company Nike chose Colin Kaepernick as the face of its 30th Anniversary of the “Just Do It” campaign, the nonprofit sent an email to workers explaining their decision, writing:
There is a wide range of viewpoints on the Nike controversy. Texas Farm Bureau and Affiliated Companies employees are asked to not wear Nike branded apparel while representing the companies. We are choosing to remove our companies from this controversy by discontinuing the use of Nike branded apparel for business purposes. The attire you choose on your own time is a personal matter.
Despite the fact that the only employee who wore the shoes was Carl, the membership coordinator who fashionably paired his cowboy hat with a pair of Lebron James’ signature sneakers, the news is sure to impact sales of Nikes’ upcoming launch of the Lone Ranger 7s, a lightweight, very high top cowboy boot made for professional rodeo clowns and anyone who wants to mosey on down the road in comfortable footwear.
Meanwhile, in a statement to the Associated Press, Mississippi Department of Public Safety commissioner Marshall Fisher said the agency which oversees the Highway Patrol, Bureau of Narcotics, Bureau of Investigation, Office of Homeland Security, the state crime lab and the state medical examiner, would no longer purchase goods from Nike.
“As commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, I will not support vendors who do not support law enforcement and our military,” Fisher wrote in the statement.
A spokesman said the department has bought shoes, shirts and tactical training uniforms from the sportswear company in the past, despite the fact that an Associated Press search of the database that documents state purchases seems to show that Mississippi has spent a grand total of zero dollars on Nike products in the past fiscal year.
“I support the commissioner’s decision,” said Texas Governor Phil Bryant in a separate statement, noting that the commissioner has the authority to choose which companies his agency does business with. “And it’s not going to be a company that pays an individual who has slandered our fine men and women in law enforcement,” Bryant wrote in a font that likely conveyed a Foghorn Leghorn-like Mississippi drawl.
However one cannot discount the fact that US News ranks Mississippi’s education system 46th in the nation, while its economy and access to opportunity rank 48th and 49th, respectively. Perhaps Strain and Bryant believe they spend seven figures on Nikes, simply writing it as $0,000,000 per year.
The Texas Farm Bureau and Mississippi are the latest entities to ban Nike purchases. Kenner La. mayor Ben Zahn banned his city’s recreation department from purchasing Nikes before reversing his decision after a public outcry. Tennessee State Senator and chairman of the state’s Finance, Ways and Means committee is also pressuring Tennessee’s state-funded colleges to ban Nike from campuses.
In a devastating blow to the apparel giant’s bottom line, two organizations comprised of people who never wore Nikes anyway, announced a ban on employees wearing Nikes because they love the flag, the troops, the national anthem and everything America has to offer except for the First Amendment of the Constitution. Well actually, they love that part too … except when black people use it. But other than that … ‘Murica!
KWTX reports that the Texas Farm Bureau, an organization that represents “the interests of agricultural producers and rural communities” informed employees that they could no longer wear Nikes to work. Upset that sporting goods company Nike chose Colin Kaepernick as the face of its 30th Anniversary of the “Just Do It” campaign, the nonprofit sent an email to workers explaining their decision, writing:
There is a wide range of viewpoints on the Nike controversy. Texas Farm Bureau and Affiliated Companies employees are asked to not wear Nike branded apparel while representing the companies. We are choosing to remove our companies from this controversy by discontinuing the use of Nike branded apparel for business purposes. The attire you choose on your own time is a personal matter.
Despite the fact that the only employee who wore the shoes was Carl, the membership coordinator who fashionably paired his cowboy hat with a pair of Lebron James’ signature sneakers, the news is sure to impact sales of Nikes’ upcoming launch of the Lone Ranger 7s, a lightweight, very high top cowboy boot made for professional rodeo clowns and anyone who wants to mosey on down the road in comfortable footwear.
Meanwhile, in a statement to the Associated Press, Mississippi Department of Public Safety commissioner Marshall Fisher said the agency which oversees the Highway Patrol, Bureau of Narcotics, Bureau of Investigation, Office of Homeland Security, the state crime lab and the state medical examiner, would no longer purchase goods from Nike.
“As commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, I will not support vendors who do not support law enforcement and our military,” Fisher wrote in the statement.
A spokesman said the department has bought shoes, shirts and tactical training uniforms from the sportswear company in the past, despite the fact that an Associated Press search of the database that documents state purchases seems to show that Mississippi has spent a grand total of zero dollars on Nike products in the past fiscal year.
“I support the commissioner’s decision,” said Texas Governor Phil Bryant in a separate statement, noting that the commissioner has the authority to choose which companies his agency does business with. “And it’s not going to be a company that pays an individual who has slandered our fine men and women in law enforcement,” Bryant wrote in a font that likely conveyed a Foghorn Leghorn-like Mississippi drawl.
However one cannot discount the fact that US News ranks Mississippi’s education system 46th in the nation, while its economy and access to opportunity rank 48th and 49th, respectively. Perhaps Strain and Bryant believe they spend seven figures on Nikes, simply writing it as $0,000,000 per year.
