A 29-year-old correctional officer in Ferguson, Missouri, has been
accused of raping a pregnant woman while she was in his custody, and
then setting her free.
A federal lawsuit has been launched, and the officer Jaris
Hayden, has been so far released on $10,000 bail.
In the legal documents obtained by the Huffington Post, it is
said that the victim, known as JW, was arrested last October
after police stopped her for an expired license plate, and she
also gave the officers a false name.
The victim claims Hayden frequently sexually harassed her before
the rape. For instance, when taking her to Ferguson jail, he
said, “You smell good” and “This will teach you a
lesson.”
JW was visibly pregnant at that time.
When in the cell, JW was crying and begged to let her go home.
Hayden allegedly said to her that she was “the kind of girl
who would get me in trouble” and took the woman to the
boiler room, unbuttoning his pants and told the victim that they
were to have oral sex.
Afterwards, the suit papers say that Hayden bent the pregnant
woman over and "indicated that he was going to have
intercourse with her."
Then, she went to the emergency room. During sex, the victim got
some of the officer’s pubic hair, which a DNA test confirmed was
Hayden’s.
After the intercourse, Hayden allegedly told JW to escape and
“stay close to the building" to avoid CCTV cameras.
The woman, who doesn’t wish to be identified, is now suing for
several damages including "fear of police", "anxiety
over sex" and "mental suffering", USA Today
reported.
Hayden will appear in court on December 3.
The suit also focuses on the general police brutality in
Ferguson, including the recent shooting of unarmed Michael Brown
which triggered popular protests across the US.
"Discovery will produce other acts of violence, all
contributing to a pattern and practice of allowing violence and
sexual assault on members of the public. The numerous acts of
violence against the citizenry by law enforcement of the City of
Ferguson constitute a pattern," the document states.
A rookie NYPD officer “accidentally” shot and killed
an unarmed African-American man in a staircase in a New York apartment
block. It happened as Ferguson is tensely waiting for a grand jury
decision on a police officer who shot Michael Brown.
Akai Gurley, 28, and his
girlfriend Melissa Butler were entering a staircase on the
seventh floor in Pink House project in Brooklyn late Thursday
evening when two policemen came down from the eighth floor. Peter
Liang and his partner, Shaun Landau were doing a top-to-bottom
patrol. Liang, a rookie on probationary assignment, fired a shot
in Gurley’s chest without a warning, Butler said.
“They didn’t present themselves or nothing and shot
him,” Butler told DNAinfo New York. “As soon as he came
in, the police opened the [door to the] eighth-floor staircase.
They didn’t identify themselves at all. They just shot.”
Gurley and Butler tried to go down the stairs but reached only
the fifth floor where Gurley lost consciousness. There a neighbor
called an ambulance. Butler says the policemen did not come to
help nor called the ambulance. Gurley, who has a 2-year-old son,
was pronounced dead on arrival to hospital.
An NYPD spokesperson said the police department's internal
affairs bureau is investigating the shooting. Liang has been
placed on modified assignment and was relieved of both his badge
and gun.
The police are collecting information from witnesses and radio
reports without talking to Liang as according to the policy, he
will be interrogated in the District Attorney’s office first and
then by internal affairs officers.
"What happened last night was a very unfortunate
tragedy,'' police commissioner Bill Bratton said in a
statement. "The deceased is totally innocent. He just
happened to be in the hallway. He was not engaged in any criminal
activity.''
Bratton said it probably was an accidental discharge of weapon.
“So here’s an unarmed, black 28 year old in the
stairwell,” former City Councilmember Charles Barron said as
quoted by CBS New York. “Two officers, one Asian, one white,
fully armed. He’s unarmed, they meet on the stairwell and he
winds up dead with a bullet in his chest. I want to hear the
justification for this one. Don’t tell me the hallway was dimly
lit. That’s no reason to kill a black man on a stairwell.”
The incident happened while a grand jury decision concerning
Michael Brown’s death is awaited. Unarmed 18-year-old Michael
Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson by police officer Darren
Wilson in August. The shooting caused riots in the area and
tensions between police and the African-American community.
With a population set to hit 9
billion human beings by 2050, the world needs to grow more food —without
cutting down forests and jungles, which are the climate's huge lungs.
The solution, according to one soil management scientist, is Big Data.
Kenneth Cassman,
an agronomist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, recently unveiled
a new interactive mapping tool that shows in fine-grain detail where
higher crop yields are possible on current arable land.
"By some estimates, 20
to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are associated with
agriculture and of that a large portion is due to conversion of natural
systems like rainforests or grassland savannahs to crop production,
agriculture," Cassman told NBC News at a conference in suburban Seattle.
The only practical way
to stop the conversion of wild lands to farmland is grow more food on
land already dedicated to agriculture, he said. Currently, the amount of
farmland used to produce rice, wheat, maize and soybean, he noted, is
expanding at a rate of about 20 million acres a year.
