theintercept--2020-07-02--There's a War Going On Over Kamala Harris's Wikipedia Page, with Unflattering Elements Vanishing

At least one highly dedicated Wikipedia user has been scrubbing controversial aspects of Harris ’ s “ tough-on-crime ” record from her Wikipedia page , her decision not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for mortgage fraud-related crimes , her strong support of prosecutors in Orange County who engaged in rampant misconduct , and other tidbits — such as her previous assertion that “ it is not progressive to be soft on crime ” — that could prove unflattering to Harris as the public first gets to know her on the national stage .
The edits , according to the page history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s volunteer editor brigade , and have drawn the page into controversy , though it ’ s a fight the pro-Harris editor is currently winning .
Presidential vetting operations have entire teams of investigators , but for the public , when the pick is announced , the most common source for information about the person chosen is Wikipedia .
And there , a war has broken out over how to talk about Harris ’ s career .
California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris is widely seen as a frontrunner for a spot on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with vetting well underway .
In 2016 , The Atlantic published an article about Wikipedia edits and how a burst of activity could foreshadow Hillary Clinton ’ s vice presidential pick , noting that Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine ’ s page had seen significantly more edits than any other candidate ’ s in the weeks leading up to the announcement .
The article also cited a 2008 Washington Post report about Sarah Palin ’ s Wikipedia page seeing more than 65 edits in the hours leading up to John McCain ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ user remembered this Atlantic piece and wrote a Jupyter script to see which 2020 vice presidential contender had the most edits in a span of three weeks : Harris had 408 , Stacey Abrams had 66 , Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 22 , and Sen. Amy Klobuchar had four .
Another Redditor pointed out that a majority of Harris ’ s edits were coming from a single person .
Harris has been working to distance herself on the national stage from her prosecutorial record in California , which has increasingly become a political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic police reform legislation after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor .
During the 2020 primary , she branded herself as a “ progressive prosecutor ” and shifted left on issues like health care and climate change .
But the most drastic gap is between her current messaging on crime and her past .
A section in her bio that detailed her decision not to prosecute Mnuchin for financial fraud , despite recommendations from her staff attorneys , has also been deleted : In 2013 , Harris did not prosecute Steve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ suggestive of widespread misconduct ” according to a leaked memo….In 2017 , she said that her office ’ s decision not to prosecute Mnuchin was based on “ following the facts and the evidence…like any other case ” .
In 2016 , Mnuchin donated $ 2,000 to her campaign , making her the only 2016 Senate Democratic candidate to get cash from Mnuchin , but as senator , she voted against the confirmation of Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury .
A section on an Ethics Commission finding Harris guilty of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district attorney race has also been deleted .
A line about Harris traveling to Israel and the West Bank in November 2017 , where she met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , was removed altogether .
The Wikipedia user , who goes by the username “ Bnguyen1114 , ” has made hundreds of edits to Harris ’ s page throughout the last several months , often getting into fights over the proposed edits with other Wikipedia editors , who pointed out that the language was getting pulled directly from press releases and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have gone through a database of press releases from Harris ’ s office , cataloging every single one and adding it to the article , ” one Wikipedia editor said .
“ That is not how we write encyclopedic articles.
” On June 11 , the Wikipedia user removed this section referencing the Orange County scandal from the page , saying that they were proofreading for length : Later that year , Harris appealed a judge ’ s order to take over the prosecution of a high-profile mass murder case and to eject @ @ @ @ @ @ @ District Attorney ’ s office over allegations of misconduct by Republican D.A .
Tony Rackauckas .
Rackauckas was alleged to have illegally employed jailhouse informants and concealed evidence .
Harris noted that it was unnecessary to ban all 250 prosecutors from working on the case , as only a few had been directly involved , later promising a narrower criminal investigation .
The U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Rackauckas in December 2016 , but he was not re-elected .
In her first bid for public office , Harris embraced a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Francisco district attorney race and unseated Terence Hallinan , who was considered one of the “ most left-wing politicians in the country.
” Under Hallinan , the district attorney ’ s office focused on rehabilitative justice initiatives instead of incarceration , which led to the lowest felony conviction rates of any county in California .

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris is widely seen as a front-runner for a spot on the ticket with presumptive nominee Joe Biden, with vetting well underway.
Presidential vetting operations have entire teams of investigators, but for the public, when the pick is announced, the most common source for information about the person chosen is Wikipedia. And there, a war has broken out over how to talk about Harris’s career.
At least one highly dedicated Wikipedia user has been scrubbing controversial aspects of Harris’s “tough-on-crime” record from her Wikipedia page, her decision not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for mortgage fraud-related crimes, her strong support of prosecutors in Orange County who engaged in rampant misconduct, and other tidbits — such as her previous assertion that “it is not progressive to be soft on crime” — that could prove unflattering to Harris as the public gets to know her on the national stage. The edits, according to the page history, have elicited strong pushback from Wikipedia’s volunteer editor brigade, and have drawn the page into controversy, though it’s a fight the pro-Harris editor is currently winning.
In 2016, The Atlantic published an article about Wikipedia edits and how a burst of activity could foreshadow Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential pick, noting that Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s page had seen significantly more edits than any other candidate’s in the weeks leading up to the announcement. The article also cited a 2008 Washington Post report about Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page seeing more than 65 edits in the hours leading up to John McCain’s announcement.
Last month, a Reddit user remembered this Atlantic piece and wrote a Jupyter script to see which 2020 vice presidential contender had the most edits in a span of three weeks: Harris had 408, Stacey Abrams had 66, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 22, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar had four. Another Redditor pointed out that a majority of Harris’s edits were coming from a single person.
Harris has been working to distance herself on the national stage from her prosecutorial record in California, which has increasingly become a political liability, while taking a lead on Democratic police reform legislation after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, she branded herself as a “progressive prosecutor” and shifted left on issues like health care and climate change. But the most drastic gap is between her current messaging on crime and her past.
A section in her bio that detailed her decision not to prosecute Mnuchin for financial fraud, despite recommendations from her staff attorneys, has also been deleted:
In 2013, Harris did not prosecute Steve Mnuchin‘s bank OneWest despite evidence “suggestive of widespread misconduct” according to a leaked memo. … In 2017, she said that her office’s decision not to prosecute Mnuchin was based on “following the facts and the evidence … like any other case”. In 2016, Mnuchin donated $2,000 to her campaign, making her the only 2016 Senate Democratic candidate to get cash from Mnuchin, but as senator, she voted against the confirmation of Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury.
A section on an Ethics Commission finding Harris guilty of a campaign spending violation during her San Francisco district attorney race has also been deleted. A line about Harris traveling to Israel and the West Bank in November 2017, where she met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was removed altogether.
The Wikipedia user, who goes by the username “Bnguyen1114,” has made hundreds of edits to Harris’s page throughout the last several months, often getting into fights over the proposed edits with other Wikipedia editors, who pointed out that the language was getting pulled directly from press releases and campaign literature. “You seem to have gone through a database of press releases from Harris’s office, cataloging every single one and adding it to the article,” one Wikipedia editor said. “That is not how we write encyclopedic articles.”
On June 11, the Wikipedia user removed this section referencing the Orange County scandal from the page, saying that they were proofreading for length:
Later that year, Harris appealed a judge’s order to take over the prosecution of a high-profile mass murder case and to eject all 250 prosecutors from the Orange County District Attorney’s office over allegations of misconduct by Republican D.A. Tony Rackauckas. Rackauckas was alleged to have illegally employed jailhouse informants and concealed evidence. Harris noted that it was unnecessary to ban all 250 prosecutors from working on the case, as only a few had been directly involved, later promising a narrower criminal investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Rackauckas in December 2016, but he was not re-elected.
In her first bid for public office, Harris embraced a “tough-on-crime” approach in the San Francisco district attorney race and unseated Terence Hallinan, who was considered one of the “most left-wing politicians in the country.” Under Hallinan, the district attorney’s office focused on rehabilitative justice initiatives instead of incarceration, which led to the lowest felony conviction rates of any county in California.
