WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn — The grandmother and sister of a Brooklyn boy who died in a Williamsburg park Wednesday want to know the truth about the minutes leading up to his death.

They told PIX11 News that a Good Samaritan found Ivan Cruz, 14, unresponsive and surrounded by a group of boys in P.S. 16 Park on Wednesday, shortly after 6:30 p.m.

A call had gone out to 911.

“The caller said he was standing on monkey bars and he jumped or fell,” Alizabeth Cruz, 19, said about the first call made to ask for an ambulance.

But the family said a couple of adult witnesses saw the teen followed by a group of boys from the Bedford Avenue bus stop into the park.

“The lady saw one of the boys pushing him and then when he tried to hold the pole… they said he hit his head.”

But the medical examiner told the family Friday Ivan Cruz didn’t have any head injuries.

14, who ‘snapped his neck’ and died in park

The grandmother and sister of a Brooklyn boy who died in a Williamsburg park Wednesday want to know the truth about the minutes leading up to his death.

By: Mary Murphy , Jennifer BisramPosted at 10:02 PM, Jun 26, 2020 and last updated 4:15 PM, Jun 27, 2020

WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn — The grandmother and sister of a Brooklyn boy who died in a Williamsburg park Wednesday want to know the truth about the minutes leading up to his death.

They told PIX11 News that a Good Samaritan found Ivan Cruz, 14, unresponsive and surrounded by a group of boys in P.S. 16 Park on Wednesday, shortly after 6:30 p.m.

A call had gone out to 911.

“The caller said he was standing on monkey bars and he jumped or fell,” Alizabeth Cruz, 19, said about the first call made to ask for an ambulance.

But the family said a couple of adult witnesses saw the teen followed by a group of boys from the Bedford Avenue bus stop into the park.

“The lady saw one of the boys pushing him and then when he tried to hold the pole… they said he hit his head.”

But the medical examiner told the family Friday Ivan Cruz didn’t have any head injuries.

“His neck was broken,” Alizabeth Cruz told PIX11 News. “We don’t really know what happened.”

The teen’s grandmother, Luisa Rivera, started sobbing and quoted what the medical examiner said next.

“She said, ‘Go back to the police. Go back to the police.’”

Luisa Rivera, who was raising her grandson, is also a foster mother to other children; they all just went through a difficult quarantine in their Williamsburg apartment.

Cruz’s sister said her younger brother had been getting harassed the last two years at Middle School 126.

“We’d been getting calls from teachers saying he was getting bullied,” Alizabeth Cruz said.

The grandmother said at one point, her grandson got suspended for trying to defend himself.

“I just want to clarify what happened,” the sobbing grandmother said Friday night from her apartment. “I’m not interested in money.”

The family said a detective from the 90th Precinct was assigned to look at the case, but there have been no arrests.

When PIX11 News contacted the NYPD Friday night, a department spokesman said “the medical examiner will contact us. We have no determination from the ME’s office at this time.”

via: https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/brooklyn/family-raises-questions-about-brooklyn-boy-14-who-snapped-his-neck-and-died-in-park

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Madison police and the FBI have launched a hate crime investigation after an 18-year-old biracial woman was set on fire.

The assault took place early Wednesday morning when the woman was driving and stopped at a red light and “heard someone yell out a racial epithet,” according to a police incident report.

The woman is not named in the report, but a family spokesperson identified her as Althea Bernstein, a college student and a volunteer EMT.

“She looked and saw four men, all white. She says one used a spray bottle to deploy a liquid on her face and neck, and then threw a flaming lighter at her, causing the liquid to ignite,” read the report, which was filed over the phone.

Bernstein then “patted out the flames, and eventually drove home,” the report said. “Her mother encouraged her to go to a hospital.”

Later on Wednesday, Bernstein called 911 to report the incident, according to Michael Johnson, the family spokesperson and president and CEO of Boys and Girls Club of Dane County.

“Once it happened I don’t even remember anything, but your brain still has that fight or flight response that takes care of you,” Bernstein told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding that she drove herself to the emergency room.

Bernstein has burn marks on her face and neck pain from the incident, Johnson said.

