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(Reuters) - Body-worn cameras are increasingly being used by U.S. law enforcement agencies and often play a central role in high-profile police killings. But wide disparities remain in how they are employed and when the footage is made public.
HOW MANY POLICE AGENCIES USE BODY-WORN CAMERAS?
Conflicting witness accounts of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown, a Black man, in Ferguson, Missouri, led former President Barack Obama’s administration to fund body-worn camera programs across 32 states.
As of 2016, about 47% of the country’s 15,328 general-purpose law enforcement agencies had bought the cameras, according to a 2018 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the most recent study measuring nationwide usage.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping $1.8 trillion package for families and education in his first speech to Congress on Wednesday and argue that he has restored Americans’ faith in democracy nearly 100 days after he succeeded Donald Trump in office.
Biden will speak at 9 p.m. (0100 GMT Thursday) inside the U.S. Capitol, at an event scaled back this year because of the pandemic. He will use the speech to outline his priorities for the rest of his first year in office and provide a progress report on his record so far.
“Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation: America is on the move again, turning peril into possibility, crisis into opportunity, setback into strength,” Biden will say, according to speech excerpts released by the White House.
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FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) departs after House impeachment managers rested their case in impeachment trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump, on charges of inciting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 11, 2021. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Thursday started talks on a police reform bill, the morning after Democratic President Joe Biden urged senators and representatives to act before the May 25 anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis policeman.
Republican Senators Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Cory Booker and Democratic Representative Karen Bass were among those tasked with reaching a consensus on a policing bill, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and two Democratic legislative aides said.
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TORONTO (Reuters) - A First Nation group in Canada’s British Columbia province has put top gold miner Newmont Corp on notice that it is unlikely to gain buy-in for a gold and copper project, amid concern that mining will encroach on a local town.
A mineral exploration camp is seen on Tahltan Territory in British Columbia, Canada, in this 2019 handout photo. Adam Amir/Handout via REUTERS
The pushback by the Tahltan First Nation carries extra weight due to the group’s outsized influence in its territory, in contrast to similar groups who oppose mining elsewhere.
That authority may complicate efforts by U.S.-based Newmont to develop its early-stage Tatogga project, acquired in March in a $311 million buyout of GT Gold.
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong’s legislature is set to discuss a controversial immigration bill, which lawyers, diplomats and right groups fear will give authorities unlimited powers to prevent residents and others from entering or leaving the Chinese-ruled city.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Legislative Council meeting debating a Beijing-backed electoral reform in Hong Kong, China, June 18, 2015. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
The government has dismissed those fears as “complete nonsense,” saying the bill merely aims to screen illegal immigrants at source amid a backlog of asylum applications and does not affect constitutional rights of free movement.