Categories
Small Business Lifestyle

Withlacoochee River levels continue to rise, residents being evacuated [Video]

RIDGE MANOR, Fla., (WFLA) The water levels from the Withlacoochee River continue to rise in Hernando County, which is putting residents and their homes in jeopardy. Rescue crews have been working around the clock to evacuate people. The flooding has forced the closure of US 301 between State Road 50 and State Road 575. []

Categories
Small Business Lifestyle

Slain teen was wearing an ankle monitor that wasn’t being tracked at time of death; sources say [Video]

New details have emerged about the death of a 15-year-old killed one week ago in New Orleans East.Fifteen-year-old Jvoine Elow Jr. was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of his death, but it was not being actively tracked. The news has some in the criminal justice community ringing the alarm.WDSU Reporter Shay O’Connor was live at New Orleans Police Department Headquarters with more on where the investigation is ongoing.No one has been arrested in Elow’s death, and officials said if he had been tracked in real-time, it could have prevented his death.Matthew Dennis, the president of the Association of Supervised Ankle Monitoring Providers, said, “There’s nobody watching it. No one is making sure the young man is at home.”Dennis said had there been real-time tracking on Elow’s monitor ankle monitor, officials would have been immediately notified that the teen was not at home. Dennis said, “The equipment and the process that’s being used is perfectly fine working equipment. It’s broken only in the fact that it’s not being supervised.”Sources told WDSU that the 15-year-old had two open cases at the time of his death. According to his release order, the teen was to abide by the juvenile city-wide curfew and wear an ankle monitor. He had just finished an intensive in-home supervision program without any violations and was headed down the right path according to family and officials at Martin Luther King High where the teen attended school. His grandparents and brother were devastated at his passing. Eluteria Elow-King, the grandmother of Jvoine Elow Jr., said, “This has taken a toll on me. I just can’t deal with this. This is so hard. I’m going to miss him.”School officials told WDSU that the teen had just left a city-led youth program called Pathways when he went to the apartment complex and not home where his grandparents were expecting him.The teen was allegedly involved in a fight before being shot and killed. Rafael Goyeneche with the Metropolitan Crime Commission said that had the juvenile judicial system had been up to par on monitoring, it would have stopped what is now a rippling effect. Rafael Goyeneche said, “We need to know why something wasn’t done to address that. That technology is only effective if there are people monitoring the equipment.”District Attorney Jason Williams also released a statement on the situation:Obviously, there are no guarantees. However, if a judge, hearing officer or penal institution orders placement of an electronic monitoring device on a young person, that order should include real-time monitoring to immediately identify and alert of any curfew or location violations. This real-time monitoring would cause the juvenile to be quickly picked up and detained when a violation occurs, possibly preventing loss of life. The disciplined use of electronic monitoring technology with real-time tracking can not only interrupt juvenile criminal activity, but also play a vital role in protecting juveniles as well as the public at large.Live monitoring is especially critical for an electronic monitoring program aimed at juveniles, given that juveniles are naturally more impulsive and willing to test boundaries. They need to know that someone will notice and respond promptly if they deviate from whats expected. Without that accountability, theyre essentially positioned to fail, and in some cases, this can be very dangerous.A new law takes effect January 1st. that all ankle monitors must be monitored in real-time, whether it’s an adult or juvenile.If you know anything that could lead to an arrest in Elow’s death, call Crime Stoppers at 822-1111. Elow will be laid to rest this Saturday at his school, MLK High, in the Lower 9th Ward.Donate to Elow’s family for funeral expenses by clicking the link below:Fundraiser by Eluteria Elow-King : Help Honor Jvoine’s Life and Legacy (gofundme.com)

Categories
Small Business Lifestyle

Albuquerque middle school teacher among 8 charged in child predator operation [Video]