Police are working on obtaining permission to access Bernstein’s hospital records, according to Madison police spokesperson Joel DeSpain. Investigators are also looking at surveillance images to see if the incident was captured on camera.

“Our department believes victims, and we take their statement and then thoroughly investigate what they said happened to them,” DeSpain told CNN Friday. “We believe this victim, and we are going to work with her and review all the video we can find.”

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway released a statement saying the incident was “a horrifying and absolutely unacceptable crime that I will not tolerate in Madison.”

“While we are still learning more about the details, current information suggests this may have been a premeditated crime targeted toward people of color, which makes the incident even more disturbing,” Rhodes-Conway said. “I immediately reached out to the police when I learned of the incident, asking them to use all available resources to pursue the perpetrators as quickly as possible.”

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/biracial-woman-says-she-was-set-on-fire-in-wisconsin-authorities-are-now-investigating-the/article_c28f66c5-eaa3-53d2-b3c0-1696617328db.html

Photo Credit: Althea Bernstein Family

(CNN) — A group of Whole Foods employees in a Boston-area store walked out to protest the company’s policy that prevented them from wearing Black Lives Matter masks.

Seven workers at the chain’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, store posed in a picture Wednesday that they posted on Twitter, in which they claimed Whole Foods cares “about the business their racist customers give them more than spreading a peaceful yet important message.” The employees say the protest was in response to the store’s manager decision not to let them wear the gear.

In response to the manager’s decision, Whole Foods said in a statement that all employees “must comply with our longstanding company dress code, which prohibits clothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not company-related.”

“Team members with face masks that do not comply with dress code are always offered new face masks,” a Whole Foods spokesperson said. “Team members are unable to work until the comply with dress code.”

The Boston Globe first reported the walk out.

Although Whole Foods doesn’t allow employees to visibly support the Black Lives Matter movement while on the job, Amazon explicitly stated those three words in a press release earlier this month.

“Black lives matter. We stand in solidarity with our Black employees, customers, and partners, and are committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear,” Amazon wrote on June 3. It also announced a $10 million donation to social justice organizations.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has stated similar sentiments on his Instagram account in response to a customer email that said “all lives matter.” Whole Foods also has a statement on its homepage saying it supports “the Black community and meaningful change in the world.”

Starbucks had also barred employees from wearing Black Lives Matter apparel before reversing its decision earlier this month. The coffee chain sent out 200,000 T-shirts with the phrase displayed on the shirt.

In a statement, Starbucks said it’s “critical to support the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement as its founders intended and will continue to work closely with community leaders, civil rights leaders, organizations, and our partners to understand the role that Starbucks can play, and to show up in a positive way for our communities.”

The movement gained steam after George Floyd died in police custody in May sparking nationwide protests for racial equality and police reform.

via: https://www.kmov.com/whole-foods-workers-sent-home-for-wearing-black-lives-matter-masks/article_80bbb0a4-c5bf-561f-aea9-e20b9b0d5348.html

Photo Credit: kmov.com/Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg

Fox has released a statement on casting for non-white characters on “The Simpsons.”

“Moving forward, ‘The Simpsons’ will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters,” the network said Friday.

The move comes as several television shows have pulled episodes featuring blackface from their streaming platforms, and amid a nation dealing with controversial depictions of race on TV and film.

On “The Simpsons,” Hank Azaria has been the voice of the black cartoon character Carlton Carlson. He also was known for voicing Apu, a character which has long been criticized for portraying a racist depiction of an Indian person. Azaria announced in 2017 he would no longer voice the character.

Harry Shearer voices the black character Dr. Julius M. Hibbert, one of several characters he voices, including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy and Kent Brockman.

Fox’s new policy follows announcements several white actors, including Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell, who have agreed to stop voicing characters who are biracial. Mike Henry announced Friday that he would no longer voice the black Cleveland Brown character on Fox’s animated “Family Guy.”

via: https://nypost.com/2020/06/26/the-simpsons-will-no-longer-have-white-actors-voice-non-white-characters/

Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief payments have been sent to people behind bars across the United States, and now the IRS is asking state officials to help claw back the cash that the federal tax agency says was mistakenly sent.

