background preloader

Urban America

Facebook Twitter

Springfield’s high rates of gun violence, domestic abuse are linked, experts say. Six years later, the Greene County Family Justice Center opened.

Springfield’s high rates of gun violence, domestic abuse are linked, experts say

It’s the only such organization in the state. Willis, at the center, said it’s a game changer. Before, victims had to navigate multiple agencies across the sprawling city to get help, whether for legal support, housing, counseling or child services. Now partnerships among 10 public and private agencies provide an array of services for survivors of family violence, child and elder abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking — all in one safe place. “Domestic violence is not going to be stopped overnight, we’ve got a lot of work to do. The county has not seen a drop in domestic abuse or gun violence. In 2014, Springfield police made one stride in how officers respond to domestic violence calls by implementing lethality assessments, which measure how likely a victim is to be killed by their abuser.

Untitled. FRANKLIN COUNTY — An eighth grade boy has died of com­pli­ca­tions due to the coron­avirus, the Wash­ing­ton School District con­firmed Sun­day.

untitled

He is the first per­son younger than 18 to die of COVID-19 in Mis­souri, ac­cord­ing to state health data. Pey­ton Baum­garth, a stu­dent at Wash­ing­ton Mid­dle School, died over the week­end, district of­fi­cials said in a let­ter to par­ents. He last at­tended school on Oct. 22 and be­gan a quar­an­tine last week. He was hos­pi­tal­ized as his symp­toms wors­ened, of­fi­cials said. District of­fi­cials said the fam­ily was ask­ing that “we all re­mem­ber to wear masks, wash hands fre­quently and fol­low guide­lines.

Deaths in chil­dren from the virus are rare. Untitled. Written by Rebecca Cairns, CNN Although we're surrounded by millions of them every day, most of us don't think about bricks too often.

untitled

For thousands of years, the humble clay-fired brick hasn't changed. The building blocks of modern suburban homes would be familiar to the city planners of ancient Babylon, the bricklayers of the Great Wall of China, or the builders of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral. But the brick as we know it causes significant environmental problems, by using up raw, finite materials and creating carbon emissions. That's why Gabriela Medero, a professor of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University, decided to reinvent it. Originally from Brazil, Medero says she was drawn to civil engineering because it gave her passion for maths and physics a practical outlet. Untitled. UNIVERSITY CITY • The developer pitching a $190 million shopping center at Olive Boulevard and I-170 sought to win over a standing-room-only crowd at the first public hearing for the city commission weighing $70 million in tax-increment financing assistance.

untitled

About 400 to 500 people filled the Mandarin House event center Wednesday night to hear details on the ambitious proposal, which city officials say they hope to leverage as a revenue source for neighborhood stabilization efforts in the city’s 3rd Ward north of Olive Boulevard, long the poorer area of town. “I’m in the dark,” said Kim Brown, an 18-year resident of the 3rd Ward who came Wednesday night to learn more about the project. Novus Development, the Webster Groves-based developer pitching the project, would buy out roughly 50 acres, including more than 60 homes, near the interchange for a mixed use development anchored by a big-box retailer. “I don’t know a better sales tax generator than the one we have,” he said.

Policing the Police. Chicago’s Murder Problem. Researchers just discovered a hidden factor that could be driving violent crimes. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) Researchers at the National Bureau for Economic Research say they have found a startling connection between exposure to outdoor pollution and an increase in violent crime.

Researchers just discovered a hidden factor that could be driving violent crimes

Forward Through Ferguson A Path Toward Racial Equality. The Man Who Shot Michael Brown. ‘Verbatim: The Ferguson Case’ Continue reading the main story Video By now, most Americans have heard of Ferguson, Mo.: on Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, on a street in that suburb of St.

‘Verbatim: The Ferguson Case’

Louis. Rollingstone. Hen Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race crisis: It changed the subject.

rollingstone

Instead of using the incident to talk about a campaign of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal searches and arrests across decades of discriminatory policing policies, the debate revolved around whether or not the teenagers who set fire to two West Baltimore CVS stores after Gray's death were "thugs," or merely wrongheaded criminals. From Eric Garner to Michael Brown to Akai Gurley to Tamir Rice to Walter Scott and now Freddie Gray, there have now been so many police killings of African-American men and boys in the past calendar year or so that it's been easy for both the media and the political mainstream to sell us on the idea that the killings are the whole story.

A. Most Americans have never experienced this kind of policing.