Dozens of people have died while under the watch of East Tennessee jailers since 2016, a 10News review of records from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies revealed.

Some took their own lives, some overdosed and others died of illness and injury, the records showed. Most were awaiting trial — still innocent in the eyes of the law, but dead behind bars.

"Nothing is getting better, it's just getting worse," said attorney Lance Baker, who represents the families of several people who have died in East Tennessee jails.

The facilities are often chronically underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded, Baker and some county sheriffs said. In East Tennessee, jails in Hamblen and Cocke County are not fit for inmates, a state accreditation agency found.

"The working conditions are bad," said Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnigan, who struggles to maintain a full staff of corrections officers. "But the pay is absolutely ridiculous." He also bemoaned inmates — who are often also addicts— smuggling contraband into the facility.

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/investigations/more-than-60-people-have-died-in-east-tennessee-jails-since-2016/51-f6d1f487-1121-4741-be5a-41aeec526d21

An Illinois man discharged from a hospital during a mental health crisis last year was "abandoned" by police in a parking lot late at night, only to be hit by a car shortly after, suffering traumatic brain injuries, a recent lawsuit alleges.

A complaint filed last month in Will County Circuit Court alleges that two officers with the New Lenox, Illinois, police department committed willful and wanton conduct after dropping 24-year-old Qusai Alkafaween off in a dark, empty parking lot shortly before midnight on Dec. 5, 2020.

The complaint also alleges that Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox negligently discharged Alkafaween during his mental health crisis when "he was a danger to himself and others and unable to protect himself."

Officers from the Orland Park Police Department brought Alkafaween, of Worth, Illinois, to the hospital that day after a gas station attendant reported he was "acting erratically," Jack Casciato, a partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago and one of the attorneys representing Alkafaween, said during a press briefing Wednesday.

Alkafaween has schizophrenia and was "experiencing delusions," Casciato said. He was treated and discharged after several hours, though the complaint alleges the hospital was negligent in failing to transfer Alkafaween to a mental health facility or order a psychiatric consultation.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officers-sued-allegedly-abandoning-man-mental-health/story?id=80954014
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Read on. It gets worse.

A bankruptcy court judge was set to hear arguments Thursday regarding claims filed by dozens of Hertz customers who say they were falsely arrested — and in some cases jailed — because the company reported the cars they had rented as stolen.

The car rental giant, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, insists virtually all of the claims are "meritless" and says they should not be allowed to proceed for various technical reasons.

One of the claimants, James Tolen, said a surprise traffic stop in Houston late last year turned into a frightening police encounter that made him fear for his life. After completing a project for one of the customers at his renovation company, Tolen was heading home Dec. 23 in a pickup truck rented from Hertz.

He and his fiancée, Krystal Carter, who is also a claimant, say they had rented from Hertz about a dozen times last year — but that didn't prevent him from being stopped by police for driving a car reported stolen by the company. Around 10 p.m. that night, police pulled him over and ordered him out of the car over a loudspeaker, telling him to lift his shirt and back up toward them.

"As I turn around, I see both officers train the guns on me," Tolen told CBS News' Consumer Investigative Correspondent Anna Werner.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hertz-customers-allege-false-arrests-lawsuit/
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Another reason to hate Hertz

Detroit voters decriminalized therapeutic mushrooms – also known as psychedelic or "magic" mushrooms. On Election Day Tuesday, voters were asked to vote on Proposal E, which would make "the personal possession and therapeutic use of entheogenic plants by adults the city's lowest law-enforcement priority."

The measure passed with 61.08% of the vote.

Detroit is not the only city to decriminalize the substance, called psilocybin, which can be used to treat a variety of psychological issues, including depression, although scientists are still doing research.

Last year, voters in another Michigan city, Ann Arbor, also voted to decriminalize psychedelic plants, as did voters in Washington, D.C. and voters in Denver in 2019.

In those states, psychedelic mushrooms are not legal, but law enforcement will not arrest those in possession of the drug. Last year, Oregon became the first state to actually legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin, according to the Associated Press.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/detroit-decriminalize-psychedelic-mushrooms/

Hundreds of sick and mistreated dogs have been rescued from the properties of an Iowa dog breeder, whom the U.S. Department of Justice accused in September of multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

Daniel Gingerich agreed to forfeit all of the dogs he was keeping at multiple properties and "permanently refrain" from activities that would require an Animal Welfare Act license, including dog breeding, according to a consent degree entered Tuesday.

Michael G. Byrne, Gingerich’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The DOJ alleged in a Sept. 28 motion for a temporary restraining order that Gingerich "repeatedly evaded, or attempted to evade," inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, until March 2021, when inspectors first gained access to some of Gingerich's properties.

Gingerich, who was licensed in October 2019 by the USDA to breed dogs, received over 100 violations of the AWA after inspectors first gained access to his properties six months ago.

"During one recent inspection, APHIS inspectors observed a severely emaciated golden retriever, several dogs with untreated and painful eye conditions, and a non-responsive puppy that died moments later," the DOJ said in a statement.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-dogs-rescued-usda-licensed-breeder-iowa-n1283150
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Lock him up in similar conditions!

Leaves from a plant which can be found “in back yards across Samoa” could be as effective as ibuprofen in lowering inflammation and could even be used to treat illnesses such as Parkinson’s and cancer, a new study has found.

