IRL Roundup: Trump’s Police Reform Executive Order, North Korea Blows, Tyler Perry and More

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President Trump Signs Executive Order On "Safe Policing For Safe Communities"

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President Trump Signs Police Reforms Order That Seeks to Cut Use of Choke Holds

President Trump Signs Executive Order On "Safe Policing For Safe Communities"
US President Donald Trump speaks at the event where he will sign an executive order on police reform, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, June 16, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to reform policing in the United States that seeks to discourage the use of choke holds to subdue suspects and creates a national database of tainted officers as antiracism demonstrations continue across the country and a protestor was shot in New Mexico by a private militia.

“This is a big, big step — a step that hasn’t been taken before,” Trump said before signing the order. “We have to break the old patterns of failure.”

But, he went on to add, siding with law enforcement, “I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to defend, dismantle and dissolve our police departments, especially now when we achieved the lowest recorded crime rates in recent history,.”

Trump’s executive order has essentially three key elements. It seeks to create a national database of police misconduct so that an officer with a record of aggressive behaviour doesn’t simply move to another state or department, as has been also envisioned by a sweeping police reforms legislation put forward by Democrats.

Trump’s order will also seek to address the use of force. “Choke holds will be banned except if an officer’s life is at risk, the president said. Federal funding will be provided to police departments based on certification of their use of force. And training will be provided to officers on de-escalating situations.

And, finally, the order will recommend a greater role for social workers and mental health professionals; for them to work closely with officers, when responding to certain calls.

(Via Mediaite)

North Korea Blows Up Liaison Office Amid Rising Tensions With South Korea

North Korea
People watch a television news screen showing an explosion of an inter-Korean liaison office in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Complex, at a railway station in Seoul on June 16, 2020. – North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on June 16, the South’s Unification ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP) (Photo by JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)

North Korea blew up an inter-Korean border office on Tuesday as tensions rise between Pyongyang and South Korea.

North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency said the office in Kaesong, just north of the South Korean border, was “tragically ruined with a terrific explosion,” The Associated Press and Reuters reported. The office has been shut down since January due to coronavirus concerns.

The news agency said “enraged people” wanted to “force human scum and those, who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes,” referring to North Korean defectors who sent propaganda leaflets with anti-Pyongyang sentiments across the border, according to the news outlets.

The flyers were typically sent in by balloon or in bottles across the river along with food, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks with information on South Korea. South Korea has pledged to take legal action against the defector groups that are sending propaganda over the border.

(Via CNN)

Tyler Perry Is Paying for Rayshard Brooks’ Funeral — and His 4 Kids’ College Educations

Celebrities Visit Build - March 26, 2018
Tyler Perry at Build Studio on March 26, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Getty Images)

Tyler Perry will pay for the funeral expenses of Rayshard Brooks, a black man who was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer on Friday night. The mogul has also offered to pay for Brooks’ children’s college educations.

Perry “spoke to Rayshard’s family and wanted to do something to help.”

“His heart goes out to the family during this tragic time,” adds the source.

Brooks, who was 27 at the time of his death, is survived by his wife, Tomika Miller, and four children: Dream, 1, Memory, 2, Blessing, 8, and Mekai, 13.

Brooks was shot by police at a Wendy’s parking lot on Friday night and succumbed to his injuries after undergoing surgery.

(Via NY Post)

Run, Joe, Run

Yes, Donald Trump Tweeted This

A 911 dispatcher in Minneapolis appeared to raise questions with her supervisor over how officers handled the arrest of George Floyd last month, telling him that it looked “a little different,” records released Monday show. In a brief call — audio of which was released by the city of Minneapolis — the unidentified dispatcher can be heard telling the supervisor, who also isn’t identified, that she wasn’t sure whether the officers had to use force or not. “You can call me a snitch if you want,” she said, but cameras showed that the officers “got something out of the back of the squad [car], and all of them sat on this man.” She added: “I don’t know if they needed you or not, but they haven’t said anything to me yet.” (NBC News)

T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T customers were mystified on Monday when their calls stopped going through, in what turned out to be a nationwide outage for T-Mobile’s network, specifically, that lasted most of the day. Around 1AM Tuesday, the company tweeted that voice calls and text messaging services had been fully restored. (The Verge)

The New York City Police Department is disbanding a 600-person plainclothes anti-crime unit in a move that a top official described Monday as the end of its controversial stop-and-frisk program. The unit, which has operated in every precinct in the city, was charged with proactively finding guns and taking them off the streets. (NBC News)

New cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled in Alabama and South Carolina in the second week of June compared to the prior seven days, a Reuters analysis found, as 17 U.S. states reported weekly increases in the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Reuters)

President Donald Trump says almost 1 million people had requested tickets to attend his upcoming rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But some who have registered for the free event, which is scheduled to take place at a nearly 20,000 seat auditorium next week, say they have no plans to attend. They’re trying to troll the President’s campaign instead. Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother living in Fort Dodge, Iowa, appears to have helped led the charge on TikTok late last week when she posted a video encouraging people to go to Trump’s website, register to attend the event — and then not show up. (CNN)

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