While campaigning in the Mission District, SF Weekly reported at the time, Harris slammed Hallinan for failing to prosecute anti-war protesters for property destruction. “It is not progressive to be soft on crime,” she said.
On June 8, the Wikipedia user removed this quote from the page, saying that the changes made were “minor edits for length.”
In a paragraph about Harris announcing a new state law requiring law enforcement agencies to collect statistics on how many people are shot, seriously injured, or killed by police officers throughout the state, the user removed the following sentence: “Harris was later criticized by criminal justice advocates for her measured approach.”
This user also tried to make edits to the “Bernie Bro” Wikipedia page, a term that refers to the persistent myth that Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign had a monolithic base of support concentrated only among young white men.
According to the user’s edit history, they tried to remove a paragraph explaining that although Sanders’s base skewed white in 2016, the Vermont senator actually had the most diverse base of any of the Democratic presidential candidates.
Harris’s most fervent online supporters, or stans, call themselves the “KHive.” Though members of the KHive are excited by the prospect of Harris, a daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, shattering another glass ceiling, they also cite her policy positions as a reason for their support. They generally consider her background as a prosecutor to be a political strength.


theintercept--2020-07-02--House Democrats, Working With Liz Cheney, Restrict Trump's Planned Withdrawal of Troops From Afghani

House Democrats, Working With Liz Cheney, Restrict Trump's Planned Withdrawal of Troops From Afghanistan and Germany

The U.S. military has been fighting in Afghanistan for almost nineteen years .
House Democrats , working in tandem with key pro-war GOP lawmakers such as Rep. Liz Cheney , are ensuring that continues .
Last night , the House Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment — jointly sponsored by Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado and Congresswoman Cheney of Wyoming — prohibiting the expenditure of monies to reduce the number of U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan below 8,000 without a series of conditions first being met .
The imposed conditions are by no means trivial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be allowed , the Defense Department must be able to certify , among other things , that leaving Afghanistan “ will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan ” and “ will not compromise or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing United States counter terrorism mission against the Islamic State , al Qaeda , and associated forces.
” The Crow/Cheney amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act ( NDAA ) last night passed by a vote of 45-11 .
The NDAA was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vote of 56-0 .
It authorizes $ 740.5 billion in military spending — roughly three times more than the world ’ s second-highest spender , China .
President Trump throughout the year has insisted that the Pentagon present plans for withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan prior to the end of 2020 .
Last week , reports indicated that “ the Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall.
” Trump ’ s plan “ would reduce the number of troops from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lowest number since the very earliest days of the war in Afghanistan , which began in 2001.
” In February , Trump announced an agreement with the Taliban to end the war completely .
Shortly after those White House withdrawal plans were reported , anonymous intelligence officials leaked a series of claims to the New York Times regarding “ bounties ” allegedly being paid by Russia to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops .
Those leaks emboldened opposition to troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on the ground that it would be capitulating to Russian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times leak that Liz Cheney , along with GOP Congressman Mac Thornberry , cited in a joint statement on Monday to suggest troop withdrawal would be precipitous : “ After today ’ s briefing with senior White House officials , we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan , including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces .
It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan .
We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need .
We anticipate further briefings on this issue in the coming days .
”

AP
The U.S. military has been fighting in Afghanistan for almost nineteen years. House Democrats, working in tandem with key pro-war GOP lawmakers such as Rep. Liz Cheney, are ensuring that continues.
Last night, the House Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment — jointly sponsored by Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado and Congresswoman Cheney of Wyoming — prohibiting the expenditure of monies to reduce the number of U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan below 8,000 without a series of conditions first being met.
The imposed conditions are by no means trivial: for these troop reductions from Afghanistan to be allowed, the Defense Department must be able to certify, among other things, that leaving Afghanistan “will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan” and “will not compromise or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing United States counter terrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated forces.”
The Crow/Cheney amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last night passed by a vote of 45-11. The NDAA was then unanimously approved by the Committee by a vote of 56-0. It authorizes $740.5 billion in military spending — roughly three times more than the world’s second-highest spender, China.
President Trump throughout the year has insisted that the Pentagon present plans for withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan prior to the end of 2020. Last week, reports indicated that “the Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall.” Trump’s plan “would reduce the number of troops from 8,600 to 4,500 and would be the lowest number since the very earliest days of the war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001.” In February, Trump announced an agreement with the Taliban to end the war completely.
Shortly after those White House withdrawal plans were reported, anonymous intelligence officials leaked a series of claims to the New York Times regarding “bounties” allegedly being paid by Russia to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops. Those leaks emboldened opposition to troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on the ground that it would be capitulating to Russian treachery. It was that New York Times leak that Liz Cheney, along with GOP Congressman Mac Thornberry, cited in a joint statement on Monday to suggest troop withdrawal would be precipitous:
“After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need. We anticipate further briefings on this issue in the coming days.”
America’s adversaries should never question the will of the United States government or the American people to defend our interests, to protect the security of our nation, to protect our Armed Forces, and to respond when attacked or threatened. pic.twitter.com/czl22H8hrd — Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) June 30, 2020
The Crow/Cheney amendment impeding Trump’s withdrawal plan asserted that “a rapid military drawdown and a lack of United States commitment to the security and stability of Afghanistan would undermine diplomatic efforts for peace” (only the U.S. could malign a troop withdrawal plan after a 19 year-old war as “rapid”). Their amendment also claims that “the current agreement between the United States and the Taliban does not provide for the appropriate protections for vulnerable populations, does not create conditions for the rejection of violence and prevention of terrorist safe havens, and does not represent a realistic diplomatic solution, based on verifiable facts and conditions on the ground, that provides for long-term stability”
The NDAA that was approved last night by the Committee also imposed restrictions on Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Germany. Trump’s plan called for the removal of roughly 9,500 troops from German soil, reducing the number of U.S. troops in this extremely prosperous and rich European nation from 34,500 to 25,000. But by an overwhelming vote of 49-7, the Armed Service Committee approved an amendment to the NDAA that “bans the administration from lowering troop levels below current levels until 180 days after Pentagon leaders present a plan to Congress and certify it will not harm U.S. or allied interests.”
Just as she did with Afghanistan, Congresswoman Cheney, to oppose this troop removal from Germany, cited — along with her Democratic Committee colleagues — the threat of Russia, now the all-purpose rationale for continuing endless U.S. imperialism and war, just as it was during the first Cold War:
Pulling US troops out of Germany is in Russia’s interest, not America’s. Russia welcomes prospect of US troop pullback from Germany https://t.co/Jm0UuFDrQE — Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 11, 2020
Meanwhile, the leading Democrat who joined Cheney to oppose troop withdrawal from Germany, Congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona, also cited “increasing Russian aggression” to argue that “it is more important than ever that our NATO allies and partners remain confident about the United States’ commitment.” For decades, the perceived threat from Moscow was the leading instrument used to justify endless U.S. imperialism, and even now that Russia is little more than what journalist Vincent Bevins today called “a minor power in Eastern Europe,” it still somehow occupies this same crucial role in the U.S. imagination and militaristic discourse.
Opposition to troop withdrawal in both Afghanistan and Germany was not unanimous. There were elements of the progressive left and the pro-Trump right who supported these withdrawals. Yesterday on Twitter, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, the former co-chair of the Sanders campaign, and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, traded mutual support and vows to work together to defeat the Crow/Cheney amendment:
Agree ? I’m your Huckleberry. It is past time to end the war in Afghanistan. https://t.co/cGTUtXok7x — Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 1, 2020
But this left-right anti-war coalition is no match for the war machine composed of the establishment wings of both parties and the military and intelligence community that continue to use selective, illegal leaks to sabotage any plans to reduce the U.S. military presence around the world. That the Democrats have spent a full decade desperately recruiting former military and intelligence officials to serve as their Congressional candidates (both Congressman Crow, Liz Cheney’s co-sponsor on the Afghanistan amendment, and the anti-German-troop-withdrawal Congressman Gallego, are both Iraq War veterans) has only made the party even more militaristic.