New Mexico Attorney General Ral Torrez joined alongside the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and multiple local law enforcement held a news conference on the arrests and charges of eight suspected child predators in New Mexico on Monday, Oct. 14. Currently, there is a warrant for a ninth arrest. “Operation Overwatch” is an undercover online chat investigation spearheaded by the New Mexico Department of Justice. View the suspected child predators and charges hereStephen Charles Phillips, Albuquerque Middle School TeacherCount 1: Sexual exploitation of children by prostitution (hires) (attempt)Count 2: Criminal sexual penetration attempt (child under 13)MORE: Albuquerque police crackdown on ‘vigilantes’ attempting to catch suspected child predators According to NMDOJ, all eight have been charged with crimes, including child solicitation via electronic devices, attempted criminal sexual penetration and other related offenses. Each defendant had sought to engage in sexual activity with a minor.”Operation Overwatch, which just last week culminated in the arrest of eight individual suspects and the issuance of an additional arrest warrant for individuals who were engaged with undercover agents from several different agencies,” Torrez said during Monday’s news conference. “Not only our agents here at DOJ, but also the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and Santa Fe Police Department, the Albuquerque Police Department over the last several weeks, various agents working in an undercover capacity establish decoy accounts on a number of different, nontraditional, digital platforms and digital messaging services,” Torrez said.Accounts used in operation from online platformsKikSkiptheGamesMocoSpaceDiscordGrindrFetlifeSniffies”What they were able to do was establish both underage personas and presented themselves as either minor children or as adults, usually parents who were offering to traffic children for sex. As a result, they were able to initiate contact with several suspects,” Torrez said. “Parents need to be mindful about what is going on with their kids and specifically who they are communicating with on video game platforms, and virtual spaces, every internet platform and social media application that they have.””I hope this is really a kind of a wakeup call to all these predators that come and prey on our children, our most vulnerable. Whether you’re within the state or outside of the state, there is no good reason to ever go after our most vulnerable,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Raul Bujanda said. “Every year, thousands of children become victims of crimes, whether it’s through kidnappings, violent attacks, sexual abuse, human trafficking or online predators. Today is another important example of law enforcement’s commitment to bringing child predators to justice and disrupt all forms of exploitation,” Bujanda said.”These cases are sickening. The disappointing thing is, we know there’s more of you out there. And as you can see, we’re a fortified front here, standing in front of you. We are looking for you. We will find you. We know that you can’t help yourself. So, we’re going to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable, which is our children,” Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said during Monday’s news conference.Faith Egbuonu: What message does this send for vigilante groups? Oftentimes, the lines are blurred.AG Ral Torrez: That’s critically important. Not just in this context, but in every context. The men here in uniform are highly trained and specially trained to deal with complex criminal investigations. Vigilantism has no place in our criminal justice system at all.It has no place in our society in terms of untrained cowboys taking it upon themselves to try and track people down. In fact, oftentimes they can not only endanger themselves, they can endanger other people, and they can also endanger strong criminal cases that we could otherwise put together and take people off the streets. So, I can’t say it strongly enough. There is no space, in