Cassman and colleagues unveiled the Global Yield Gap and Water Productivity Atlas in October at the Water for Food
conference. The atlas was six years and $6 million in the making and
contains site-specific data on soil, climate and cropping systems to
determine potential yield versus actual yield farm by farm in nearly 20
countries around the world. Projects are ongoing to secure data for 30
more countries.
Mind the gap
Once
farmers are aware of their gaps, they can prioritize investments to
close them, such as spending on fertilizer, a new irrigation system or
different crop varieties. When scaled up to a global view, a seed
company can look at the map and see where drought routinely curbs
yields, for example, and target research, development and marketing of
drought-tolerant varieties on those regions.
The tool is likely to
be especially helpful to major agribusiness companies such as Syngenta
and Monsanto, which were major sponsors of the conference where the
atlas was unveiled, said Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a Washington-based advocacy for sustainable agriculture.
"That is not
necessarily a bad thing, but if information isn't getting down to the
500 million family farmers around the world who are producing most of
the world's food, more than 50 percent of the world's food, then I don't
see the point. Those farmers have to make a profit too and feed their
families," she said.
TIM WIMBORNE / Reuters file
Freshly cut wheat stands under approaching storm clouds near Roma, Australia, west of Brisbane on October 29, 2011.
Atlas in action
A
key initiative going forward is to teach smallholder farmers how to use
the atlas, Cassman said. Until now, the tool has largely rested with
agricultural researchers who have validated its promise of delivering
information that can help grow more food on existing farmland.
At the Water for Food conference, for example, agricultural researcher Zvi Hochman
with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization described how he used the atlas to compare his country's
wheat yields with those in similar climate zones around the world. A
colleague noted overlap with Argentina, where yields are higher.
To figure out the
difference in yield, Hochman dug into the data and learned that
Argentinean farmers grow wheat and corn on the same fields each year. He
then explored scenarios for growing two crops a year in Australia.
That's "a system," he said, "that is not currently practiced by most
farmers." A winning strategy for Australia, he concluded, is to grow
lentils after wheat in years with sufficient water.
Likewise, Kindie Tesfaye,
a researcher with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
in Ethiopia, described how he used the atlas to determine that by
closing the yield gap a feasible 50 percent in Ethiopia, the country
could grow enough cereals to feed 205 million people by 2050, which is
greater than the United Nation's projected growth in population to about
174 million.
To close the gap by
that much, he added, more research is needed to understand "the
biophysical and the socioeconomic constraints that are leading to these
yield gaps." That is, the atlas is a first step, a road map to boosting
yields.
"It allows us to be
able to pinpoint where the big gaps are and to start to gather the
pieces of the puzzle to say, well, why is it that we have the yield gaps
in those particular points," Robert Lenton,
the founding director of the Water for Food Institute at the University
of Nebraska, said during a press briefing at the conference.
Barry Malone / Reuters file
Farmers Mandefro Tesfaye, left,
and Tayto Mesfin collect wheat in Abay, north of Ethiopia's capital,
Addis Ababa, October 21, 2009.
Closing the gaps
One
key breakthrough is the global boom in natural gas, according to
Cassman. Its abundance and thus lower cost, he said, makes
natural-gas-derived fertilizers and energy for pumping water accessible
and available in a way they were not just seven years ago. As a result,
for the first time in at least 40 years, he said, the value of crops
grown is rising faster due to insatiable demand than the cost of inputs.
"In closing yield gaps
in many parts of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the biggest
constraints are nutrients and water," he said. "And if the cost of
accessing external resources to alleviate those constraints on your
farm, if that's decreasing relative to the value of what you produce,
then at least the economic incentive to use those inputs becomes
greater. And it wasn't that way in the past."
Cheap natural gas, he
said, increases the economic incentive to use those inputs and grow more
food. And enough food to meet the demand for more meat and sugar in an
increasingly wealthy world, he said, is necessary to alleviate poverty,
stabilize population and curb climate change.
Food prices make a big jump in 2014
"Indirectly, if we
don't have access to reasonable supplies of energy then you don't reduce
poverty fast enough to stabilize human population at 9.6 (billion) and
you zoom past it and then your challenge for climate change and land
clearing become exorbitantly larger," Cassman said. "I think that is
what people are missing in the connections."
The need to close yield gaps is reinforced by a study released Monday in Nature Climate Change
on the challenge of implementing a forest conservation policy. If
non-forested areas aren't protected as well, the study found,
agriculture will expand into grasslands and other areas that also store
carbon, leading to carbon emissions that essentially offset those gained
by saving the forests.
A more robust policy is
to globally protect native forests and non-forested areas such as
grasslands, according to study lead author Alexander Popp at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
"That would mean this
loss of potential land for agricultural expansion, which has to be
compensated for by increasing yield," he told NBC News.
