(NEW YORK) — Here are today’s In Crisis headlines:
Injuries, arrests in Philadelphia during protests over police shooting of Black man
At least 30 police officers were injured and over 33 people arrested in Philadelphia Monday night during protests over the fatal police shooting Monday afternoon of a Black man in West Philadelphia. According to WPVI, police responded at around 3:50 p.m. to a domestic disturbance call and confronted a man at the scene who was holding a knife. In a confrontation recorded on video by a bystander, the man — identified by neighbors as Walter Wallace — reportedly refused calls to drop the knife and was subsequently shot and killed by police.
All of the officers injured in the ensuing protests were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, the most serious of which appears to be a female officer whose leg was broken when she was reportedly struck by a vehicle in the early morning hours. That officer remains hospitalized. Arrests including charges ranging from assault on police officers and rioting to looting and firearms possession, according to Philadelphia police.
The names of the officers who fired the shots were not immediately disclosed. Both were wearing body cameras and were taken off street duty pending the investigation. Philadelphia police say an investigation into the shooting continues.
NYPD, city sued over police tactics against George Floyd death protestors
A federal civil rights lawsuit claims the protestors in New York City following the death of George Floyd they were met with a “brutal response” that included “the very pattern of police violence they marched to end.” The suit, filed against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and more than three dozen individual officers, was brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society. It further claims, in part, that officers “descended on protesters with unjustifiable fist and baton strikes, chemical pepper spray attacks, and other acts of physical violence” that left many with “bloody head wounds, concussions, broken bones, and emotional trauma.”
There was no immediate response to the suit from Mayor de Blasio, who disavowed aggressive police tactics at the time of the protests yet largely defended the NYPD response. Several officers were referred for discipline after their behavior was recorded in video. “Trust is critical to effective policing. Trust takes a long time to earn and it is very easy to lose. We will continue to work relentlessly to earn and keep that trust because without community partnership, we cannot effectively do our jobs,” Commissioner Shea said, while also defending his officers’ behavior as a whole.
COVID-19 numbers
Here’s the latest data on COVID-19 coronavirus infections and deaths.
Latest reported numbers globally per Johns Hopkins University
Global diagnosed cases: 43,571,756
Global deaths: 1,160,421. The United States has the most deaths of any single country, with 225,739.
Number of countries/regions: at least 189
Total patients recovered globally: 29,234,996
Latest reported numbers in the United States per Johns Hopkins University
There are at least 8,705,127 reported cases in 50 states + the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. This is more than in any other country.
U.S. deaths: at least 225,739. New York State has the greatest number of reported deaths in the U.S., with 33,424.
U.S. total patients recovered: 3,460,455
U.S. total people tested: 133,750,060
The greatest number of reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is in California, with 911,235 confirmed cases out of a total state population of 39.51 million. That ranks third in the world after Maharashtra, India, which has 1,648,665- reported cases, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, which has 1,092,843 reported cases.
Fauci says get used to wearing masks for “return to normalcy”; current COVID-19 wave “not good news”
Dr. Anthony Fauci is advising the world to get used to wearing masks if we want to get back to anything approaching normal. In an essay he co-authored for the Journal of the American Medical Association, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor writes, in part, “As countries around the world seek to safely reopen businesses, schools, and other facets of society, mask use in the community to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2…is and will remain critical. Return to normalcy will require the widespread acceptance and adoption of mask wearing and other inexpensive and effective interventions as part of the COVID-19 prevention toolbox.”
Speaking Monday at a Yahoo Finance event, Fauci also described the current spike in COVID-19 cases as “an elongated — and an exacerbation of — the original first wave” of infections. Fauci noted that even though some states and U.S. regions managed to reduce their infection numbers by mandating mask use, business closures and quarantines, many others didn’t and continue not to. “Now as we’re getting into the cold weather, we came back up again to the worst that we’ve ever had, which was over 80,000 per day,” he said of the current case increase, adding that it’s “kind of semantics” whether you wish to describe the infections as coming in waves. “You want to call it the third wave or extended first wave. No matter how you look at it, it’s not good news,” Fauci said.
According to the latest ABC News analysis, 38 states are reporting increasing rates of COVID-19 positivity and 35 are reporting an increase in hospitalizations. According to the Covid Tracking Project, there are currently over 43,000 Americans hospitalized with the coronavirus, with the overall number of U.S. cases, hospitalizations and daily deaths trending upward.
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