Also on today’s menu:
Hamlin Remains In Critical Condition
Catholic Mass For Pelé Today
Russians Killed In Strike By Ukraine
The opening day of the year 2023 ended with police taking the life of a man believed to have grown up in the area. While authorities have not yet released the names of the victim or the police officers involved in the shooting, the Attorney General’s Office said that at least two officers responded to a 9:52 p.m. report of “a resident armed with a knife” at 5 Varney Point Road. The property is listed under the Beth Ann Pataski Fay 2010 Family Trust.
Michael Garrity, director of communications for the Attorney General’s Office, reported that, “During the encounter, one officer discharged an electronic taser and a second officer discharged his weapon,” killing the armed resident. An autopsy is scheduled to take place today.
It is too early to speculate on the case, but it brings to mind another officer-involved shooting that occurred in Thornton on October 19, 2020. Thornton Police Officer Matthew Yeo shot and killed a mentally disturbed 37-year-old, Ethan Freeman, in that incident.
Yao had first encountered Freeman earlier that day at a local school when Freeman was lying on the floor and asking for an ambulance. He was taken to Speare Memorial Hospital and, during that encounter, he “was cooperative and had brief and nonconfrontational interactions with Officer Yao,” according to the Attorney-General’s investigative report.
Yeo was called to Freeman’s residence on Four Wheel Drive later that afternoon when the landlord said his tenant was bleeding and complaining of chest pain after having smashed objects in the apartment. Freeman met the officer with a stream of obscenities while brandishing the leg of a wooden chair. Yao retreated from the residence when he saw the state Freeman was in, and he drew his pistol while calling for backup, saying his life had been threatened.
The whole incident was captured on Yeo’s body camera. Freeman, who was naked and covered with blood, jumped through one of the windows of his apartment and walked toward the officer, telling him, “You’re dead.”
According to the report, “Despite the officer repeatedly yelling at Mr. Freeman to stay back, Mr. Freeman continued to walk towards Officer Yao, approaching faster than the officer was able to back up. … [T]he officer did not believe he could safely transition from his drawn pistol to the less-than-lethal alternatives that he carried with him” and he fired two shots in quick succession, killing Freeman.
Many police encounters involve mentally disturbed people, but addressing the problem is complicated by a lack of hospital beds to care for them, and by court decisions that have forced facilities to release patients that appear to be doing well while under supervision but who, once they are on their own, stop taking their medications. The court decisions, in turn, were prompted by lawsuits against the state for holding people against their will. Mentally ill persons have been institutionalized for years, but the eugenics movement to remove “genetically inferior” and “feeble-minded” people from the society led to the establishment of places like the Laconia State School where even people with afflictions like epilepsy were locked away.
The problem is playing out again in New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams has ordered that people believed to be unable to care for themselves will be sent for psychiatric evaluations without their consent. The New York Civil Liberties Union has accused Adams of “playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers” without having put in place “the resources necessary to address the mental health crises that affect our communities.”
“The federal and state constitutions impose strict limits on the government’s ability to detain people experiencing mental illness — limits that the Mayor’s proposed expansion is likely to violate,” ACLU-NY Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “The mayor’s attempt to police away homelessness and sweep individuals out of sight is a page from the failed Giuliani playbook. With no real plan for housing, services, or support, the administration is choosing handcuffs and coercion.”
Hamlin Remains In Critical Condition
The January 3 football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals has been indefinitely postponed after Buffalo’s defensive back, Damar Hamlin, went into cardiac arrest on the field in Cincinnati. Hamlin was still listed in critical condition this morning.
The 6-foot, 200-pound 24-year-old was hit in the chest while tackling Bengals receiver Tee Higgins. Hamlin wrapped his arms around Higgins’ shoulders and helmet to drag him down, then got to his feet, appeared to adjust his face mask, and then fell backward and lay motionless. “His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the UC Medical Center for further testing and treatment,” the Bills said in a statement. “He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition.”
Teammates, some of them in tears, shielded Hamlin from public view while medics provided cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and some players formed a prayer circle.
Catholic Mass For Pelé Today
Brazil’s Pelé, who died at age 82 and still is regarded as the world’s best soccer player, will be buried today in the city where he grew up, became famous, and helped make into a global capital of soccer. A Catholic Mass will be celebrated at the Vila Belmiro stadium before his casket is ushered through the streets of Santos to a nearby cemetery.
Brazil’s newly inaugurated president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in for a third term Sunday following a comeback victory, paid his respects at Vila Belmiro.
In the 1960s and ’70s, Pelé’s fame allowed him to meet presidents and queens, and Nigeria’s civil war was put on hold to watch him play. Many Brazilians credit him with putting the country on the world stage for the first time.
Russians Killed In Strike By Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to regain momentum after a Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by Western-supplied weapons killed 63, perhaps more Russian soldiers. The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces claimed that around 400 Russian soldiers had been killed and about 300 wounded by the four rockets that made it through in the strike at a vocational school building in Makiivka. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school.
It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago.
Russia has been engaging in relentless nighttime drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure since New Year’s Eve, and Ukrainian forces have claimed to have shot down more than 80 of the Iranian-made drones. A Russian missile strike overnight on the city of Druzhkivka in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region wounded two people, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported this morning.
Café Chatter
On Mythical Beings & War: He visits our yard too! I assume he’s the same one as they are so rare.
— Sandra Heaney
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