A Michigan high school that has been tormented by racist hate speech for the past 4 years is in one other episode after white students allegedly drew Ku Klux Klan and Nazi symbols on minority students’ vehicles.

The most up-to-date incident occurred Sept. 13 at the tip of school at Saline High School, in line with Saline Area Schools Superintendent Stephen Laatsch, who issued a press release to district families the following day saying he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by “incidents related to with hate speech at school. “Racism in any form has no place in our community and we are committed to addressing this issue with the seriousness it deserves,” he said.

Laatsch said the investigation is still ongoing, but administrators “have contacted the victims’ families and have been able to identify students suspected of being involved.”

He said the implications of acts of hate speech, as defined in the scholar handbook, include a “tripartite approach to intervention” that features “discipline, education and restorative practices.” Discipline may include detention, suspension or expulsion.

Acknowledging that “events like these often reverberate throughout our school and broader community,” Laatsch said the district is putting together a team to offer support to students and staff and pointing families to resources, including guides on stopping and responding to bias and tips on how to seek advice from children about racial prejudice.

The Instagram account of Saline High School’s Black Student Union (BSU), formed in 2022 after previous hate speech incidents on the school, posted photos reportedly from the day that included racist slurs, Nazi symbols and references to the KKK dirt on vehicles two minority students, MLive reported.

BSU President Aliyah Carrao, who runs the account, said group members knew the scholars answerable for the situation and added that they were “people that many of the group members called friends, so honestly, we’re all stuck.” But what we do as a bunch when people comment on it is, at the start, educate.”

For several years, black students at Saline High have been burdened with educating their peers and other community members about racism, including for greater than controversial exchange of racist messages on the Snapchat account of a bunch of mixed-race students in January 2020, resulting in the suspension of 4 students.

Students who used racist memes and phrases comparable to “We ni-er,” “WHITE POWER” and “THE SOUTH RISE AGAIN” of their posts later sued the school system, arguing that the chats took place off campus and that they were being violated. the fitting to freedom of speech. The case was settled at the tip of 2020.

Black and Latino students and their parents then attended school board meetings to protest racism and xenophobia in district schools and lobby for diversity, equity and inclusion practices, prompting one parent to ask one other why he “wasn’t in Mexico.” “

In 2021, a bunch of parents of Saline High students sued U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland over a memo he issued to the FBI and U.S. prosecutors regarding threats of violence and intimidation made to teachers, staff and school board members across the country on the time.

In their criticism, the parents argued that it was their constitutional right to get up at school board meetings and criticize the school district for its “harmful, immoral and racist progressive agenda,” as evidenced by the district allowing the school to fly a Black Lives Matter flag and a culturally responsive curriculum , which parents considered “disguised CRT,” was suppressed within the Merrick Memo and other federal policies.

A federal appeals court dismissed the case in December 2023, finding that the parents had not demonstrated any injury and that their right to complain and protest was fully intact.

The N-word was twice scrawled on the wall of a Saline High School boys’ bathroom last fall, prompting the Black Student Union, which now has 28 members, to call for tougher penalties for discriminatory behavior during a November school board meeting.

Earlier this yr, Black and minority students met on multiple occasions with district officials, including Laatsch, to deal with systemic concerns about racism and promote a more welcoming school environment, in line with MLive. At the school board meeting, Corrao advocated for a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and advised officials that Saline’s “actions – more than words – will have the greatest impact on students.”

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Saline, situated south of Ann Arbor, has a population of 8,948. Its residents are 93.6% white, 1.4% African American, 2.5% Hispanic or Latino, and a couple of.5% Asian.

Although the Saline High football coach declined to comment, Solankowa Post Office reported that several people on the school confirmed that “white football players” who “allegedly wrote the N-word on a black football player’s vehicle … were not on the team during Friday’s game,” during which individuals from the opposing team and a part of the scholar body chanted, “Saline is racist “.

Parent Kandace Jones, a former Saline school board member who has two sons within the district and whose oldest Tenth-grade student is a member of BSU, told MLive that racism against Black and minority students has been occurring for therefore long that it has turn into normalized.

“There are many incidents every year, many of which are not shared, and my son feels desensitized to it,” she said. “It’s incredibly disappointing and heartbreaking to see that it’s so normal for them that they just shrug and say, ‘Yes, that’s what it is.'”

“I feel like the school is taking this process more seriously this time than they did last year,” Corrao said of the district’s response to the most recent racial slurs and symbols. “It’s not something we can give up,” she said. “We want change.”

NEW YORK (AP) — FBI agents raided the official residence of New York Mayor Eric Adams and confiscated his phone early Thursday morning, hours before an indictment containing criminal charges against the Democrat was expected to be made public.

Adams was accused by a grand jury on federal criminal charges that remain sealed, in response to two people aware of the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to debate the matter publicly.

