Man with own name tattooed on neck arrested for falsely ID’ing himself
Mattoon police arrested a 36-year-old Illinois man for giving officers a fake name, despite having his real name tattooed on his neck.
Matthew C. Bushman, of Mansfield, had a warrant out for his arrest when officers booked him on Oct. 11 for obstructing justice. A police mugshot shows the “Matty B” tattoo across his throat.
Police said they were investigating a forgery when Bushman gave them a false name and date of birth in an attempt to dodge a warrant out of Peoria County.
Bushman was booked into Coles County Jail.
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Minority Workers in Retail, Fast Food Have More Erratic Hours Than White Workers, UC Researchers Find
Retail and fast food work is notorious for erratic schedules.
But new research finds hourly workers of color in the industries have more unpredictable hours and last-minute schedules than their white colleagues.
Minority workers, particularly women of color, are “exposed to the most unstable and unpredictable work scheduling practices,” according to a report published Wednesday by sociologists at The Shift Project at the University of California. “This is not desirable schedule flexibility, but rather unpredictability and instability imposed by employers.”
Minority workers in the retail and food service industries are 10% to 20% more likely than white workers to report canceled shifts, on-call shifts and “clopenings” — shifts separated by fewer than 11 hours, the researchers found. The Shift Project, which studies scheduling practices, surveyed 30,000 employees at 120 of the largest retail and food-service firms for its report.
Although 13% of white workers reported at least one of their shifts was canceled in the last month, that percentage is 30% higher among minority workers, according to the findings.
According to the research, minority workers in retail and the food service industries are also more likely to be considered “involuntary part-time workers” — that is, workers who want to work full-time but are forced to work part-time, either because their hours were cut back or they could not find a full-time job.
The researchers attributed much of the scheduling gap between minority workers and white workers to managers’ conscious or unconscious racial bias. Although 80% of hourly white workers said their managers were white, only 38% of non-white workers said that they had a direct supervisor.
‘Fair workweek’ push
The retail and food service industries employ 17% of workers in the United States, and African-American and Hispanic workers make up a disproportionate share of the employees in the sectors compared with other industries. Top companies have relied on new technology and advanced algorithms in recent years to staff their stores and warehouses.
Last-minute scheduling creates financial strain and has damaging consequences for many workers and their families. Sometimes last-minute scheduling can make it difficult to care for young children or elderly family members. It can also lead to uneven pay and make it challenging for these workers to plan ahead.
At Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and private employer, 44% of US employees are workers of color.
Adriana Bautista, a 13-year Walmart veteran who lives in Bay City, Texas, and works part time, said she wants to work there at least 20 hours a week. She said has worked just five hours some weeks in the past.
“Walmart also schedules me at different times every week,” said Bautista, a member of United for Respect, an advocacy group that presses for changes at Walmart and supports legislation to address unpredictable schedules. “On some days, I get off at 10 pm but have to be back at 8 am It’s exhausting, but I can’t afford to decline those shifts.”
She often relies on her family for help caring for her children.
“Most of the time I leave my kids alone with my 16-year-old daughter,” she said. “No mother wants to be in that position, but often the alternative is missing out on income we need to put food on the table.”
Kory Lundberg, a spokesperson for Walmart, said the company gives workers their schedules at least two and a half weeks in advance.
Walmart also provides “core hours” — a policy that offers workers the same shifts on the same days for as long as 13 weeks — and gives workers the ability swap shifts with other workers or volunteer to pick up additional hours.
“We are proud of the scheduling options we offer associates,” Lundberg said. “These options empower our people to build a schedule that meets their individual needs.”
Target does not disclose its mix of part-time workers or the racial breakdown of its workforce. But some Target workers, including several employees of color, recently told CNN Business that their hours have dropped.
Target has denied that it has cut hours. The company previously said that existing staffers are working this year, on average, approximately the same number of hours” as they were last year and the year prior and slightly more than they were three years ago. Target has added millions of payroll hours in recent years, the company said.
Jenny Allen, a former Payless employee who lives in Tacoma, Washington, said she often worked from opening to closing time late at night and then had to come back to work early the following morning.
“I missed a lot of time with my kids,” said Allen, who is also a member of United for Respect, the workers’ advocacy group.
Lawmakers are starting to address erratic hours and volatile pay for retail and service workers.
In recent years, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Oregon and New Hampshire have passed “fair workweek” laws.
On the federal level, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro have introduced the Schedules that Work Act, requiring retail, food service, hospitality and warehouse employers to provide schedules to their workers two weeks in advance. The bill also would call for companies to give workers more say in their own schedules and guarantee at least eleven hours of rest between shifts.
Warren and DeLauro plan to re-introduce the bill in the coming weeks.