The legislation authorizing the payments during the pandemic doesn’t specifically exclude jail or prison inmates, and the IRS has refused to say exactly what legal authority it has to retrieve the money. On its website, it points to the unrelated Social Security Act, which bars incarcerated people from receiving some types of old-age and survivor insurance benefit payments.

“I can’t give you the legal basis. All I can tell you is this is the language the Treasury and ourselves have been using,” IRS spokesman Eric Smith said. “It’s just the same list as in the Social Security Act.”

Tax attorney Kelly Erb, who’s written about the issue on her website, says there’s no legal basis for asking for the checks back.

“I think it’s really disingenuous of the IRS,” Erb said Tuesday. “It’s not a rule just because the IRS puts it on the website. In fact, the IRS actually says that stuff on its website isn’t legal authority. So there’s no actual rule — it’s just guidance — and that guidance can change at any time.”

After Congress passed the $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package in March, checks of up to $1,200 were automatically sent in most cases to people who filed income tax returns for 2018 or 2019, including some who are incarcerated. A couple of weeks later, the IRS directed state correction departments to intercept payments to prisoners and return them.

The IRS doesn’t yet have numbers on how many payments went to prisoners, Smith said. But initial data from some states suggest the numbers are huge: The Kansas Department of Correction alone intercepted more than $200,000 in checks by early June. Idaho and Montana combined had seized over $90,000.

Washington state, meanwhile, had only intercepted about $23,000 by early June. Some states, like Nevada, have refused to release the numbers, citing an IRS request for confidentiality.

While the IRS says checks sent to jail inmates also should be returned, the sheer number of jails and detention centers across the U.S. makes it difficult to tell if many are following those instructions.

The IRS seems to have decided by itself to pull back the payments approved by Congress, said Wanda Bertram, a spokeswoman for the Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank focusing on the harm of mass incarceration. She says prison officials are accustomed to intercepting tax documents to screen for potential scams, priming them to follow this request.

“It appears that the IRS is just making this up,” Bertram said.

Inmates and their families need the money, she said, especially as prisons try to reduce the spread of the virus by instituting lockdown conditions or releasing thousands of inmates who are then trying to get back on their feet.’Yellowstone’ Season 3 Premiere Draws Over 4 Million Viewers on Paramount NetworkDon’t miss new episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ Sundays at 9/8c on Paramount Network.Ad By Paramount Network See More

Lockdowns can increase expenses for inmates because they are often given lower-quality food or fewer meals and need to supplement by buying food from prison commissaries. Family and friends on the outside often cover those costs, and many have lost jobs during the economic downturn, Bertram said.

“Loved ones right now are also under a squeeze because of the pandemic and being out of a job, so when you send a stimulus check for someone, the person in prison is not the only one who benefits from that,” Bertram said.

Intercepting relief checks may also have a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic inmates, who are incarcerated at a higher rate than white Americans. Black people are imprisoned at roughly twice the rate of Hispanic residents, and more than five times the rate of whites as of last year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Prison officials nationwide have been trying to intercept the checks, with varying results. Officials in Vermont, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Arizona and California estimated that they each had intercepted fewer than a dozen checks as of early June. Oregon prison officials had seized 25 payments, with 21 returned to the IRS and four others given to relatives or other joint tax filers.

Kaitlin Felsted, a spokeswoman for the Utah prison system, said the state had intercepted 28 checks so far but noted that any relief money sent to an inmate’s home address wouldn’t be touched by prison officials.

Some states, like Alaska and Wyoming, aren’t tracking the number of payments they intercept.

It’s not clear if inmates have any recourse, said Erb, the tax attorney.

Those who are released before year’s end and who didn’t get a relief check can try to claim the missing money as a credit on their 2021 tax returns, but it’s not clear if the IRS will honor such claims, Erb said. Other inmates may be out of luck.

“I think somebody has to sue, and you have to have the resources to be able to do that,” she said. “I don’t know that there’s anything most people can do besides complain and see if they can attract some attention. You have to have somebody who will step up and be an advocate for that segment of the population.”

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/us-inmates-got-virus-relief-checks-and-irs-wants-them-back/article_a730fc7c-f007-557c-8c17-b924660c8f11.html

Photo Credit: kmov.com