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In local news
- 988 updates: Washington lawmakers approved a bill that would invest more resources in the state’s 988 mental health crisis line, including mobile units and crisis training. Some states, including Indiana, are considering using a phone tax to help pay for the line. In Los Angeles, the hotline was heralded as a way to reduce the number of police shootings that occur during a mental health crisis. However, an LA Times investigation found LA County’s mobile crisis teams take more than an hour to respond to most calls.
- From The Times-Picayune: In Louisiana during the last decade, more than 200 law enforcement officers were fired for or convicted of offenses, including sexual assault. Yet only 1 in 5 lost their credentials to work in law enforcement. To compare, Georgia revokes about 800 police licenses per year.
- From The Frontier: In 2019, Oklahoma’s medical examiner ruled that the death of a Pottawatomie County jail prisoner, Ronald Gene Given, was a homicide. But no one has been charged in connection with his death. The Frontier unearthed an investigative report that said jail staff had used a Taser on him before he lost consciousness, a detail that some detention officers and an attorney for the jail have denied.
New from Streetlight
- How a shortage of foster placement options can lead to more youth arrests: State child welfare agencies are understaffed and under-resourced, and it’s become common for them to house kids in hotels, offices and homeless shelters due to a lack of other placement options. In New Mexico, some youth in foster care spend more time in detention than their peers just because there’s nowhere for them to go. Advocates say trauma-informed practices and better access to education could help whittle away at the foster care-to-prison pipeline.
- Emotional support animals spark skepticism from some landlords: Anecdotally, emotional support animals are the most common type of assistance animal, but they also meet the most resistance from landlords. I wrote about what renters can do if a landlord won’t allow emotional support animals.
Thank you for reading our newsletter. You can reach me here at bryant@streetlightnews.org and 405-990-0988.
– Mollie Bryant
Founder and editor, Streetlight
