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A fire overnight heavily damaged a house in Wellston.

The new St. Louis circuit attorney will be sworn in and with a backlog of thousands of case. Gabe Gore will certainly have his hands full.

FOX 2 learned St. Louis County Executive Sam Page will announce Tuesday morning he is vetoing a controversial the St. Louis County Council just passed.

Where you can stay in a former brewery, firehouse, Masonic temple, and more

Looking for summertime fun that's not far away? Here are a handful of options.

When a marijuana legalization amendment was being criticized last year over concerns it would calcify the lack of Black participation in the burgeoning industry, Adolphus Pruitt was one of its most vociferous defenders. Pruitt, the president of the St. Louis City NAACP, and other local NAACP leaders insisted the constitutional amendment establish a “microbusiness license” […]

The post New rules stir fear Black Missourians will once again lose out in marijuana licensing appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Flash droughts develop fast, and when they hit at the wrong time, they can devastate a region’s agriculture. They’re also becoming increasingly common as the planet warms. In a new study published May 25, 2023, we found that the risk of flash droughts, which can develop in the span of a few weeks, is on pace to rise in every major agriculture […]

The post Farmers face soaring risk of flash droughts in every major food-growing region, new research shows appeared first on Missouri Independent.

SPRINGFIELD - Illinois State Representative Amy Elik (R-Alton) issued a statement following the passage of the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY 24) state budget scheduled to take effect July 1, 2023: “I’m disappointed the state budget approved by the Illinois General Assembly continues to spend more without a plan to ease the burden on our taxpayers. As the cost of living continues to remain high, the state budget, unfortunately, does not respect the pocketbooks of hard-working Illinoisans. As Deputy Budgeteer for the House Republican Caucus, my Republican colleagues and I offered to work on a bipartisan balanced budget, a budget that could have included our shared priorities. But instead, the Democrats gave themselves another pay raise and made promises they can’t fulfill, setting up for a potential tax hike in the future.”

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It’s not as simple as it sounds.

WOOD RIVER – Consultant Good Energy has informed the City Of Wood River that Ameren Illinois has established its new residential electric rate for customers in the Wood River area and these rates should be released by June 1. Although the rate filings are not yet official, the preliminary rates for Ameren BGS-1 Residential, which would be from June 2023 – May 2024, are estimated to be $0.08450-$0.08650. However, residents need to also know the newly filed rate can return to an upward swing anytime during that period. The City feels it's extremely important and the message is clear, we work hard to help the residents save money on their electric bills and do so in the safest way possible. The residents of Wood River have experienced huge savings while participating in the aggregation program. The City of Wood River goal was to give residents an alternative to Ameren's utility rates. The previous program period which ended in December 2022 secured fixed base rates of $0.0429

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A budget proposal in the House could roll back billions for rural clean energy.

The sweeping changes to the archdiocese announced Saturday are a lot to take in. See how your parish will be affected.

After getting her linguistics degree, Nicole Horseherder planned to return home to Black Mesa and teach. But with the region’s aquifers under threat from coal companies, she rallied against them – and won.

Kansas kicks off their 50th anniversary tour on June 2 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and guitarist and founding member Richard Williams is certainly excited to be celebrating such a big milestone. “Fifty, it's a…

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It’s already happening—mostly to the advantage of Beijing.

The likely consequences of Biden’s new immigration policy will be misery for thousands seeking refuge.

The Biden administration is trying to bottle up migrants south of the border. It isn’t working.

by Richard A. Webster, Verite

This article was produced for Verite by Richard A. Webster, who was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of a 16-year-old autistic boy when deputies pinned him to the pavement, handcuffed and shackled, as officers sat on his back for more than nine minutes, according to a “statement of interest” filed this month by the Department of Justice as part of a civil rights lawsuit against JPSO.

The teen, Eric Parsa, died on the scene in January 2020. The sheriff’s office has also recently faced a number of other lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force and racial discrimination by deputies. The sheriff’s office was the subject of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and WRKF and WWNO starting in 2021, which disclosed evidence of racial discrimination and violence by deputies; after the first story ran, the American Civil Liberties Union called on federal prosecutors to investigate the department.

Regarding the DOJ filing, the sheriff’s office maintains that its deputies did not discriminate against Parsa based on his disability — and thus did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act — because Parsa posed a threat to himself, the public and law enforcement officers.

But the DOJ said that evidence submitted in the case appears to show that Parsa posed no danger, and that deputies were aware of the teenager’s disability and did nothing to modify their procedures or actions to ensure his safety, as required by law.

“A reasonable jury could thus find that Defendants discriminated against E.P. based on disability,” DOJ attorneys said in their May 12 statement about the Parsa case, noting the only word Parsa uttered throughout the deadly ordeal was “firetruck.”

