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Prince George’s Residents, Advocates Demand Police Reform

By William J. Ford WI Staff Writer @jabariwill

Before a work group completes a report by Oct. 30 with recommendations to reform the Prince George’s County police department, some residents and advocates want at least a half-dozen added to ensure full accountability.

The list of demands come from family members such as Tracy Shand, whose 49-year-old brother Leonard Shand was shot and killed by police Sept. 26, 2019, in Hyattsville.

“When you killed my brother, you knocked at my door, so I can’t stay in my corner no more,” Shand said Friday, Sept. 25 outside the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building in Largo. “It is horrifying to come up here and tell you that change has to happen in P.G. County.”

To accentuate their point, Shand and other supporters held orange and white posters with 82 names of individuals killed by county police.

Shand, affected loved ones and other supporters chose to speak in front of the administration building because it houses the office of County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

The 23-member task force held a meeting Thursday, Sept. 24 that included a presentation from the county’s Office of Homeland Security. One of the agency’s main duties is to provide dispatch of police, fire and other emergency services through county’s 911 call center.

Alsobrooks has said the work group established in July would not only listen to community suggestions, but also assess and analyze police department use of force, hiring and training policies.

Meanwhile, residents on Friday focused one six demands such as to force police accountability for those killed by police in the majority Black jurisdiction in Maryland. This demand connects to the Leonard Shand case because a grand jury ruled several weeks ago his death “was objectively reasonable” and didn’t indict any of the nearly 12 officers involved.

Two other requests would enforce the state’s attorney office publicly lists officers barred from testifying in court on previous cases, and support statewide police reform and accountability initiatives from dozens of advocacy groups.

Two other demands are part of a report released in June that highlights racial and retaliatory practices within the police department. Michael E. Graham,

5 Josette Blocker talks about how Prince George’s County police caused her nephew, Demonte Ward-Blake, to become paralyzed from the waist down after a traffic stop in October 2019. Blocker spoke at a press conference Sept. 25 outside the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building in Largo. (William J. Ford/The Washington Informer)

a 33-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, wrote the nearly 100-page document as a part of lawsuit by former and current Prince George’s police officers against the county and department.

Residents and advocates want the rest of the report unredacted that shows more than 6,800 use of force incidents occurred in the REFORM Page 38

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Kentucky Judge Orders Transcripts Released from Breonna Taylor Grand Jury

By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia

A defiant Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron maintained his desire to keep secret the recording of the grand jury proceedings in the case of Breonna Taylor’s death despite a judge’s order on Monday, Sept. 28 to release them.

Judge Ann Bailey Smith, who presided over the arraignment of former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison, the lone officer indicted on somewhat lesser charges, ruled that the recording and all discovery documents cannot be shared merely between the parties.

Smith set Wednesday, Sept. 30, as the day she will release the recordings.

The grand jury indicted Hankison on three counts of first-degree

By Sarafina Wright WI Contributing Writer

Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia [CHOP] believe there may be key genetic differences in the causes of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] between African Americans and people of European ancestry, which may play an important part in how patients of different ethnic backgrounds respond to treatments for this condition.

The findings published online by the journal Scientific Reports suggested that structural variants of the genome play an important role in ADHD.

However, these studies focused mainly on coding regions, or regions of DNA or RNA that code wanton endangerment for firing his weapon into apartments adjacent to the one occupied by Taylor.

The 26-year-old former EMT worker was shot at least a half-dozen times when officers breached her apartment to serve a warrant later found to be suspect.

Releasing the recording instead of the transcript is not expected to satisfy Taylor’s family or a grand juror who filed legal claims demanding the release of recordings, transcripts and asking the judge to make a binding declaration that the panel has a right to disclose information about the process.

In court papers, the anonymous juror said there are fears that Cameron would attempt to use the court’s powers of contempt in the case of public disclosure.

“It is the fear of the Petitioner that for particular proteins, and were also primarily conducted in people of European ancestry.