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Wendy Williams Tears up as She’s Honored With Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
Wendy Williams received the 2,677th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, joined by Jack Abernethy, CEO of Fox TV stations, radio host Elvis Duran, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell and others who assembled on Hollywood Boulevard to celebrate the veteran TV host.
“If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry, so I’ll keep it light and laughter-y,” Williams said as she took the podium to accept her honor, choking back tears all the same. “Jack and Elvis and Mitch and people have said throughout the day … I’m successful because I’ve done things my way. No, not exactly. It’s because I’m a good listener to advice, and if I don’t like the advice, then I do things my way.”
The performer went on to thank her family, fans and “loyal, hard-working staff” at “The Wendy Williams Show,” as well as Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein of Debmar-Mercury, which distributes the program. She also named some of her greatest talk-show inspirations, such as Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore.
“I did not know I would be a talk-show host, but I liked the chit-chat; I’ve always liked the chit-chat,” she said. “When they told me, ‘It’s going to be a live talk show,’ I was frightened — frightened. Doing it by myself, I had no problem with because most of my career I’ve been by myself. Even in a room full of a thousand people, I always feel like the person who doesn’t belong.”
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Colorado woman tried to mail human fetuses to UK
A woman in Colorado has been indicted for trying to ship three human fetuses to the UK using the United States Postal Service, reports said.
The fetuses, believed to have been stillborn in the 1920s, were sold to a buyer over Facebook, KUSA-TV reported.
Emily Suzanne Cain, 38, shipped the package from Canon City, Colorado, on Oct. 15, 2018, but Customs and Border Protection officers in San Francisco flagged it before it could be loaded onto a London-bound flight.
Cain tried to disguise the contents by labeling them “school teaching aids and T-shirts” on a customs form certifying there are no dangerous items in the package, KXTV-TV reported.
But she didn’t sign the form, so CBP officers X-rayed the bundle and were horrified to see “human shapes.”
Cain, who had also hand-written an apology for the package’s delay, was outraged when she discovered it had not been delivered and called USPS customer service on Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, to inquire about the delivery.
San Mateo County Coroner’s Office identified the remains as human, while Homeland Security investigators obtained a warrant for her Facebook communications, KDVR reported.
Facebook posts indicate Cain bought the “wet specimens” from a friend who heads a university’s BioMed department “and recently picked them up in a U-Haul trailer,” KUSA-TV reported.
She had allegedly been trying to sell the fetal collection for $20,000.
Investigators traced the fetuses’ origins to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska — which confirmed they had belonged to the lab, reports said.
Cain was charged with violating a US law that prohibits the sale of human fetal tissue. She was released on a $5,000 bond with a GPS monitor and pleaded not guilty Tuesday.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/10/16/colorado-woman-tried-to-mail-human-fetuses-to-uk-reports/
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Man off meds stabbed mom 21 times over ‘inheritance
An Indiana man who stopped taking medication for paranoid schizophrenia stabbed his mother 21 times over his non-existent inheritance, police said.
Vinson Edge, 39, of Speedway, was arrested Monday in connection with the slaying of his mother, 58-year-old Vickie Edge, the night before.
She was stabbed with two kitchen knives in her head, neck, hands, arms and chest after an argument with her son over money, the Indianapolis Star reports.
Cops found the man’s brother outside of the family’s apartment complex holding a bat as he told investigators that Edge had killed their mother, whose body was found inside near a large kitchen knife, court documents show.
Edge had stopped taking his medication for paranoid schizophrenia about a month earlier, his brother told cops, prompting him to act erratically. Edge was not known to be a violent person prior to the change, his brother said.
Edge, who fled the apartment, was busted the following day after police got a tip that he was going to meet up with his mother’s longtime boyfriend, WXIN reports.
Terry Brown, 52, shot Edge in the leg just before he was taken into custody. A witness told the station that Brown and two others subdued Edge as they waited for cops to arrive.
Brown is now facing a charge of battery with a deadly weapon and is expected to appear in court on Thursday, the Indianapolis Star reports.
Relatives, meanwhile, said they saw no signs of trouble prior to the fatal stabbing that took away the “heartbeat” of the family, according to Samantha Riley, who is married to Vickie Edge’s nephew.
“It was no means, merit, there was no argument,” Riley told WXIN. “It just happened out of the blue.”
Photo Credit: Speedway Police Department
A woman sues San Antonio after a police officer pulled out her tampon in public
Natalie D. Simms was in shock as she stood on the dimly lit side street in San Antonio with her hands raised in the air. A police officer looking for drugs had failed to find anything after combing through her pockets — but much to Simms’s horror, the search wasn’t over.
“Spread your legs,” the officer allegedly told Simms.
On Aug. 8, 2016, Simms was subjected to a public vaginal cavity search during which her tampon was pulled out in view of male police officers and others nearby, according to a federal lawsuit filed last year in the Western District of Texas. Simms sued the city of San Antonio and now-retired San Antonio Police Department detective Mara Wilson for unspecified damages, alleging that the act was a “blatant violation” of her constitutional rights, and resulted “in significant and lasting harm.”