Combined with the fact that Democrats are increasingly merging with and being led by the Bush-era neocons and other Bush/Cheney operatives in creating such jingoistic and militaristic messaging campaigns as the beloved-by-liberals Lincoln Project, and that Biden is clearly trying to run to Trump’s right on foreign policy with ads accusing him of being too soft on China and linking him to Castro and Chavez, the picture is clear. It should come as absolutely no surprise that House Democrats are finding common cause with Liz Cheney and other GOP warmongers to block any efforts to reduce even moderately the footprint of the U.S. military in the world or its decades-long posture of endless war.
Updated: Friday, July 2, 4:02 p.m. PDT
The roll call vote on the Crow/Cheney amendment to prevent Trump’s withdrawal plan from Afghanistan is now available. Of the 11 members voting “no,” eight were Republicans (Mo Brooks, Bradley Burne, Austin Scott, Scott DesJarlais, Ralph Abraham, Trent Kelly, Matt Gaetz, Jim Banks) and three were Democrats (Tulsi Gabbard, Anthony Brown, Ro Khanna). That means that the “yes” votes — to impede troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — came from a signifiant majority of Democratic votes. The roll call vote can be seen on the videos below:


theintercept--2020-07-02--Months Ago, an Officer in Louisiana Shot a 14-Year-Old Boy. It Took the George Floyd Protests for Pe

Months Ago, an Officer in Louisiana Shot a 14-Year-Old Boy. It Took the George Floyd Protests for People to Pay Attention.

of Friday , March 20 , Tiffany McGee , a resident of Jefferson Parish , Louisiana , just outside New Orleans , received a call from a nurse at the Tulane University Medical Center .
Her 14-year-old son , Tre ’ mall , had been brought into the hospital with a gunshot wound .
McGee rushed from her home in Terrytown in the West Bank over the Mississippi River to the hospital , where she was greeted by a deputy and a detective , who told her that Tre ’ mall was in their custody .
“ They wouldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said McGee .
“ They didn ’ t even try to explain to me what happened .
They didn ’ t say what he was in custody for .
They had me believing my child was shot in the street by someone and not an officer.
” As she would later find out , through her own investigation , Tre ’ mall had in fact been shot in the back by a Jefferson Parish deputy .
After leaving the hospital , she called Nathan O ’ Quinn , the father of two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hanging out with that evening , to ask if his sons knew anything .
O ’ Quinn hadn ’ t heard from either Ineis O ’ Quinn , 18 , or Nijel Simmons , 16 , so he and McGee met up to make a plan .
“ We know her 14-year-old boy was shot , so I ’ m thinking the worst , ” O ’ Quinn told The Intercept .
Both O ’ Quinn and McGee have location trackers on their boys ’ phones .
Tre ’ mall ’ s phone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , on the West Bank across the river from Audubon Park in New Orleans .
There they learned from an officer on duty that Tre ’ mall had been shot by a deputy of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff ’ s Office , or JPSO .
The two called the juvenile center , the parish jails , and the sheriff ’ s office , as well as its detective ’ s division ; they also knocked on the sheriff ’ s office doors .
Nobody answered .
Finally , later that evening , O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him from another police department , about six miles west of Westwego .
Several hours later , O ’ Quinn received a call from the Rivarde Juvenile Detention Center , where Nijel had been brought in under charges of resisting arrest by flight .
The next morning , McGee also received a call from the juvenile detention center .
Tre ’ mall had been deposited there by deputies just after being released from surgery , and booked for resisting arrest by flight and illegal possession of a stolen vehicle .
When McGee arrived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his armpit had reopened , and staff had given him paper towels to control the bleeding .
She took him back to the hospital to get stitched back up .
Until recently , the shooting had gone unmentioned by the local media or the JPSO .
The sheriff ’ s office ’ s original report , viewed by The Intercept , makes no mention of a weapon being discharged or a minor being shot and dispatched by EMS to the hospital .
Tre ’ mall ’ s admission form to the Rivarde @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 130 pounds , an eighth grader with a gunshot wound to his left arm .
McGee said she is speaking out after months of trying to get answers from authorities .
In March , the state had just gone under a shelter-in-place order because of the coronavirus pandemic , and nobody was answering the phones at the JPSO .
“ I ’ ve been coming forward , ” she said .
“ The whole month , I was calling the office , calling the office.
” On the first day of Louisiana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I was at the office , but they gave me the runaround.
” She attempted to file a complaint but got passed around from department to department .
It wasn ’ t until the JPSO came under scrutiny for other police shootings that she connected with a local civil rights lawyer , Ron Haley .
McGee said Tre ’ mall suffers from tight pains and burning sensations in his back and arm , which doctors say he ’ ll experience for the rest of his life .
“ He was an average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .
“ He can ’ t play sports now .
Now he ’ s more of a hermit .
He thinks the police are following him .
He thinks they ’ re out to harass him .
He doesn ’ t feel safe walking around.
” to light as the JPSO , like police departments across the nation , faces a community forcing a reckoning with a long history of police killings and racism .
Two days after George Floyd ’ s murder in Minneapolis , Modesto Reyes , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dead by a JPSO deputy after a traffic stop turned into a foot chase .
Officers say Reyes was in possession of two guns ; Haley , who is also representing the Reyes family , says eyewitnesses saw him with a phone in his hand .
On June 16 , the JPSO rolled out a BearCat armored tank and over 50 officers in riot gear to stop a small crowd from blocking a highway ramp near the sheriff ’ s office building — which is named for the late Harry Lee , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sheriff for 27 years .
In 2006 , Lee vowed to spend $ 400,000 on armored vehicles to police the streets , saying , “ I ’ m going after the bad guys .
At the end of the day , most of them will be Black.
” Over 100 people had gathered to protest Reyes ’ s shooting and the deaths of others at the hands of the JPSO , including Leo Brooks , shot and killed in Metairie in July 2019 ; Daviri Robertson and Chris Joseph , shot and killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who died of injuries consistent with compressional asphyxiation after a struggle with police in May 2018 .
In these cases , the victim is not there to dispute the officer ’ s version of events .
However , Tre ’ mall McGee survived his encounter with the JPSO and can testify to what happened on the night of March 20 .
Tiffany McGee declined to have her son speak with The Intercept without the family ’ s attorney present , but she , O ’ Quinn , and Haley separately explained what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ mall , Ineis , and Nijel say they left a party together with another boy , who offered to drive .
At some point , police lights appeared behind the car , and the boys heard sirens .
Unaware that the car was stolen , the three boys yelled for the driver to pull over , but instead he sped up before stopping , jumping out , and fleeing on foot .
Ineis , Nijel , and Tre ’ mall also jumped out of the car and ran .
When the officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they told him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back .
When he did , according to the adults ’ accounts , an officer demanded that he tell him where his friends were or he was going to shoot him .
Tre ’ mall heard a gunshot and felt his body go numb .
He ’ d been shot in the back .
The bullet went through his armpit and exited through his arm .
Meanwhile , O ’ Quinn said , officers chased Ineis down , slammed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , during which time he heard a gunshot ring out .
Nijel told his father that he was hiding under a nearby shed when he heard the gun go off .
Afraid , he called out to the officers and began climbing out , asking them why they ’ d shot his friend .
One officer dragged him out by the foot while another kicked him in the stomach and the face , giving him two black eyes and a laceration beneath his arm .
When he was cuffed and taken to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told that he was too beat up to be booked .
Nijel was taken to the hospital to be treated and then delivered back to the center .
Tre ’ mall , according to his mother , said that after he was shot , he was handcuffed and sat on the curb .
Officers started to put him into the back of a deputy car when emergency medics showed up and transported him to the medical center .
The JPSO and its sheriff , Joseph Lopinto , have not responded to requests for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office declined to comment , effectively invoking the Louisiana Children ’ s Code laws , which protect minors from being identified .
Though the police report says the three boys were Mirandized , each of them say they were not read their rights upon arrest , and it was hours before either of their parents was able to reunite with them .