“We felt as though prior studies of ADHD from a genomic level were not telling the entire story because of whom they were leaving out and what they were studying,” said Hakon Hakonarson, MD, Ph.D., director of the Center for Applied Genomics at the CHOP Research Institute and senior author of the study.

“Given the large number of African American individuals we have recruited into our studies, whose genomes are fundamentally more complex than those of European ancestry, we wanted to see if comparing the coding and non-coding regions of the genome in those of African-American and Attorney General Cameron would attempt to utilize the court’s contempt powers ... if there was a public disclosure that contradicted certain things that he stated happened during the proceedings, characterized the singularity of the decision in a different light, or raised doubts about charges that were presented during the proceedings,” the motion states, according to CNN.

The juror argued that Cameron “attempted to make very clear that the grand jury alone made the decision alone on who and what to charge” and that “the only exception to the responsibility he foisted upon the grand jurors was in his statement that they ‘agreed’ with his team’s investigation that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officer Myles Cosgrove were justified in their actions.”

“It’s a compelling public interest for these proceedings to be released,” the juror continued in court filings. “The citizens of this Commonwealth have demonstrated their lack of faith in the process and proceedings in this matter and the justice system itself. Using the grand jurors as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for these decisions only sow more seeds of doubt in the process while leaving a cold chill down the spines of future grand jurors.”

Cameron responded with a statement that declared the grand jury is meant to be a secretive body.

“It’s apparent that the public interest, in this case, isn’t going to allow

5 Tributes to Breonna Taylor sit just outside a Kentucky courthouse. (Courtesy photo) cutor, our team has an ethical obligathem well or hold the plain and antion not to release the recording from ger of the lingering questions against the Grand Jury proceedings, and we them,” the juror noted. stand by our belief that such a release “It is patently unjust for the jucould compromise the ongoing fedrors to be subjected to the level of eral investigation and could have unaccountability the Attorney General intended consequences such as poicampaigned for simply because they soning the jury pool,” Cameron said. received a summons to serve their

The juror noted that public outcry community at a time that adherence over the absence of charges for the to the summons forced them to be police officers in Taylor’s death had involved in a matter that has caused left them afraid and vulnerable. such a palpable divide between sides,”

Cameron has subjected the panel the court filing continued. to “a level of accountability that is Finally, the juror noted that they unreasonable and that the legal sysare seeking “only the truth, the tem has put the grand jurors on an whole truth, and nothing but the island where they are left to wonder truth.” if anyone who finds them will treat WI

ADHD Study Reveals Unique Genetic Differences in African-American Patients

that to happen. As the special proseEuropean ancestry could help us pinpoint areas of focus for future research efforts.”

The CAG team and their collaborators generated whole-genome

“We felt as though prior studies of ADHD from a genomic level were not telling the entire story because of whom they were leaving out and what they were studying.”

– HAKON HAKONARSON, MD, PH.D. sequence data on 875 participants, including 205 patients diagnosed with ADHD and 670 non-ADHD controls. African Americans represented 116 of the 205 ADHD patients and 408 of the non-ADHD controls.

In addition to confirming several structural variants and target genes associated with ADHD identified in prior studies, the researchers also discovered 40 novel structural variants in patients with ADHD. They identified a cluster of structural variants in the non-coding region of pathways involved in neuronal brain function and highly relevant to the development of ADHD, including gene expression in specific ADHD phenotypes.

There was little overlap (around 6 percent) in the genes impacted by single nucleotide variants between African-American and European ancestry. These differences were especially pronounced in the non-coding structural variants. These variants may also impact how patients respond to medications for ADHD.

“Whole genome sequencing appears to be a valuable discovery tool for studying the molecular mechanisms behind ADHD,” Hakonarson said. “Additionally, the inclusion of African Americans, coupled with the study of non-coding regions of the genome, identified several structural variants that warrant further study, as they may impact both susceptibility to ADHD and how patients respond differently to therapeutic intervention.” WI