A whale of an effort in Nicaragua, blizzard buries Buffalo, Jerusalem mourns slain rabbis, smoke rings in Syria and more.
collapse gallery
Lindsay DeDario / Reuters
1
Storm clouds and snow blow off Lake Erie in Buffalo, New York, on
Nov. 18, 2014. An autumn blizzard dumped a year's worth of snow in three
days on western New York.
Gleb Garanich / Reuters
2
A young military cadet releases a pigeon after an oath-taking
ceremony at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kiev, Ukraine on Nov.
14. About 100 new young military cadets took part in the ceremony on
Friday, according to officials.
Vadim Ghirda / AP
3
Smoke rises from the Syrian city of Kobani, following airstrikes
by the U.S. led coalition, seen from a hilltop outside Suruc, on the
Turkey-Syria border on Nov. 17. Kobani and its surrounding areas have
been under assault by extremists of the Islamic State group since
mid-September and are being defended by Kurdish fighters.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews look at bullet holes in the window of a
synagogue in Jerusalem on Nov. 19. The previous day two Palestinians
armed with a gun and meat cleavers attacked Jews praying inside. Four
rabbis and a policeman were killed in the attack.
Jim Hollander / EPA
5
Ultra-Orthodox Jews pray outside the yeshiva and synagogue where
four rabbis were killed in the Har Nof religious neighborhood in
Jerusalem, on Nov. 18.
Residents and tourists try and push a whale back into the ocean on
Popoyo beach in Rivas, Nicaragua, on Nov. 14. They were unable to help
the beached whale discovered Friday morning.
Dried leaves rest on cracked ice on a pond in Salina, Kansas on Nov. 18.
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
9
Jonatan Leliebre, 10, and Oscar Torres, 9, exercise before a
wrestling practice session at an old Basque ball gymnasium in downtown
Havana, Cuba on Oct. 30.
A plume of smoke from Alaska's Pavlof volcano on the lower Alaskan
peninsula is seen from a satellite on Nov. 15. By Saturday, Pavlof was
lofting ash plumes to an altitude of 30,000 feet, high enough to disrupt
commercial airline flights.
M. Spencer Green / AP
11
Police and fire officials walk near a small twin-engine cargo
plane that crashed into a home on Chicago's southwest side early on Nov.
18. The Aero Commander 500 that had taken off from Midway International
Airport slammed into the front of the home and plunged into the
basement. Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford says two occupants of
the home were unhurt. The pilot was killed in the crash.
Derek Gee / The Buffalo News via AP
12
A man digs out his driveway in Depew, N.Y., on Nov. 19. The
Buffalo area found itself buried under as much as 5½ feet of snow
Wednesday.
Health workers wearing protective equipment dance as they try to
cheer up an Ebola patient at the Kenama treatment center run by the Red
Cross Society on Nov. 15. Ebola-hit Sierra Leone faces social and
economic disaster as gains made since the country's ruinous civil war
are wiped out by the epidemic, according to a study released on
Thursday.
Grant Halverson / Getty Images
14
The Cameron Crazis taunt Davon Bell of the Presbyterian Blue Hose
as he prepares to inbound the ball against the Duke Blue Devils during
their game at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Nov. 14, in Durham, North
Carolina.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
15
U.S. President Barack Obama and Myanmar's opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi walk back to her home following the conclusion of their
joint news conference in Yangon, Myanmar on Nov. 14.
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 07:
Visitors view the 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' installation at
the Tower of London on Nov. 7. The installation by artists Paul Cummins
and Tom Piper used 888,246 ceramic poppies - one for each of the
commonwealth servicemen and women killed in World War I. (Photo by Dan
Kitwood/Getty Images)
Dogs peek out from under a gate at
the Cirillo family home in Hamilton, Ontario on Oct. 23 near a memorial
of flowers and flags. Canadians mourned the loss of Cpl. Nathan
Cirillo, the army reservist who was shot dead as he stood guard before
the Tomb of the Unknown soldier in Ottawa. Flags were flown at
half-staff to honor Cirillo, a 24-year-old a reservist from Hamilton,
Ontario, whose shooting began an attack that ended with a lone gunman
storming into Parliament and opening fire before being shot dead
himself.
A local Hong Kong journalist
collapses in agony after being hit in the face with pepper spray by
police in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong on Oct. 17. Fresh clashes
broke out in Hong Kong as pro-democracy demonstrators attempted to take
back a protest camp in a densely populated suburb that had been
partially cleared by police earlier in the day.
Barry Malone / Reuters file
Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
Quinn Rooney / Getty Images
Peter Power / The Canadian Press via AP
ALEX OGLE / AFP - Getty Images
EDUARDO MUNOZ / Reuters