any kind of vigilante activity in this operation or any other.Raul Bujanda, FBI Special Agent in Charge: The one thing Faith, I would add, we’re also 100% responsive. So, law enforcement is going to be there responding. So, we don’t need no vigilante group out there. We don’t see that really in the state of New Mexico, we’re always tracking to make sure they’re not going after this or any other type of activity. But this is something that law enforcement is going to be there 100% of the time.And I’ll even further add that some of these predators purposely don’t want their name out there. So, they use different types of pseudonyms or whatnot to try to make our job a little harder. They don’t really make it harder, but they think they’re making it harder. We’re going to find who they are. But a vigilante group might not have that information.They might actually be going up to going after someone who’s just going to be turned into a victim, because they had nothing to do with the scam itself.Albuquerque police Cmdr. Kyle Hartsock: We actually charged a vigilante group back in April. They were trying to do this, but there’s the law, just to be clear, only allows law enforcement to pretend to be a child in terms of charging someone. So, as they correctly stated, and we pointed out if this really was an offender you were catching, we can never charge them now.That’s all you’ve done. In many cases, they were entrapment, and they were going after very low IQ individuals it wasn’t necessarily even clear if they were actually trying to commit this issue. They were doing it for likes on Instagram. So, we charged four individuals with it back in April. Wanted to point that out. We send a strong message against that. Call police, call FBI, submit a tip online. Law enforcement works these cases every day.Faith Egbuonu: I know you all specified how important it is for parents to be involved with their children. For those that don’t have parents or guardians, how do we combat that? For kids that don’t have that guidance that are often taken advantage of. AG Ral Torrez: One of the initiatives that’s underway at the New Mexico Department of Justice is called the Smart Chats Program, where we are actually working with, school districts and educators across the state, both to get a baseline understanding from young people about what applications they’re on, what social media they’re using, what devices they use to communicate with people.We take in that information and process, and then we go back and talk to the leadership at the school, not only about specific ways they can engage with young people at the school to be more proactive and in sort of safeguarding their information and protecting themselves online, but to just raise the awareness level within educational institutions, because outside of the home, we think that schools are probably the next best place for us to engage, in that kind of public awareness and education. That said, Smart Chats is something that we are willing to partner with other civic groups, youth sports. Lots of different communities, based activities and organizations can reach out to us, Boy Scout troops and the like. We are happy to go in contact and work with leadership there to see if we can help raise some awareness with people.Jason T. Stevens, Homeland Security Investigations (El Paso): For Homeland Security Investigations, we have a federal campaign is called KNO2 Protect. It’s a federal campaign where we’ve also partnered with Snapchat, and we’ve created a lens for Snapchat. So, it can kind of create a quiz or interactive tool for, I want to say, young children or teens that are using that.It also allows parents to kind of facilitate that conversation by asking certain questions. The KNO2Protect campaign is something that they can go online and look for. They can use a Snapchat tool and hopefully that will enable them in some of those conversations.Note: KOAT is currently investigating the Albuquerque teacher’s school of employment Stay updated on the latest news updates with the KOAT app. You can download it here.

