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Officer Blane Salamoni, Alton Sterling’s Killer, Has Been Fired
Blane Salamoni—the Baton Rouge, La., police officer who killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling on July 5, 2016—has been fired, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul announced Friday. “These [police officers’] actions were not minor deviations from policy, as they contributed to the outcome that resulted in the death of another human being,” Paul said. Officer Howie…
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Pain and Policy: Why Reparative Justice Is Needed to End the War on Drugs [Retracted]
RETRACTED (6/12/18): This story has been removed because we have discovered it was in breach of our editorial standards. If you’d like to know more, you can read an editor’s note here. A cached version of the story is available here for transparency.
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#JusticeForJason: Wis. DOJ Claims Jason Pero, 14, Called 911, Described Himself, Before Deputy Fatally Shot Him
Updated Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, 2:19 a.m. EST: On Saturday the Wisconsin Department of Justice released the initial findings of its investigation into the fatal police shooting of 14-year-old Jason Pero of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe, which occurred Nov. 8. The Wisconsin DOJ claims that Jason called 911 at approximately…
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‘Everyday It Rains’: A Root Editor’s Personal Struggle Through the Hell of Hurricane Harvey
Editor’s note: Yeats (or perhaps Achebe) was right: Things fall apart. And for The Root’s Senior Editor Kirsten West Savali, in the last year, those three words have become like a living mantra. At the beginning of the summer, West Savali, 37, and her husband, Savali Savali, 40, urgently uprooted their family of five (six, counting…
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Drug Policy Alliance Calls Out NYC Mayor de Blasio for Attempting to Spin Marijuana-Arrests Record [Retracted]
RETRACTED (6/12/18): This story has been removed because we have discovered it was in breach of our editorial standards. If you’d like to know more, you can read an editor’s note here. A cached version of the story is available here for transparency.
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When R. Kelly Is Your ‘Brother,’ You Make Statements Like This
Erykah Badu, a musical genius who is one of my favorite artists, ignited a Twitter storm Monday night with her controversial statements on rape culture and sexuality, tweeting that she agreed with an article in which a school required girls to wear longer skirts so as not to serve as “distractions” for heterosexual male teachers.…