“Natalie suffered through a shocking display of what can occur when police power is unchecked,” Dean Malone, an attorney for Simms, told WOAI in 2018. “We intend to seek full damages available under the law and look forward to presenting Natalie’s horrible experience to a jury.”
But now, it appears the legal battle may be ending differently than how Malone envisioned. The city is scheduled to vote Thursday on a proposed settlement that would award Simms $205,000, according to an official agenda. Simms and her lawyer have agreed to the sum, the San Antonio Express-News reported, citing a city memo.
The potential payout offered to Simms, 40, is not the first of its kind in Texas. Last January, officials in Harris County paid $185,000 to a Houston woman who alleged in a federal lawsuit that her constitutional rights were violated when two sheriff’s deputies performed a cavity search on her near a bustling convenience store, the Houston Chronicle reported at the time. In that case, the settlement drew backlash from the woman’s lawyers and advocates, who decried the amount as “an injustice,” according to the Chronicle.
In a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday, San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia said cases are evaluated with the goal of finding “potential resolutions without the necessity of proceeding to trial.”
“We were able to resolve this matter with this proposed settlement and believe it to be in the best interest of all involved,” Segovia said.
According to Simms’s lawsuit, her troubles began as she sat on a curb on that August night waiting for her boyfriend. Simms was perched near the street, talking on her cellphone when police officers descended, the suit said. It was later revealed that officers had been investigating the area after receiving complaints about possible drug activity, the Express-News reported. A police detective reportedly said he had seen Simms, who has a criminal record, and another woman walk beneath a highway underpass where they appeared to sell drugs, according to the Express-News.
First, police obtained consent to search Simms’s car, which she gave “knowing that she had done nothing wrong,” court documents said. Meanwhile, a female officer was called to the scene to search Simms, and it wasn’t long before Wilson, a department veteran, arrived.
After looking through Simms’s clothing and not finding anything, Wilson, who allegedly did not have a warrant at the time, asked whether she could remove the woman’s shorts, making small talk as she continued the search, according to the lawsuit.
“Officer Wilson was initially talking as if she were sitting down and having a cup of coffee with Natalie,” the suit said. “Unfortunately, this was not a meeting over coffee, and Officer Wilson’s decision as to how to conduct the search was about to take a turn for the worse.”
Wilson instructed Simms to “spread your legs,” according to a transcript of dash-cam footage included in the lawsuit. Wilson added, “I’m going to ask you, do you have anything down here before I reach down here?”
Simms said she didn’t and expressed alarm about Wilson’s intent to examine her vagina, noting that she was on her period. Armed with a flashlight, the officer said she only planned to look, not touch, and “pulled open Natalie’s pants and underwear,” the complaint said. Five other officers, all of whom were men, were nearby, the suit alleged.
“Officer Wilson did so knowing that Natalie was on her period, and also knowing and seeing that Natalie had a menstrual pad in place,” the lawyers wrote.
Still, Wilson repeatedly asked Simms to confirm she was using a tampon.
“It’s full of blood, right?” Simms said. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson responded. “It looked like it had stuff in there.”
Ignoring Simms’s protests that she didn’t have contraband, Wilson continued her search, at one point even remarking, “You’re very hairy,” the suit alleged.
Then, Wilson told Simms to turn around and spread her legs again, the complaint said. There was another place she had yet to look.
“Officer Wilson had violated Natalie vaginally, and now it appeared that she might violate Natalie anally,” the suit said. “She was doing so without a warrant, with no medical personnel present, and on a public street in view of several people as well as those passing by.”
Simms asked multiple times if she could be taken to a police station, but her requests were disregarded, according to the lawsuit.
“If you don’t have nothing, you don’t have anything to worry about, okay, but these are all the places that everybody hides stuff, so this is where we have to search,” Wilson told Simms, according to the transcript. Wilson later testified that she has recovered plastic bags containing drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin, tied with string from people’s crotches, the News-Express reported.
It is unclear whether Wilson proceeded with the cavity search of Simms. The complaint said Simms ultimately left in her own car after officers did not find anything illegal in her possession.
“Even though Natalie was allowed to leave the scene, a part of her dignity and self-worth was left behind,” the lawsuit said.
According to the complaint, officials said Wilson “did nothing that violated any of the City’s procedures by searching Ms. Simms in the manner she searched her.” Instead of facing serious punishment such as termination, a notation was made in Wilson’s personnel file, the lawsuit alleged. Wilson retired in May 2017, about nine months after her encounter with Simms, as a 32-year veteran of the department.