( The JPSO does not wear body cameras , which Lopinto has said is due to budgetary issues — though the force was able to afford two new BearCats , according @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tre ’ mall and Nijel were set to be arraigned on June 25 , but the proceedings were canceled at the last minute .
Haley said the district attorney ’ s office is awaiting more information from the JPSO in addition to the initial report .
“ It was as if there was a chase in a stolen car , they caught him , arrested him , booked him , ” Haley said .
“ Nothing talking about an officer discharging a firearm .
Nothing regarding Tre ’ mall being shot .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a million words.
” On June 23 , Lopinto held a press conference to address other recent shootings but did not bring up the McGee case until asked about it by a member of the press .
“ It could have been reported or not reported .
It wasn ’ t something that was on my mind back then , ” said Lopinto , who claimed that he visited the scene of the arrest .
“ I learned about it — well , not learned about it , because I was out there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I learned it wasn ’ t reported last week when y ’ all brought it to our attention.
” He cited the first wave of coronavirus cases happening at the time as reason for his lack of attention to the matter .
“ If [ Lopinto ] was on the scene that night , I ’ m absolutely troubled that the head of law enforcement from the sheriff ’ s department was there , and this was not reported in the documents , ” said Haley .
“ I don ’ t see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the community with a straight face .
”

On the evening of Friday, March 20, Tiffany McGee, a resident of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans, received a call from a nurse at the Tulane University Medical Center. Her 14-year-old son, Tre’mall, had been brought into the hospital with a gunshot wound. McGee rushed from her home in Terrytown in the West Bank over the Mississippi River to the hospital, where she was greeted by a deputy and a detective, who told her that Tre’mall was in their custody. “They wouldn’t allow me to see him,” said McGee. “They didn’t even try to explain to me what happened. They didn’t say what he was in custody for. They had me believing my child was shot in the street by someone and not an officer.”
As she would later find out, through her own investigation, Tre’mall had in fact been shot in the back by a Jefferson Parish deputy. After leaving the hospital, she called Nathan O’Quinn, the father of two boys who Tre’mall had been hanging out with that evening, to ask if his sons knew anything. O’Quinn hadn’t heard from either Ineis O’Quinn, 18, or Nijel Simmons, 16, so he and McGee met up to make a plan. “We know her 14-year-old boy was shot, so I’m thinking the worst,” O’Quinn told The Intercept.
Both O’Quinn and McGee have location trackers on their boys’ phones. Tre’mall’s phone brought them to the Westwego Police Department, on the West Bank across the river from Audubon Park in New Orleans. There they learned from an officer on duty that Tre’mall had been shot by a deputy of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, or JPSO. The two called the juvenile center, the parish jails, and the sheriff’s office, as well as its detective’s division; they also knocked on the sheriff’s office doors. Nobody answered.
Photo: Courtesy of the family
Finally, later that evening, O’Quinn’s son Ineis called him from another police department, about six miles west of Westwego. Several hours later, O’Quinn received a call from the Rivarde Juvenile Detention Center, where Nijel had been brought in under charges of resisting arrest by flight. The next morning, McGee also received a call from the juvenile detention center. Tre’mall had been deposited there by deputies just after being released from surgery, and booked for resisting arrest by flight and illegal possession of a stolen vehicle. When McGee arrived to pick him up, the wound in his armpit had reopened, and staff had given him paper towels to control the bleeding. She took him back to the hospital to get stitched back up.
Until recently, the shooting had gone unmentioned by the local media or the JPSO. The sheriff’s office’s original report, viewed by The Intercept, makes no mention of a weapon being discharged or a minor being shot and dispatched by EMS to the hospital. Tre’mall’s admission form to the Rivarde Juvenile Detention Center lists him as 5-foot-6, 130 pounds, an eighth grader with a gunshot wound to his left arm.
McGee said she is speaking out after months of trying to get answers from authorities. In March, the state had just gone under a shelter-in-place order because of the coronavirus pandemic, and nobody was answering the phones at the JPSO. “I’ve been coming forward,” she said. “The whole month, I was calling the office, calling the office.” On the first day of Louisiana’s reopening, she said, “I was at the office, but they gave me the runaround.” She attempted to file a complaint but got passed around from department to department. It wasn’t until the JPSO came under scrutiny for other police shootings that she connected with a local civil rights lawyer, Ron Haley.
“He was an average little boy. He loved football. He can’t play sports now. Now he’s more of a hermit.”
McGee said Tre’mall suffers from tight pains and burning sensations in his back and arm, which doctors say he’ll experience for the rest of his life. “He was an average little boy. He loved football,” she said. “He can’t play sports now. Now he’s more of a hermit. He thinks the police are following him. He thinks they’re out to harass him. He doesn’t feel safe walking around.”
The incident comes to light as the JPSO, like police departments across the nation, faces a community forcing a reckoning with a long history of police killings and racism. Two days after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, Modesto Reyes, a 35-year-old welder and rapper, was shot dead by a JPSO deputy after a traffic stop turned into a foot chase. Officers say Reyes was in possession of two guns; Haley, who is also representing the Reyes family, says eyewitnesses saw him with a phone in his hand.
On June 16, the JPSO rolled out a BearCat armored tank and over 50 officers in riot gear to stop a small crowd from blocking a highway ramp near the sheriff’s office building — which is named for the late Harry Lee, a notorious racist who ruled the parish as sheriff for 27 years. In 2006, Lee vowed to spend $400,000 on armored vehicles to police the streets, saying, “I’m going after the bad guys. At the end of the day, most of them will be Black.”
Over 100 people had gathered to protest Reyes’s shooting and the deaths of others at the hands of the JPSO, including Leo Brooks, shot and killed in Metairie in July 2019; Daviri Robertson and Chris Joseph, shot and killed in March 2018; and Keeven Robinson, who died of injuries consistent with compressional asphyxiation after a struggle with police in May 2018.
In these cases, the victim is not there to dispute the officer’s version of events. However, Tre’mall McGee survived his encounter with the JPSO and can testify to what happened on the night of March 20. Tiffany McGee declined to have her son speak with The Intercept without the family’s attorney present, but she, O’Quinn, and Haley separately explained what the boys had told them.
Tre’mall, Ineis, and Nijel say they left a party together with another boy, who offered to drive. At some point, police lights appeared behind the car, and the boys heard sirens. Unaware that the car was stolen, the three boys yelled for the driver to pull over, but instead he sped up before stopping, jumping out, and fleeing on foot. Ineis, Nijel, and Tre’mall also jumped out of the car and ran. When the officers caught up to Tre’mall, they told him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. When he did, according to the adults’ accounts, an officer demanded that he tell him where his friends were or he was going to shoot him. Tre’mall heard a gunshot and felt his body go numb. He’d been shot in the back. The bullet went through his armpit and exited through his arm.
An officer demanded that he tell him where his friends were or he was going to shoot him. Tre’mall heard a gunshot and felt his body go numb.
Meanwhile, O’Quinn said, officers chased Ineis down, slammed him into a fence and cuffed him, during which time he heard a gunshot ring out. Nijel told his father that he was hiding under a nearby shed when he heard the gun go off. Afraid, he called out to the officers and began climbing out, asking them why they’d shot his friend. One officer dragged him out by the foot while another kicked him in the stomach and the face, giving him two black eyes and a laceration beneath his arm. When he was cuffed and taken to the detention center, the arresting officers were told that he was too beat up to be booked. Nijel was taken to the hospital to be treated and then delivered back to the center.
Tre’mall, according to his mother, said that after he was shot, he was handcuffed and sat on the curb. Officers started to put him into the back of a deputy car when emergency medics showed up and transported him to the medical center.
The JPSO and its sheriff, Joseph Lopinto, have not responded to requests for comment. The district attorney’s office declined to comment, effectively invoking the Louisiana Children’s Code laws, which protect minors from being identified.