For centuries, the leaves of the psychotria insularum plant, known locally in Samoa as matalafi, have been used in traditional medicine to treat inflammation associated with fever, body aches, swellings, elephantiasis, and respiratory infections.

“I was sceptical at first, when researching” said Seeseei Molimau-Samasoni, the study’s author and the manager of the plants and postharvest technologies division at the Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa.

“There was a lot of superstition around this plant particularly, even in traditional medicine, but I was keen to find out if I could provide scientific merit to the traditional medicines of the Samoan people,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/plant-in-traditional-samoa-medicine-could-be-as-effective-as-ibuprofen-study-shows

For much of the pandemic, Dr. Lee Merritt has appeared on talk shows and in lecture halls to spread false information about COVID-19.

Among her claims: that the SARS-CoV2 virus is a genetically engineered bioweapon (the U.S. intelligence community says it's not). And that vaccination dramatically increases the risk of death from COVID (data show an enormous drop in risk for those who take the vaccine). The entire pandemic, she says in public lectures, is a vast global conspiracy to exert social control.

And yet, in October, she was able to renew her medical license in the state of Nebraska. Documents obtained through a public records request by NPR showed it took just a few clicks: 12 yes-or-no questions answered online allowed her to extend her license for another year.

Critics say that Merritt's renewal is another example of how the nation's state medical boards are failing to protect the public from a small minority of doctors spreading COVID falsehoods.

"State medical boards, for the main part, have been cozy clubs of people who feel their job is to protect the profession," says Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that tracks vaccine misinformation online.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/04/1051873608/a-doctor-spread-covid-misinformation-and-renewed-her-license-with-a-mouse-click
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Also how the drug pushers get away with it....and move from state to state before they're caught.

A Texas real estate agent who swore she wouldn’t be jailed over her role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has been sentenced to 60 days in prison.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Thursday also slapped convicted rioter Jenna Ryan with $500 in restitution after she was charged with a single count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

At the hearing, Cooper told Ryan that he believed her punishment would tell Americans “something about the courts and about how our country responded to what happened, and I think the sentence should tell them that we take it seriously.”

“You suggested antifa was somehow involved. And perhaps most famously, you said that because you had blonde hair and white skin, you wouldn’t be going to jail,” Cooper said.

According to a sentencing memo that chronicled her appearance at the Capitol and her boastful commentary in the aftermath of the attack, Ryan in March had declared on Twitter that she would not face consequences for the insurrection—because she’s white.

“Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I’m not going to jail,” she wrote. “Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jenna-ryan-rioter-who-boasted-she-wouldnt-go-to-jail-because-shes-white-is-going-to-prison?ref=home
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Enjoy your privilege, trashbag!

He’s the youngest Chief in his First Nation’s history. Now he’s leading their fight against climate change.

Perched on the edge of the Porcupine river, Dana Tizya-Tramm pointed upstream to a stand of black spruce trees that jutted into the partially-frozen water. They were like lemmings marching off a cliff. Those at the tip were falling into the river, while those in back awaited the inevitable.

“Drunken forests,” said Tizya-Tramm, a cigarette between his fingers. He says neither he nor the elders remember there being such a pronounced lean in the past. It comes at least in part, he explained, because the earth no longer stays frozen year-round, even so far north.

This stretch of the Porcupine runs past the approximately 250-person community of Old Crow. The most northwest habitation in Canada — roughly 80 miles above the Arctic Circle — the town sits at the heart of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. September temperatures had already dropped below freezing, and Tizya-Tramm buttressed himself with tan moose hide mittens and a black puffy jacket. Embroidered on the right sleeve was “Chief.”

At just 34 years old, Tizya-Tramm has risen not only through elected ranks, but from the depths of addiction and trauma to become the youngest known leader in the First Nation’s history. And he’s used that mandate to aggressively combat what he says is among the most pressing threats to his people: climate change.

The shifting Arctic is squeezing the Vuntut Gwitchin on multiple fronts. Tizya-Tramm says less predictable caribou migration patterns have meant some villages can go years without a successful hunt, and the spawn of certain salmon species has dropped so low that fishing has been severely restricted in recent years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/climate-change-chief-dana-tizya-tramm/

Tamara Thomsen and Mallory Dragt thought they would take a spin under Lake Mendota on a couple of underwater scooters, motorized gadgets that scuba divers use to propel themselves through the water.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in June, and the duo, who work at Diversions Scuba, debated whether they had just seen a log sticking out of the bottom of the 9,781-acre lake or something extremely rare.

The discovery, on a slope in 27 feet of water near Shorewood Hills, has turned out to be about as historic as it gets.

After a bit of investigation, it turns out that Thomsen, who is also a maritime archaeologist for the Wisconsin Historical Society, was right in judging that it was more than just a log: It was a dugout canoe. A few weeks later, carbon-14 dating showed that the 15-foot-long vessel was an estimated 1,200 years old, the oldest intact boat ever found in Wisconsin waters.

https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/watch-now-a-1-200-year-old-dugout-canoe-is-raised-from-lake-mendota/article_c9164032-3ba1-5e8c-9151-97e793920db5.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
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In my home town! Video at the site!!!! How cool is this?