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Man sentenced to 15 years in prison after police mistook powdered milk for cocaine
A homeless man in Oklahoma was sentenced to 15 years in prison last week after police caught him with what they believed to be a bag of cocaine.
Cody Gregg, 26, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges following his arrest for a “traffic violation” in August. Gregg, who was riding a bike at the time, tried to flee from officers but they caught up to him and searched his belongings.
That’s when police found a “large amount of white powder substance” hidden in a coffee can inside his backpack. A report from the incident said the arresting officer “believed [the powder] to be cocaine based on my training and experience.”
Gregg, who had faced drug charges in the past, was booked and held in jail on a $50,000 bond. Police ran tests on the substance, which they said tested positive for cocaine.
But lab tests conducted nearly two months later said the exact opposite. By then, Gregg had already pled guilty to drug charges.
The 26-year-old then tried to withdraw his guilty plea, telling the judge the white substance was actually powdered milk he’d gotten from a local food pantry, The Oklahoman reported.
A judge ultimately approved Gregg’s plea withdrawal, and the charges against him were dropped last Friday. He was released from prison on Monday.
Jason Lollman, a public defender in Tulsa, Okla., told NBC News that it’s a common occurrence for suspects to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit, as it saves them from having to “sit in and wait” in prison before their trial.
“The cash bail system, posting cash bail, is a problem,” Lollman said. “If they can’t afford an attorney, they’re not going to be able to post bond to get out.”
Lollman said he’s regularly had to talk clients out of falsely pleading guilty, but added that he ultimately can’t blame Gregg for his decision.
“Sometimes it’s like we, the attorneys, have more stamina than the clients do,” he told NBC News. “But that’s because we’re on the outside and they’re in jail.”
The attorney added that Oklahoma City Jail, where Gregg was being held, is a “generally awful jail.” As of September, at least six inmates had died in the prison this year, The Oklahoman reported.
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A 14-year-old student was tackled by classmates after bringing a gun to school
A California high school was put on lockdown Tuesday after a student brought a gun to school, police said.
The La Habra High School student was tackled to the ground by other students after he brought an unloaded handgun into the building, CNN affiliate KCAL reported. Students said the boy was showing off the gun in class.
The incident took place during a metal shop class around 9:35 a.m., according to the news station.
The 14-year-old boy pointed it at a few students and they wrestled him to the ground and took the gun away, the affiliate said, citing students’ reports.
“As far as we know at this point the gun was unloaded,” Lt. Brian Miller told KCAL. “Also, there was some type of a struggle between a couple students to get the gun away from this particular student.”
In a statement, the high school said it went on lockdown as a precaution.
“All students and faculty are safe at this time,” the school tweeted in an update, which announced the lockdown was lifted less than an hour later.
The teen with the gun was either showing it off or trying to sell it, police said, according to the affiliate.
Officers located the handgun and detained the student, La Habra police said. No one was injured and there aren’t any other threats to the school, police said.
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Second grade, 7-year-old boy caught vaping CBD at elementary school, police say
(Meredith) — A teacher at a Wisconsin elementary school caught a 7-year-old boy vaping CBD inside a classroom, police said.
The second-grader took the vaping device from his mother’s purse and brought it Country Dale Elementary in Franklin on Oct. 8, WISN-TV reported.
A social worker from child protective services took the child to the hospital to get him checked out.
His mother told police the “Smok Novo” vaping device, which resembles a USB flash drive, contained CBD oil.
CPS later returned the boy to his mom. She was not cited or charged, but police and CPS will keep a report of the incident on file, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Franklin School District emailed a letter to parents on Tuesday warning them about the dangers of vaping.
“The safety of our students is our top priority,” said Superintendent Judy Mueller in the letter. “As a school community, we have concerns about the national vaping epidemic, especially when we see the impact on our Franklin students and families. We will continue to do everything we can to help counteract the harm associated with vaping.”
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UK teacher fired for telling Jewish pupils they would be sent to ‘gas chambers’
A British teacher has been fired for telling a class with young Jewish pupils that she would “ship them off to the gas chambers” if they didn’t finish their work, according to reports.
The unidentified teacher was punished for making the disgusting comment to a class of 28 — including 11 who are Jewish — at Newberries Primary School in Hertfordshire, according to The Sun.
She quickly insisted she was “joking” and begged her 10-year-old students not to report her, the paper said.
But enough youngsters told their parents about the anti-Semitic outburst that an emergency meeting was called for the board of governors that ended with her firing last Friday, the reports say.
“We can confirm that last week we were made aware that an alleged racist comment had been made by an agency teacher working within the school,” the school told The Sun in a statement.
“We acted on this immediately and our governors and leadership team are undertaking a full investigation. The agency teacher will not be returning.”
The school has issued a newsletter reassuring parents that they were doing all they could to “embrace diversity,” with religious leaders from different faith groups being invited to address pupils, the report said.
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