Though the police report says the three boys were Mirandized, each of them say they were not read their rights upon arrest, and it was hours before either of their parents was able to reunite with them. (The JPSO does not wear body cameras, which Lopinto has said is due to budgetary issues — though the force was able to afford two new BearCats, according to his 2019-2020 operating budget.)
Tre’mall and Nijel were set to be arraigned on June 25, but the proceedings were canceled at the last minute. Haley said the district attorney’s office is awaiting more information from the JPSO in addition to the initial report.
“It was as if there was a chase in a stolen car, they caught him, arrested him, booked him,” Haley said. “Nothing talking about an officer discharging a firearm. Nothing regarding Tre’mall being shot. I think that silence or that omission speaks a million words.”
On June 23, Lopinto held a press conference to address other recent shootings but did not bring up the McGee case until asked about it by a member of the press. “It could have been reported or not reported. It wasn’t something that was on my mind back then,” said Lopinto, who claimed that he visited the scene of the arrest. “I learned about it — well, not learned about it, because I was out there on the scene that night — but I learned it wasn’t reported last week when y’all brought it to our attention.” He cited the first wave of coronavirus cases happening at the time as reason for his lack of attention to the matter.
“If [Lopinto] was on the scene that night, I’m absolutely troubled that the head of law enforcement from the sheriff’s department was there, and this was not reported in the documents,” said Haley. “I don’t see how that happens and you look at the community with a straight face.”


theintercept--2020-07-03--How the Coronavirus Became a Death Sentence at a GEO Group Halfway House

In the first video , which is blurry and just 20 seconds long , a woman in a mask walks into a men ’ s dorm at the Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center , a federal halfway house in Houston , Texas , run by GEO Group .
She orders everyone to clear the area .
“ Turn those phones off , ” she says .
In the next clip , taken moments later , a man is wheeled down the hallway on a stretcher , wearing a red T-shirt , jeans , and an oxygen mask .
The person pushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closely by black-clad security officers .
The man on the stretcher is Oaka Adams , 43 .
He arrived at the halfway house in January after a stint in federal prison for possession with intent to distribute oxycodone .
By the time he started feeling seriously sick in mid-June , the coronavirus had already killed two of his neighbors at the halfway house .
Another died shortly after he got home .
Adams was afraid he would be next .
Although he had not been tested for the coronavirus , he felt feverish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in touch with a friend outside the halfway house , who called 911 around noon on Friday , June 19 .
At St. Joseph Medical Center , an X-ray showed all the signs of Covid-19 .
By 3 p.m. , the director of the Leidel Center , Johnathan Hardy , had left work for the day , but he would later tell a case manager that Adams would probably not be allowed to go home from the hospital .
Instead he would be discharged back to the halfway house .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s friend texted that evening .
“ This system is screwed up big time.
” Adams spent the weekend at St. Joseph .
By the following Monday , his condition had improved .
“ He can sit up and talk now , and his breathing is better , ” his friend reported .
Soon afterward , he was released to home confinement .
Back at the halfway house , word from residents was that they were planning to test everyone for the coronavirus .
But a week later , that still hadn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hardy issued an all-staff memo , which was posted inside the building .
“ Be advised that the city of Houston COVID testing team has changed the date for on-site testing , ” the piece of paper read .
Where the new date had been written — July 6 , 2020 — someone crossed it out and wrote , “ NEVER.
” Today , the U.S. Bureau of Prisons counts seven total cases of Covid-19 at the Leidel Center , including two deaths .
But current and former residents — who spoke and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anonymity to avoid retaliation — say the situation is far more dire .
They say the virus has run rampant among residents and staff alike .
They point to a third man who died of Covid-19 last month , shortly after leaving the Leidel Center .
And they say that the facility has repeatedly refused to provide testing , leaving residents to seek out tests on their own , while sharing no information about those who have died .
“ Do you know how I found out about the first death — even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resident told The Intercept .
“ From a staff member gossiping with an inmate .
And the inmate came back and told us .
We ’ re like , ‘ Are you serious ?
’ ” GEO Group has previously declined to comment on the impact of the pandemic at its residential reentry centers , including an earlier death at a halfway house in New York .
But in a July 2 email , GEO Care Vice President for Communications Monica Hook acknowledged two of the Houston deaths .
“ We are aware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sent to the hospital and subsequently passed away , ” she wrote .
She also said that while some GEO Group halfway houses have arranged for onsite testing , “ the majority of our RRCs coordinate resident healthcare through community providers.
” At Leidel , “ we have been referring residents to local health department testing sites.
” Hook provided a fact sheet describing the measures being taken by GEO Group to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 at its facilities , including special sterilization of high-contact areas , “ above and beyond normal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ residents have told The Intercept that it is up to them to clean the dorms and other areas at the halfway house .
They also reject the notion that they have access to adequate medical attention — or even food .
In a video sent to The Intercept earlier this week , a resident showed a meal consisting of two slices of white bread , a packet of mayonnaise , Goldfish crackers , and a cookie .
The spread of the virus at the Leidel Center is emblematic of the unique risks posed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Residents arrive from prisons across the country , then share rooms , bathrooms , and dining areas .
Staff come in and out of the surrounding community , as do residents who are required to work .
Since The Intercept began covering federal halfway houses in April , the number of affected facilities has continued to climb .
In late May , the BOP documented 230 total Covid-19 cases across 42 RRCs .
Just over a month later , the BOP shows 301 total cases across 57 RRCs .
These numbers are a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the federal prison system .
But they also represent a a significant undercount .
Not only do these figures fluctuate from facility to facility without explanation , the official tally only includes people who are in BOP custody , leaving out halfway house residents who are in the hands of other federal agencies , such as the U.S .
Probation Office .
It also leaves out RRC staff , who are not technically bureau employees but rather work for halfway house providers .
Of the 57 affected federal halfway houses currently listed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not a single documented case of staff infected with Covid-19 .
With 195 RRCs run by a patchwork of providers — about a third of which are for-profits — the network of halfway houses with BOP contracts lacks transparency even under normal circumstances .
While the BOP has issued press releases about Covid-19 deaths inside its prisons — providing names , ages , and facilities where the deceased were held — it has released no information about those who have died inside federal halfway houses .
The only public acknowledgment of the fatalities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Inmate Death ” column on the BOP website .
Of the six documented deaths at federal RRCs recorded by the BOP to date , three were residents of GEO Group facilities — and two were residents at the Leidel Center .
Until now , the identities of the men who died after becoming ill at the Houston halfway house have remained unknown beyond their families and the facility .
But former and current residents of the Leidel Center shared their names with The Intercept .
The oldest was 60 years old , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prison on probation violations or drug charges .
And all of them had families who were preparing to welcome them home in the coming days .
Instead , those families are planning memorial services .
I Do Not Want to Die in the Halfway House The Leidel Center is located in the heart of downtown Houston , just steps from the freeway and Minute Maid Park , the home stadium for the Houston Astros .
There is an outdoor area with picnic tables and benches dubbed Logan ’ s Garden .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority men but some women , most of who are serving the last days of their federal sentences .
In operation since the 1990s , the Leidel Center was previously run by Cornell Corrections , which was acquired by GEO Group in 2010 .
The private prison company ’ s expansion into reentry services has become a growing part of the its business plan .
Today , the Leidel Center is one of 45 halfway houses under GEO Group ’ s Continuum of Care division , which sells everything from reentry to drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal government .
Fifteen of GEO ’ s halfway houses have contracts with the BOP .
GEO Group has long been accused of mistreating those in its care .
In Houston , a 2019 lawsuit described how the company abandoned residents of a different halfway house during Hurricane Harvey , leaving them in a flooded facility without food , clean water , or medical care .
When the coronavirus crisis began , residents soon began detailing similar neglect at different GEO Group facilities , even as corporate executives boasted about the company ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Oakland , California , halfway house told The Intercept that the facility had tried to keep its positive cases a secret .
And at the Grossman Center in Leavenworth , Kansas , where coronavirus spread out of control this spring , numerous residents said that the facility ’ s attempts to contain the outbreak only made things worse .