Categories
Small Business Lifestyle

Mobile home totally damaged after Germantown Road fire [Video]

THIS, WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED. CREWS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ARE STILL WORKING TO RESTORE POWER FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AND PROVIDE ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AFTER HELENES DEVASTATION THERE. THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SAYS 93 NORTH CAROLINIANS DIED FROM THAT STORM. BUNCOMBE COUNTY HAS THE HIGHEST COUNT, WITH DEATH TOLL 42 PEOPLE. BUT BUNCOMBE COUNTY OFFICIALS ARE KEEPING THEIR OWN DATA. THEY SAY THERE ARE MORE THAN 70 DEATHS IN THAT COUNTY ALONE. SO THE TOTAL FOR OUR STATE COULD BE HIGHER. AGAIN, WERE TRYING TO CONFIRM THOSE NUMBERS OF THOSE DEATHS IN BUNCOMBE COUNTY FOR WE KNOW WERE STUDENTS. THATS ACCORDING TO SCHOOL OFFICIALS. THE SUPERINTENDENT HAS NOT CONFIRMED WHICH SCHOOLS THEY ATTENDED. HE SAYS HIS STAFF ARE MAKING DIRECT CONTACT WITH MORE THAN 22,000 STUDENTS, BUT THEY ARE STILL TRYING TO REACH ABOUT 20 MORE. THE DISTRICT RESUMES CLASSES TOMORROW. WE ARE TOLD ALL SCHOOLS HAVE POWER, BUT ONLY 13 OUT OF 45 SCHOOLS HAVE WATER. SMALL BUSINESSES IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ARE EXPECTED TO BE SHUT DOWN FOR A WHILE, ESPECIALLY IMPACTING OWNERS AND EMPLOYEES. REX HODGE REPORTS ON GOVERNOR ROY COOPERS PLANS TO ASSIST THEM. GOVERNOR ROY COOPER SAYS SMALL BUSINESSES ARE PIVOTAL TO THE STATE. IT IS CERTAINLY THE BACKBONE OF THE WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ECONOMY. HELENE ARRIVED AS AN UNINVITED PATRON TO THE PISGAH FISH CAMP RESTAURANT IN PISGAH FOREST, FLOODING IT OUT AND CLOSING IT DOWN FOR NOW. WERE GOING TO BE DOWN FOR A LITTLE WHILE, BUT WEVE NOT LOST EVERYTHING. OWNER MIKE HAWKINS IS AWARE OF FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE. THERES LOW INTEREST LOANS RIGHT NOW FOR BUSINESSES THAT THEY CAN ACCESS, AND THERE ARE SBA LOANS. WE KNOW THAT, BUT I THINK THAT THIS IS SUCH AN UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS THAT WE NEED TO DO MORE THAN THAT. I WANT TO WORK IN A BIPARTISAN WAY WITH THE STATE LEGISLATURE, WITH CONGRESS, TO TRY TO COME UP WITH SOME KIND OF GRANT PROGRAM FOR OUR SMALL BUSINESSES. HAWKINS UNDERSTANDS THE CONCEPT. CAN WE SET UP ON A STATEWIDE BASIS? CAN WE SET UP SOMETHING SIMILAR TO WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE PANDEMIC WITH PPE LOANS THAT THEN MIGHT BE FORGIVEN UNDER CERTAIN PERFORMANCE STANDARDS? HAWKINS, ALSO CONCERNED ABOUT HIS STAFF CURRENTLY OUT OF WORK UNEMPLOYMENT. THERES ALSO DISASTER, UNEMPLOYMENT TO COVER THAT, BUT ITS STILL A REAL DISRUPTION. THE GOVERNOR ALSO TOURING PISGAH LABORATORIES A FEW MILES AWAY. WE MAKE ACTIVE PHARMACEUTICAL INGREDIENTS. THE FRENCH BROAD RIVER OVERFLOWING FROM ACROSS THIS FIELD AND GETTING THREE FEET DEEP INSIDE THE FACILITY. WHAT COULD BE SALVAGED, DRYING OUT IN THE SUN. SITE MANAGER DANNY BAILEY WELCOMES THE FINANCIAL AID IDEAS FROM THE GOVERNOR. ALL THAT SOUNDS GOOD. YEAH, BUT WHEN YOURE LOOKING AT THIS MUCH LOSS, ANYTHING IS A HELP. PISGAH LABORATORIES WILL HAVE TO FOLLOW SPECIFIC RULES. WE HAVE, YOU KNOW, OTHER REGULATORY ISSUES THAT WELL HAVE TO ADDRESS. YOU KNOW, WITH OTHER AGENCIES. BUT BAILEY REMAINS OPTIMISTIC. I THINK WE CAN GET THINGS BACK UP AND HER 43 EMPLOYEES ARE STILL WORKING. THEYVE JUST HAD TO WEAR A LOT OF DIFFERENT HATS. HAWKINS ALSO COMMITTED TO GETTING HIS FAMILY TRADITION RESTAURANT BACK ON THE MENU. REX HODGE REPORTING THERE. HAWKINS SAYS HES KEEPING HIS FINGERS CROSSED HE WILL BE OPEN. HELL BE ABLE TO REOPEN THE PISGAH FISH CAMP BY CHRISTMAS. MEANTIME, THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION HAS APPROVED. $441 MILLION IN FUNDING FOR THOSE HELENE SURVIVORS. THIS IS IN ADDITION TO THE NEARLY 350 MILLION GOING TOWARDS REBUILDING FOR NORTH CAROLINA. FEMA HAS APPROVED MORE THAN $79 MILLION IN ASSISTANCE FOR MORE THAN 62,000 HOUSEHOLDS. ITS LEADERS ALSO SAY 92% OF CELL SERVICE HAS BEEN RESTORED, AND SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM