Philadelphia Police, Officials To Release Body Camera Footage of Walter Wallace Shooting

Philadelphia city officials and the police department said they will release the body camera footage and 911-tapes of the Walter Wallace Jr. shooting that occurred on Monday.

Wallace Jr. was shot and killed Monday night by two Philadelphia police officers during a confrontation after police responded to a report of a man carrying a weapon. According to Fox News, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw made the announcement Wednesday, saying the department will release the video “in the near future,” but plans on meeting with Wallace’s family first “to ensure they get an opportunity to view the materials first.”

Since Wallace was shot Monday, Philadelphia has endured three nights of turmoil as thousands have protested and rioted. Videos across social media showed looters running into a Walmart, breaking into a Chick-fil-A, and pulling items out of a Foot Locker. According to the New York Times, protesters also set fires to debris on the street and damaged Philadelphia police cruisers.

Fifty-three officers have been hurt and 172 people have been arrested Monday and Tuesday night combined.

When Outlaw and city officials release the footage, it will be the first time the Philadelphia Police Department has ever released body camera footage of a shooting, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

John McNesby, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5, released a video on Twitter urging Outlaw and city officials to release the footage.

A message from President John McNesby. Please share. @FOPLodge5 @john_mcnesby pic.twitter.com/AJAKed7Xlw

— FOPLodge5 (@FOPLodge5) October 28, 2020

 

“We’re calling on the city leadership to release the facts of this case. It’s not hard,” McNesby said. “It’s cut and dry, release what you have. Support your officers, back your officers and let’s get a handle on this thing.”

Wallace’s father, Walter Wallace Sr., told CNN Tuesday his son was bipolar and in crisis at the time of the incident. Shaka Johnson, an attorney representing the Wallace family, said in a news conference Tuesday, relatives called the authorities three times including once when Wallace’s brother asked for an ambulance.

“Law enforcement was called because they wanted an ambulance to come here,” Johnson told reporters. “The police are who arrived first.”

Johnson added Wallace’s wife told the officers when they arrived Wallace was “manic, bipolar” and in crisis.

“Unfortunately, the officers were not equipped with the training or the proper equipment to deal with a person who was experiencing crisis in that moment,” Johnson told CNN. “You don’t deal with crisis with a firearm.”

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Federal appeals court suggests late-arriving Minnesota ballots may be tossed

A panel of federal appellate judges ruled Thursday that ballots that arrive after polls close in Minnesota on Election Day must be segregated from ballots that arrive earlier, suggesting that future rulings could invalidate the late-arriving ballots.

In Minnesota, ballots are typically required to be returned to election officials by mail by the time polls close in order to count. But for the 2020 election, a consent decree agreed to by Secretary of State Steve Simon mandated that ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received within seven days would count.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel split 2-1 on its order that the late-arriving ballots be segregated, which would allow them to be removed from the final count if a court later threw them out. The judges ruled that the case was “likely to succeed on the merits.”

The case was originally brought by a pair of Electoral College electors for President Donald Trump in Minnesota, James Carson and Eric Lucero. Separately, the Trump campaign and Republican state legislative candidates petitioned the state Supreme Court to segregate ballots that arrive after the close of polls earlier in the week.

Trump’s campaign targeted Minnesota earlier in the cycle as a potential flip target after losing it by just 1.5 percentage points in 2016, but it appeared to fall off the battleground map in the fall. However, the state is seeing a late spurt of campaign action, with both Trump and Joe Biden holding events in Minnesota on Friday.

Judges Bobby Shepherd, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, and Trump appointee L. Steven Grasz formed the majority. Judge Jane Kelly, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, dissented.

There’s an additional layer of complexity in the case beyond separating certain types of ballots: The court suggested only votes in the presidential contest may be tossed out if the consent decree is invalidated. The court’s order says the ballots should be separated “in a manner that would allow for their respective votes for presidential electors … to be removed from vote totals in the event a final order is entered by a court of competent jurisdiction determining such votes to be invalid or unlawfully counted.”

Simon’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Democrats in the state slammed the ruling and urged voters to submit their ballots in-person.

“This absurd and misguided opinion will toss out the rules that have been in place since before voting began in September,” Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party, said in a statement. “I urge the people of Minnesota to return any outstanding mail-in ballots in-person as soon as possible. The reason the Republican Party is attacking your right to vote is because of the power of that vote to change our state and country.”

Shepherd and Grasz noted in their ruling that their decision could cause confusion among voters, with just days to go until Election Day.

“The consequences of this order are not lost on us. We acknowledge and understand the concerns over voter confusion, election administration issues, and public confidence in the election that animate the Purcell principle,” citing a doctrine that federal courts generally should not disrupt election rules close to Election Day.

“With that said, we conclude the challenges that will stem from this ruling are preferable to a postelection scenario where mail-in votes, received after the statutory deadline, are either intermingled with ballots received on time or invalidated without prior warning,” they continued.

It is the second case in as many days in which federal courts suggested that late-arriving ballots could still be tossed, even potentially after Election Day.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to expedite a Republican challenge to an extended Pennsylvania deadline but left open the option of ruling on the case after Election Day.

In a statement accompanying the denial in Pennsylvania, Justice Samuel Alito noted in the Pennsylvania case that the secretary of the commonwealth issued guidance to local election officials earlier on Wednesday to segregate ballots received after the close of polls but before the Nov. 6 deadline, cracking the door for a potential post-election decision.

Alito’s statement suggested that he believes those ballots could still be tossed, even if a ruling comes after Election Day. “The Court’s denial of the motion to expedite is not a denial of a request for this Court to order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if the State Supreme Court’s decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available,” he wrote.

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Gig companies break $200M barrier in California ballot fight

OAKLAND — California officially has its first $200 million ballot campaign, courtesy of the homegrown tech industry.

Proposition 22 always figured to be an enormously expensive fight. Five gig economy firms invested $110 million just at the outset of their effort to exempt themselves from a new state law that could force them to treat app-summoned workers as employees rather than contractors.

The campaign has lived up to those expectations. A late October $3.75 million outlay from DoorDash pushed proponents' fundraising total to roughly $203 million. Virtually all of that has come from five companies trying to preserve their contractor-reliant business models: Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Instacart and DoorDash.

The implications: The Prop 22 campaign has always been a financial mismatch. While organized labor wields significant sway in California politics, the union-driven opposition campaign has pulled in about $20 million. That used to be a decent sum in California ballot campaigns, but is merely one-tenth of what their opponents have committed.

Despite those lopsided numbers, which have helped the yes side saturate California's airwaves, polling suggests Prop 22 could fail. A Berkeley IGS poll this month found the measure short of a majority, claiming support from 46 percent of likely voters.

The bigger context: Before this, the fundraising record for a single side of an initiative campaign was the roughly $111 million kidney dialysis companies spent in 2018 to beat back Proposition 8. The tech industry was poised to shatter that from the start.

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