Residents of the Leidel Center describe similar chaos and mismanagement .
One resident who arrived at the halfway house in February said that nothing had been done to adapt to the looming crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he said .
“ They had no clue the storm was coming.
” Once it hit , the resident said , “ they sat on their haunches.
” While other halfway houses stopped sending people to work except for those in essential services , in accordance with BOP instructions , this did not happen at Leidel .
“ If you had a job , you could go , ” a former resident said .
“ And that was everybody .
Didn ’ t matter what what kind of work you did.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sight of a staffer inspected the belongings of a member of the women ’ s dorm in May .
The employee was not wearing a mask or gloves .
“ Like , I understand you have to go through our things , that ’ s fine , ” the resident said .
“ But we are also in the middle of a pandemic.
” At one point , the former resident said , “ they started putting signs on the floor saying , ‘ Keep your distance , ’ you know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that .
But it ’ s impossible .
This is a halfway house .
… Our beds are so close to each other … it ’ s impossible to stay six feet away from anybody in that place.
” On May 22 , a pair of Leidel residents posted a video online .
One man wore a hoodie and a paper town around his nose and mouth .
The other wore a bandana as a mask .
“ We are reporting that the coronavirus is here , ” the man in the hoodie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been exposed , and they ’ re not doing anything about it .
They ’ re attempting to cover it up.
” The man said that he had tried to contact everyone from Sheila Jackson Lee to Donald Trump , to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo , who issued Houston ’ s stay-at-home order in March .
“ We just need someone to look into this , ” he said .
“ I do not want to die in the halfway house.
” Just over a week later , on May 31 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The man was 56-year-old Roger Rust .
Like the man in the video , he lived in C dorm , home to some 80 residents and considered the worst housing area at Leidel .
“ He would be up all night just coughing and coughing and hacking and coughing , ” the man in the video told The Intercept .
Multiple residents said he used a walker .
“ There was no way that man even should have been in there , and they still kept him in there , ” the former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a second man died .
His name was Michael McLarty .
He used to sit in the front of the building before heading to work , where other residents would often chat with him .
“ Real sweet , oh my gosh , really nice man , ” the former resident said .
One day in early June , she recalled , “ I said , ‘ You ’ re not looking too good.
’ He said ‘ I know.
’ I said , ‘ You need to keep your face mask on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t know that was the last time I ’ d ever talk to him.
” Looking at his LinkedIn page for the first time , she recognized the photo McLarty used ; he ’ d taken it at the halfway house in that same spot where he always used to sit .
The photo is striking for McLarty ’ s huge handlebar mustache and ruddy sunburned complexion .
“ We didn ’ t get that much sun where we were incarcerated , ” said another resident , a man who knew McLarty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house .
“ So me and him did a lot of sunbathing out there.
” The last text message the resident received from McLarty was when he was at the hospital .
“ I ’ m sick as a dog , ” he said .
The same day that McLarty died , on June 14 , a man who had recently left the halfway house died in Conroe , Texas .
Cedric Oliphant , 46 , a Huntsville native , had been in his last days of a nine-month sentence on a probation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Oliphant ’ s relatives declined to speak publicly about his death .
But a close friend said that Oliphant went to the doctor in Huntsville on June 4 , then tested positive for Covid-19 on June 5 , the day he was released from BOP custody .
“ He was alert enough to call and send a text about being put in a medicated coma and how this may be his end , ” she wrote in a Facebook message .
“ Then next thing nurse called he was gone.
” Why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Home Confinement ?
For months , families of people in the federal prison system have said they are kept in the dark about the handling of the pandemic .
People in BOP custody have especially struggled to get answers about why they have not been allowed to do their remaining time in home confinement , particularly in light of the danger posed by coronavirus to crowded facilities .
Although the BOP claimed to have ramped up home confinement in the early months of the pandemic , for many this has proven to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would seem to be ideal candidates for home confinement , given that they are at the end of their sentences .
Yet residents at Leidel and other facilities say their requests for home confinement have been repeatedly denied .
In one typical account , the aunt of a woman currently at Leidel told The Intercept that her niece remains at the halfway house despite the fact that her home confinement date has already passed .
As a nurse in Houston , she is alarmed that GEO Group is putting the entire community at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is like in the hospitals , ” she said .
“ Our numbers are going up and up.
” Families of the men who have died at Leidel describe a total lack of communication by the director and staff , even when their loved ones passed .
Oliphant ’ s family declined to speak publicly in large part because they had so few answers about his illness .
Although McLarty ’ s widow did not respond to a phone message , a number of residents said they have spoken to her in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ She ’ s pissed , ” one resident said .
“ Because why couldn ’ t he have been on home confinement ?
” According to that resident , he would have been eligible in May .
In a phone call with The Intercept , the family of Roger Rust described a clueless and counterproductive response to his illness .
Rust ’ s son , Austin , said that his father had already been hospitalized once while living at the Leidel Center , weeks before being diagnosed with Covid-19 .
Rust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off attacks that his son described as a combination of asthma and anxiety .
After he had such an episode in April , “ the hospital kind of put it off like an asthma attack and then sent him right back .
It was like one day and then … he was back at the halfway house.
” Allison Ramos , a Corpus Cristi defense attorney , represented Rust in the case .
She was saddened at the news of his death , describing him as different from other clients she has defended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because he was not callous toward the men he had been caught transporting .
“ I liked him .
He was probably one of my top five clients .
… He was really nice , respectful.
” To Ramos , it was clear that his crime was rooted in a drug problem .
“ He just needed money and he agreed to transport people .
… You could just tell he had a drug issue and he succumbed to it.
” Rust pleaded guilty to alien smuggling and was sentenced to 18 months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentence given the charge — plus another six months on supervised release .
Just months after getting out of prison in 2018 , however , he was rearrested and jailed on new drug charges .
Although much of the sentencing information is sealed , a letter to the court from his daughter-in-law suggested that Rust had wanted to return to North Texas after his initial imprisonment but was unable to because of the conditions of his release .
“ He truly wants to be an excellent grandfather and father to his son , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We just want him to come stay near us where we can help him get on his feet.
” Austin Rust never understood why his father had to be released from prison so far from home .
His whole family and support system lived in North Texas , just outside Fort Worth .
If he had been allowed on home confinement , he would have had plenty of places to go .
“ I mean , I bought a travel trailer and I was gon na put him up in a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ I just felt like , things were about to get back where I had my dad close again.
” Rust also does not understand why , at the very least , his father could not have been tested for the coronavirus at the hospital the first time he went .
“ Maybe this would have come out different , ” he said .
Instead , just a couple weeks after his return to Leidel , his father called to say that he was back at the hospital .
By the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he was going rapidly downhill .
“ It was to the point where whenever we called , you know , you couldn ’ t even talk to him , ” Rust said .
When he tried to hold a conversation , “ he would just be coughing and wheezing and just having a horrible time.
” Their phone calls became short check-ins : “ Like , you know , ‘ I was just thinking about you , I love you , don ’ t strain yourself.
’ ” Then one day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
He had been placed on a ventilator .
From then on , Rust got all his information from a nurse at the hospital .
At no point did the halfway house attempt to inform the family , he said .
Instead it was the other way around .
Rust got a phone call from his father ’ s case manager after he was placed on a ventilator .
“ She said … ‘ I ’ ve been trying to get ahold of him and he ’ s supposed to be calling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haven ’ t heard from him for three or four days.
’ ” Rust replied that his father was in critical condition .
The case manager asked him to keep her posted .
It was just before midnight on May 31 when Rust got a phone call from his sister .
Their father had died at 11:45 p.m. Two days later , the same case worker called asking for an update on his father .
“ Can you please find out what ’ s going on with him and call me back ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ answers about the situation at the halfway house , Rust got in touch with his father ’ s old bunkmate , who sent him a text on June 2 .
“ I ’ m sorry to hear what happened , ” he wrote .
“ We were roommates .
They assumed that we were all infected , but they will not test anyone or separate the sick .
I ’ ve been coughing for the last month , but I ’ m feeling okay I guess .