The coroner ruled the teen’s death an accident as a result of “excited delirium,” a controversial diagnosis that is listed as a cause of death for a number of people who died in police custody. The coroner also cited “prone positioning” as a contributing factor. But Parsa’s family disputes the finding that his death was accidental, saying it should be classified as a homicide. In January 2021, they sued Sheriff Joe Lopinto and seven deputies, claiming the sheriff’s office violated Parsa’s constitutional and civil rights, as well as his rights under the ADA.

The Justice Department files statements of interest in civil lawsuits to “explain to the court the interests of the United States in litigation between private parties,” according to a 2017 article in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Since January 2020, the DOJ has filed at least 18 other statements of interest in disability rights cases. In this case, the department’s interest is its responsibility to enforce Title II of the ADA, which prohibits law enforcement agencies from denying individuals with disabilities the “opportunity to participate in or benefit from their services.”

The department’s May 12 statement followed a motion from the sheriff’s office for federal Judge Wendy Vitter to issue a partial summary judgment, which would toss out the ADA claims without taking them to trial. The motion is pending.

On Jan. 19, 2020, Parsa’s parents took him to play laser tag at the Westgate Shopping Center in Metairie. As they were leaving, he experienced a disability-related meltdown, according to the family’s lawsuit. Surveillance footage shows the boy repeatedly slapping his own head in the parking lot, then slapping and wrestling his father for several minutes.

A nearby business manager contacted JPSO Deputy Chad Pitfield and informed him that a child with special needs was having a violent episode, Pitfield testified in a September 2022 deposition. When Pitfield arrived in his patrol car with the lights flashing, Parsa became even more agitated. He once again began slapping his own head, then slapped Pitfield, who took him to the ground, the video shows.

At least six more deputies arrived in four patrol cars and two unmarked vehicles. They handcuffed and shackled the teen as three deputies took turns sitting on his back, with one putting him in a chokehold. About 10 minutes later, deputies noticed Parsa had gone “limp” and had urinated, according to the lawsuit. His mother screamed that they were choking him. Only then did they roll him into a “recovery position,” as filings describe it. But it was too late. He died on the scene.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement agencies make “reasonable modifications” to their policies, practices and procedures to ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against or denied services.

In Parsa’s case, the DOJ said deputies could have dispatched crisis intervention officers, used de-escalation strategies, or given the teenager time and space to calm down as he didn’t pose a significant safety threat. Instead of sitting on him as he lay facedown on the pavement, deputies could have rolled Parsa onto his side, stood him up or sat him in a vehicle.

The sheriff’s office maintained in court documents that such policy modifications are only required once two factors are in place: the scene is secured and there is no longer a threat to public safety or life. JPSO maintains that neither condition had been met in Parsa’s case, and therefore the deputies’ actions did not violate the ADA.

“The video speaks for itself and clearly shows that the scene was never secure prior to E.P.’s demise,” the sheriff’s office’s attorneys wrote in a May 1 motion for partial summary judgment, referring to surveillance footage taken from the scene.

Video of Eric Parsa’s restraint and death was captured by a nearby security camera.

The video shows that at about 1:29 p.m, Pitfield pinned Parsa to the ground by sitting on his back. From that point forward, Parsa did not move from that spot. At one point, he was surrounded by seven deputies and seven JPSO vehicles. An ambulance arrived at 1:39 p.m. and a few minutes later paramedics took Parsa’s lifeless body away on a stretcher.

In reviewing the video, the DOJ reached different conclusions from those put forward by the sheriff’s office.

“Critically, nothing … suggests that E.P. had a weapon, that officers ever reasonably suspected he had a weapon, or that there was a threat to human life,” the DOJ said in its statement. “The record contains no evidence that any bystanders were at risk.”

There is evidence, however, that deputies “could have provided any number of reasonable accommodations once the scene was secure, and thereby afforded the child a safe and effective law enforcement response,” DOJ attorneys concluded.

Statements provided by deputies who were present — and who acknowledged that they knew or assumed Parsa was autistic or had special needs — also seem to contradict the sheriff’s statement that the scene was not secure. They said that while he was on the ground, he was “calm” or “under control” and was not resisting.

“Everything was fine,” two deputies said.

As St. Louis’s population grew, city leaders in the mid-19th century established systems to care for the increasing number of people in need. For a variety of reasons, from funding issues to changes in popular opinion about welfare, these once-massive structures no longer exist as part of the St. Louis landscape. In part 1, we …

Continue reading "Public Institutions from the Past: The Poor House"

John Brown III of East Alton, IL joined the Real Rock Army today

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