The Texas Farm Bureau and Mississippi are the latest entities to ban Nike purchases. Kenner La. mayor Ben Zahn banned his city’s recreation department from purchasing Nikes before reversing his decision after a public outcry. Tennessee State Senator and chairman of the state’s Finance, Ways and Means committee is also pressuring Tennessee’s state-funded colleges to ban Nike from campuses.
Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protests against police brutality, injustice and inequality have become a rallying cry in for Republicans in red states like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, who say the protests are anti-American and disrespectful to the flag.
Of course, there is no way the Texas Farm Bureau could possibly be aware of incidents like the death of Botham Jean when it happened all the way in Dallas, TX. How could a Tennessee State Senator be expected to know about the police shooting of Daniel Hambrick, who was gunned down by a Nashville cop as Hambrick was running away? And when it comes to racism, Kenner is a distant 40 miles from Slidell, La., where a math teacher was fired for posting a racist rant about the NFL protests on Facebook.
And Mississippi is … well, it’s Mississippi. In Mississippi, you can get elected by telling black people to “stop begging for government scraps,” like Republican candidate for Senate Chris McDaniel did on Friday.
But Mississippi State Troopers and employees of the Texas Farm Bureau will now be forced to search for alternative footwear, which is unfortunate.
Aside from a crisp pair of white Air Force 1s, what else goes nicely with a freshly ironed Ku Klux Klan robe?
READ MORE FROM THE ROOT
Family of Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper won’t take her in after release, niece says
FILE – This April 8, 2016, file photo, provided by Utah State Prison shows Wanda Barzee. Barzee, the woman convicted of helping a former street preacher kidnap Elizabeth Smart as a teenager from her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002 and held her captive, will be released from prison next week. The surprise move announced Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018, comes after authorities determined they had miscalculated the time Barzee previously served in federal custody.(Utah State Prison via AP, File)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Once an accomplished organ player in Salt Lake City, Wanda Barzee became a disturbing figure for members of her own family after she helped in the 2002 kidnapping of then-teenager Elizabeth Smart.
Days before the 72-year-old woman is released from prison, looming fears about whether she remains a threat and calls to keep her off the streets bring up deep-rooted questions about mental-health treatment in the nation’s prisons, an expert said.
And details of the crime still horrify Barzee’s niece, Tina Mace.
“It just makes you ill. How could anyone do that?” she said.
Her aunt played the organ at her wedding decades ago, before Barzee joined Mitchell as he acted on his so-called revelations from God.
Like Smart, Mace is alarmed by the surprise announcement this week by Utah authorities, who said they had miscalculated her aunt’s sentence and would release her from prison next Wednesday.
“From what I know, no family can take her in or would take her in,” Mace said.
Federal agents have secured a place for Barzee to live when she starts her five-year supervised release, said Eric Anderson, Deputy Chief U.S. Probation Officer for Utah.
He declined to say whether she’ll be in a private home or a facility, but she “will not be homeless,” he said.
Barzee has served the 15-year sentence she got in a plea deal the year she testified against street preacher Brian David Mitchell, her then-husband who kidnapped the girl from her bedroom at knifepoint.
During her months in captivity, Smart said the older woman sat nearby and encouraged her husband as he raped the teenager.
Smart is now a 30-year-old speaker and activist who said Thursday she’s deeply concerned that Barzee remains a threat, citing her refusal to cooperate with mental-health treatment in prison and reports that she may still harbor Mitchell’s beliefs.
Smart called for authorities to consider carefully whether inmates have been successfully treated before they are released.
But large-scale changes requiring rehabilitation could pose troubling questions, said Rebecca Weiss, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“We could be incarcerating someone indefinitely who has served their sentence,” she said.
Treating the disproportionate number of people with mental illness in U.S. prisons — many of whom are not violent — is among the system’s biggest challenges. While there is a need to protect the public, inmates also have the right to refuse treatment.
“The degree to which our prisons succeed in rehabilitation is questionable,” Weiss said. “We’re putting a lot on a system that is overloaded with fairly unclear goals.”
Repeat violent sex offenders can be civilly committed in the federal system, but that requires a series of evaluations and a judge’s decision that they pose an imminent risk, Anderson said.
Barzee’s lawyer has maintained she’s not a threat. Attorney Scott Williams did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Prison officials declined to discuss her behavior behind bars or relay an interview request.
She was treated at the Utah State Hospital for about five years following her arrest, and testified in 2010 against Mitchell.
Barzee described a “hellish” first year of marriage that eased after she “learned to be submissive and obedient,” and his later pronouncement that it was “God’s will” they sell their possessions and travel the country wearing long robes.
Eventually, Mitchell kidnapped then-14-year-old Smart, forced her into a polygamous “marriage” and raped her almost daily.
She was found nine months later, while walking with Barzee and Mitchell on a street in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy.
Barzee’s testimony against him seemed like a turning point, but her mental state appears to have changed in her subsequent years in federal and state prisons, Mace said.
Mitchell, is serving a life sentence.
Looking back on the captivity, Smart said Thursday that she believes the older woman who treated her as a “handmaiden” and a “slave” was manipulated by her husband at times. “But she, in her own right, abused me as much as he did.”
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