I just might be one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Everyone in here is scared to death of me and my other roommates .
We can ’ t even taste or smell food .
Roger was a good friend .
Again , I ’ m sorry for your loss .
”

In the first video , which is blurry and just 20 seconds long, a woman in a mask walks into a men’s dorm at the Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center, a federal halfway house in Houston, Texas, run by GEO Group. She orders everyone to clear the area. “Turn those phones off,” she says.
In the next clip, taken moments later, a man is wheeled down the hallway on a stretcher, wearing a red T-shirt, jeans, and an oxygen mask. The person pushing him wears a surgical gown, followed closely by black-clad security officers.
The man on the stretcher is Oaka Adams, 43. He arrived at the halfway house in January after a stint in federal prison for possession with intent to distribute oxycodone. By the time he started feeling seriously sick in mid-June, the coronavirus had already killed two of his neighbors at the halfway house. Another died shortly after he got home.
Adams was afraid he would be next. Although he had not been tested for the coronavirus, he felt feverish and struggled to breathe. Adams got in touch with a friend outside the halfway house, who called 911 around noon on Friday, June 19. At St. Joseph Medical Center, an X-ray showed all the signs of Covid-19. By 3 p.m., the director of the Leidel Center, Johnathan Hardy, had left work for the day, but he would later tell a case manager that Adams would probably not be allowed to go home from the hospital. Instead he would be discharged back to the halfway house. “I’m so upset,” Adams’s friend texted that evening. “This system is screwed up big time.”
Adams spent the weekend at St. Joseph. By the following Monday, his condition had improved. “He can sit up and talk now, and his breathing is better,” his friend reported. Soon afterward, he was released to home confinement. Back at the halfway house, word from residents was that they were planning to test everyone for the coronavirus. But a week later, that still hadn’t happened. On June 29, Hardy issued an all-staff memo, which was posted inside the building. “Be advised that the city of Houston COVID testing team has changed the date for on-site testing,” the piece of paper read. Where the new date had been written — July 6, 2020 — someone crossed it out and wrote, “NEVER.”
Today, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons counts seven total cases of Covid-19 at the Leidel Center, including two deaths. But current and former residents — who spoke and shared videos and photographs on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation — say the situation is far more dire. They say the virus has run rampant among residents and staff alike. They point to a third man who died of Covid-19 last month, shortly after leaving the Leidel Center. And they say that the facility has repeatedly refused to provide testing, leaving residents to seek out tests on their own, while sharing no information about those who have died. “Do you know how I found out about the first death — even the first sickness?” one former resident told The Intercept. “From a staff member gossiping with an inmate. And the inmate came back and told us. We’re like, ‘Are you serious?’”
GEO Group has previously declined to comment on the impact of the pandemic at its residential reentry centers, including an earlier death at a halfway house in New York. But in a July 2 email, GEO Care Vice President for Communications Monica Hook acknowledged two of the Houston deaths. “We are aware of two Leidel Center residents that were sent to the hospital and subsequently passed away,” she wrote. She also said that while some GEO Group halfway houses have arranged for onsite testing, “the majority of our RRCs coordinate resident healthcare through community providers.” At Leidel, “we have been referring residents to local health department testing sites.”
Hook provided a fact sheet describing the measures being taken by GEO Group to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 at its facilities, including special sterilization of high-contact areas, “above and beyond normal cleaning activities at RRCs.” But multiple residents have told The Intercept that it is up to them to clean the dorms and other areas at the halfway house. They also reject the notion that they have access to adequate medical attention — or even food. In a video sent to The Intercept earlier this week, a resident showed a meal consisting of two slices of white bread, a packet of mayonnaise, Goldfish crackers, and a cookie.
The spread of the virus at the Leidel Center is emblematic of the unique risks posed to halfway houses throughout the pandemic. Residents arrive from prisons across the country, then share rooms, bathrooms, and dining areas. Staff come in and out of the surrounding community, as do residents who are required to work. Since The Intercept began covering federal halfway houses in April, the number of affected facilities has continued to climb. In late May, the BOP documented 230 total Covid-19 cases across 42 RRCs. Just over a month later, the BOP shows 301 total cases across 57 RRCs.
These numbers are a small fraction of the thousands of cases across the federal prison system. But they also represent a a significant undercount. Not only do these figures fluctuate from facility to facility without explanation, the official tally only includes people who are in BOP custody, leaving out halfway house residents who are in the hands of other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Probation Office. It also leaves out RRC staff, who are not technically bureau employees but rather work for halfway house providers. Of the 57 affected federal halfway houses currently listed on the BOP website, there is not a single documented case of staff infected with Covid-19.
With 195 RRCs run by a patchwork of providers — about a third of which are for-profits — the network of halfway houses with BOP contracts lacks transparency even under normal circumstances. While the BOP has issued press releases about Covid-19 deaths inside its prisons — providing names, ages, and facilities where the deceased were held — it has released no information about those who have died inside federal halfway houses. The only public acknowledgment of the fatalities are the numbers listed in the “Inmate Death” column on the BOP website.
Of the six documented deaths at federal RRCs recorded by the BOP to date, three were residents of GEO Group facilities — and two were residents at the Leidel Center. Until now, the identities of the men who died after becoming ill at the Houston halfway house have remained unknown beyond their families and the facility. But former and current residents of the Leidel Center shared their names with The Intercept. The oldest was 60 years old, the youngest 46. All three had gone to prison on probation violations or drug charges. And all of them had families who were preparing to welcome them home in the coming days. Instead, those families are planning memorial services.
Screenshot: Google Map
I Do Not Want to Die in the Halfway House
The Leidel Center is located in the heart of downtown Houston, just steps from the freeway and Minute Maid Park, the home stadium for the Houston Astros. There is an outdoor area with picnic tables and benches dubbed Logan’s Garden. The facility sleeps some 190 people, a majority men but some women, most of who are serving the last days of their federal sentences.
In operation since the 1990s, the Leidel Center was previously run by Cornell Corrections, which was acquired by GEO Group in 2010. The private prison company’s expansion into reentry services has become a growing part of the its business plan. Today, the Leidel Center is one of 45 halfway houses under GEO Group’s Continuum of Care division, which sells everything from reentry to drug treatment to counseling services to state and federal government. Fifteen of GEO’s halfway houses have contracts with the BOP.
GEO Group has long been accused of mistreating those in its care. In Houston, a 2019 lawsuit described how the company abandoned residents of a different halfway house during Hurricane Harvey, leaving them in a flooded facility without food, clean water, or medical care. When the coronavirus crisis began, residents soon began detailing similar neglect at different GEO Group facilities, even as corporate executives boasted about the company’s response to shareholders. Residents at an Oakland, California, halfway house told The Intercept that the facility had tried to keep its positive cases a secret. And at the Grossman Center in Leavenworth, Kansas, where coronavirus spread out of control this spring, numerous residents said that the facility’s attempts to contain the outbreak only made things worse.
Residents of the Leidel Center describe similar chaos and mismanagement. One resident who arrived at the halfway house in February said that nothing had been done to adapt to the looming crisis. “They were not prepared,” he said. “They had no clue the storm was coming.” Once it hit, the resident said, “they sat on their haunches.” While other halfway houses stopped sending people to work except for those in essential services, in accordance with BOP instructions, this did not happen at Leidel. “If you had a job, you could go,” a former resident said. “And that was everybody. Didn’t matter what what kind of work you did.” Yet another resident recalled being disturbed at the sight of a staffer inspecting the belongings of a member of the women’s dorm in May. The employee was not wearing a mask or gloves. “Like, I understand you have to go through our things, that’s fine,” the resident said. “But we are also in the middle of a pandemic.”
At one point, the former resident said, “they started putting signs on the floor saying, ‘Keep your distance,’ you know, ‘Six feet’ and stuff like that. But it’s impossible. This is a halfway house. … Our beds are so close to each other … it’s impossible to stay six feet away from anybody in that place.”
