Bird Song of the Day
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. All the charts are becoming dull approaching nominal, if you accept the “new normal” of cases, for example.
“Many police officers spurn coronavirus vaccines as departments hold off on mandates” [WaPo]. “Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies. The reluctance of police to get the shots threatens not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say. At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have g
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Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (right) endorses Carlos Vega for Philadelphia district attorney over incumbent Larry Krasner. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
Ed Rendell, who served as Philadelphia District Attorney, the city’s mayor, and Pennsylvania’s governor, is taking what he calls a “reluctant” step into the upcoming DA’s race to endorse former homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega in the Democratic primary over incumbent Larry Krasner.
Krasner, a longtime criminal defense and civil rights attorney who won a crowded Democratic primary in 2017, swept into office on promises to fundamentally reform the way the DA’s office worked. He made good on a number of his campaign pledges: he has never sought the death penalty, he has aggressively prosecuted police officers for misconduct, he has stopped prosecuting most minor drug cases, and ramped up efforts to review wrongful convictions and exonerate people who were wrongly imprisoned.
A picture showing the wall of remembrance for fallen police officers being covered up inside the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office conference room has sparked outrage. The Fraternal Order of Police president says it smears the memories and legacies of fallen officers. Philly DA Larry Krasner called the criticism a political attack however and said he was legally required to cover.
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Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
The second-in-command at the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office is leaving the embattled agency a week after PlanPhilly reported that the office issued an illegal six-year contract to online auction company Bid4Assets under his watch.
Office spokesperson Theresa Lundy confirmed that Undersheriff Curtis Douglas, chief legal advisor to Sheriff Rochelle Bilal, has announced his retirement, effective imminently.
Lundy painted the move as the end to a long career in government that included prior stints at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the city’s U.S. Attorney.
“Undersheriff Douglass [sic] is currently retiring from decades of public service!” wrote Lundy, in an email. “This is great news.”