On May 22, a pair of Leidel residents posted a video online. One man wore a hoodie and a paper towel around his nose and mouth. The other wore a bandana as a mask. “We are reporting that the coronavirus is here,” the man in the hoodie said. “The entire facility has been exposed, and they’re not doing anything about it. They’re attempting to cover it up.” The man said that he had tried to contact everyone from Sheila Jackson Lee to Donald Trump, to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who issued Houston’s stay-at-home order in March. “We just need someone to look into this,” he said. “I do not want to die in the halfway house.” Just over a week later, on May 31, the first Leidel Center resident died.
“The entire facility has been exposed, and they’re not doing anything about it. They’re attempting to cover it up.”
The man was 56-year-old Roger Rust. Like the man in the video, he lived in C dorm, home to some 80 residents and considered the worst housing area at Leidel. “He would be up all night just coughing and coughing and hacking and coughing,” the man in the video told The Intercept. Multiple residents said he used a walker. “There was no way that man even should have been in there, and they still kept him in there,” the former resident said.
Two weeks later, a second man died. His name was Michael McLarty. He used to sit in the front of the building before heading to work, where other residents would often chat with him. “Real sweet, oh my gosh, really nice man,” the former resident said. One day in early June, she recalled, “I said, ‘You’re not looking too good.’ He said ‘I know.’ I said, ‘You need to keep your face mask on at all times.’ … I didn’t know that was the last time I’d ever talk to him.”
Looking at his LinkedIn page for the first time, she recognized the photo McLarty used; he’d taken it at the halfway house in that same spot where he always used to sit. The photo is striking for McLarty’s huge handlebar mustache and ruddy sunburned complexion. “We didn’t get that much sun where we were incarcerated,” said another resident, a man who knew McLarty before they both arrived at the halfway house. “So me and him did a lot of sunbathing out there.” The last text message the resident received from McLarty was when he was at the hospital. “I’m sick as a dog,” he said.
The same day that McLarty died, on June 14, a man who had recently left the halfway house died in Conroe, Texas. Cedric Oliphant, 46, a Huntsville native, had been in his last days of a nine-month sentence on a probation violation. Like McLarty’s family, Oliphant’s relatives declined to speak publicly about his death. But a close friend said that Oliphant went to the doctor in Huntsville on June 4, then tested positive for Covid-19 on June 5, the day he was released from BOP custody. “He was alert enough to call and send a text about being put in a medicated coma and how this may be his end,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “Then next thing nurse called he was gone.”
Why Couldn’t He Have Been on Home Confinement?
For months, families of people in the federal prison system have said they are kept in the dark about the handling of the pandemic. People in BOP custody have especially struggled to get answers about why they have not been allowed to do their remaining time in home confinement, particularly in light of the danger posed by coronavirus to crowded facilities. Although the BOP claimed to have ramped up home confinement in the early months of the pandemic, for many this has proven to be a false promise.
Halfway house residents would seem to be ideal candidates for home confinement, given that they are at the end of their sentences. Yet residents at Leidel and other facilities say their requests for home confinement have been repeatedly denied. In one typical account, the aunt of a woman currently at Leidel told The Intercept that her niece remains at the halfway house despite the fact that her home confinement date has already passed. As a nurse in Houston, she is alarmed that GEO Group is putting the entire community at risk. “I know what it is like in the hospitals,” she said. “Our numbers are going up and up.”
Families of the men who have died at Leidel describe a total lack of communication by the director and staff, even when their loved ones passed. Oliphant’s family declined to speak publicly in large part because they had so few answers about his illness. Although McLarty’s widow did not respond to a phone message, a number of residents said they have spoken to her in the wake of her husband’s death. “She’s pissed,” one resident said. “Because why couldn’t he have been on home confinement?” According to that resident, he would have been eligible in May.
In a phone call with The Intercept, the family of Roger Rust described a clueless and counterproductive response to his illness. Rust’s son, Austin, said that his father had already been hospitalized once while living at the Leidel Center, weeks before being diagnosed with Covid-19. Rust had been using an inhaler to ward off attacks that his son described as a combination of asthma and anxiety. After he had such an episode in April, “the hospital kind of put it off like an asthma attack and then sent him right back. It was like one day and then … he was back at the halfway house.”
Photo: Courtesy of the family
Austin Rust said his father was a devoted family man when he was growing up. “He was the baseball coach. He was, you know, the all-American dad that did anything for his kids,” he said. After Roger Rust and his wife divorced, however, “he kind of went crazy.” Although his son did not discuss specifics, Rust developed a drug problem that led to his arrest on federal charges.
According to court records, Rust was arrested on March 6, 2016 after he was stopped at a Texas Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 281, just north of the Mexican border. He was driving a truck pulling a horse trailer, which was subsequently searched by Border Patrol agents. Four men were discovered hiding in the trailer. A small amount of cocaine and methamphetamine was found in Rust’s glove compartment.
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Allison Ramos, a Corpus Cristi defense attorney, represented Rust in the case. She was saddened at the news of his death, describing him as different from other clients she has defended on similar smuggling charges, in part because he was not callous toward the men he had been caught transporting. “I liked him. He was probably one of my top five clients. … He was really nice, respectful.” To Ramos, it was clear that his crime was rooted in a drug problem. “He just needed money and he agreed to transport people. … You could just tell he had a drug issue and he succumbed to it.”
Rust pleaded guilty to alien smuggling and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison — a relatively short sentence given the charge — plus another six months on supervised release. Just months after getting out of prison in 2018, however, he was rearrested and jailed on new drug charges. Although much of the sentencing information is sealed, a letter to the court from his daughter-in-law suggested that Rust had wanted to return to North Texas after his initial imprisonment but was unable to because of the conditions of his release. “He truly wants to be an excellent grandfather and father to his son,” she wrote in February 2019. “We just want him to come stay near us where we can help him get on his feet.”
Austin Rust never understood why his father had to be released from prison so far from home. His whole family and support system lived in North Texas, just outside Fort Worth. If he had been allowed on home confinement, he would have had plenty of places to go. “I mean, I bought a travel trailer and I was gonna put him up in a little park down the road,” he said. “I just felt like, things were about to get back where I had my dad close again.”
Their father had died at 11:45 p.m. Two days later, the case worker called asking for an update. “Can you please find out what’s going on with him and call me back?”
Rust also does not understand why, at the very least, his father could not have been tested for the coronavirus at the hospital the first time he went. “Maybe this would have come out different,” he said. Instead, just a couple weeks after his return to Leidel, his father called to say that he was back at the hospital. By the time his coronavirus test came back positive, he was going rapidly downhill. “It was to the point where whenever we called, you know, you couldn’t even talk to him,” Rust said. When he tried to hold a conversation, “he would just be coughing and wheezing and just having a horrible time.” Their phone calls became short check-ins: “Like, you know, ‘I was just thinking about you, I love you, don’t strain yourself.’”
Then one day, Rust could not reach his father at all. He had been placed on a ventilator. From then on, Rust got all his information from a nurse at the hospital. At no point did the halfway house attempt to inform the family, he said. Instead it was the other way around. Rust got a phone call from his father’s case manager after he was placed on a ventilator. “She said … ‘I’ve been trying to get ahold of him and he’s supposed to be calling me from the hospital. And I haven’t heard from him for three or four days.’” Rust replied that his father was in critical condition. The case manager asked him to keep her posted.
It was just before midnight on May 31 when Rust got a phone call from his sister. Their father had died at 11:45 p.m. Two days later, the same case worker called asking for an update on his father. “Can you please find out what’s going on with him and call me back?” he remembered her asking.
Seeking answers about the situation at the halfway house, Rust got in touch with his father’s old bunkmate, who sent him a text on June 2. “I’m sorry to hear what happened,” he wrote. “We were roommates. They assumed that we were all infected, but they will not test anyone or separate the sick. I’ve been coughing for the last month, but I’m feeling okay I guess. I just might be one of the people that are asymptomatic. … Everyone in here is scared to death of me and my other roommates. We can’t even taste or smell food. Roger was a good friend. Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”