Federal law enforcement officers were spotted entering the mayor’s Manhattan residence at dawn on Wednesday. Several vehicles with federal law enforcement banners were parked outside the residence.

“Federal agents showed up at Gracie Mansion this morning to create a spectacle (again) and take Mayor Adams’ phone (again). He has not been arrested and is eagerly awaiting his day in court,” Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, said in an announcement. “They are sending a dozen agents to retrieve the phone when we would gladly give it to him.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on the investigation. Adams’ attorney and the mayor’s spokesman didn’t immediately reply to questions Thursday morning.

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In a videotaped speech released Wednesday evening, Adams vowed to fight all charges against him, saying he had been “targeted” in a case “built on lies.”

“I will fight these injustices with all my strength and spirit,” he said.

It was not initially clear what laws Adams was accused of breaking or when he would must appear in court.

The indictment ends a rare few weeks in New York, where federal investigators zeroed in on those closest to Adams, prompting a flurry of raids, subpoenas and high-profile resignations.

Federal prosecutors are believed to be pursuing multiple separate investigations into Adams and his senior associates, relatives of those associates, campaign fundraising and possible influence peddling throughout the police and fire departments.

In the past two weeks alone, town’s police commissioner and the varsity system’s superintendent have announced their resignations.

FBI agents seized Adams’ electronic devices nearly a yr ago as part of an investigation focused, no less than partly, on Adams’ campaign contributions and interactions with the Turkish government. Because the fees were sealed, it was unclear whether or not they were the identical.

On September 5, federal investigators seized devices belonging to the police commissioner, the faculties chancellor, two deputy mayors and other trusted figures each inside and outdoors City Hall.

They all denied any irregularities.

Registered sex offender Billy Dupree had been free for six months after he strangled a 16-year-old black girl named Deleisha Kelley in 2014, raped her, then drove her body across state lines from Kansas to Missouri, where he dumped her body.

Yet despite DNA evidence from semen and Dupree’s phone records, obtained in 2015, linking him to the crime, Dupree was not arrested and charged with first-degree murder until 2023.

Earlier this month, prosecutors offered him a deal that reduced the first-degree murder charge to involuntary manslaughter, the bottom level of murder. Kelley was not informed of the deal by his family.

It seems Dupree’s uncle is the district attorney for Wyandotte County, Kansas, the identical county where the trial was set to begin on Monday.

Mark Dupree’s office didn’t prosecute the case since it was handled by the Kansas attorney general’s office, however the trial was scheduled to happen in the identical courthouse, which is taken into account the district attorney’s “home turf,” the editorial said. Kansas City Star.

“Any suggestion that the judge or the Attorney General’s Office was in any way influenced by Mr. Dupree’s family ties is false,” a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said. Fox 4.

Dupree was elected to the position of Wyandotte County District Attorney in August 2016 and was re-elected in 2020.

However, Kelley’s family believes Billy Dupree’s uncle was a serious reason he was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter.

“They ripped off the scabs for nothing,” said her mother, Kellie Blewett. Kansas City Star“The system failed.”

Not only was there DNA and cellphone evidence linking Dupree to the murder, but his neighbor testified during a September 2023 hearing that Dupree knocked on his door on the morning of December 18, 2014, asking for help getting rid of the girl’s body.

“He said he had an underage girl there and that he had to kill her, strangle her,” the neighbor testified, according to the Kansas City Star.

The neighbor further testified that Dupree told him he “didn’t want to go back to jail if anyone found out he had sex” with one other underage girl.

The neighbor said he looked into Dupree’s apartment and saw a pair of feet protruding of his bedroom.

“I got out of there as fast as I could,” the neighbor said.

Kelley’s body was discovered in an abandoned garage in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 21, 2014, wrapped in a blanket. She was wearing only her underwear.

Investigation

It took several weeks for investigators to discover Kelley’s body, prompting them to search her cellphone call records, which showed she had made several calls to Dupree before her death.

Her last call was to 911, however it was never answered. Her cellphone records also showed she was inside 0.1 miles of Dupree’s residence.

At some point through the investigation, DNA from Dupree’s semen was found on Kelley’s body, further linking him to the murder.

He was summoned for questioning on January 28, 2015, six weeks after her murder – but was not arrested until eight years later, on January 4, 2023.

It then became clear to Kelley’s family that something was fallacious.

“Everything was known from day one — nothing happened,” Kelley’s uncle, Vinson Smith, told Fox 4 on the time.

“I’m sure we’re not the first family this has happened to, but that’s the most important thing. OK, I think we’re finally being heard, or something is being heard.”

But nine months later, prosecutors offered Dupree a plea deal that reduced the first-degree murder charge to manslaughter. They told the family the case was “old, so there’s no guarantee” of a conviction.

Dupree, 39, had been incarcerated since November 2020 for robbery, drug possession and deprivation of liberty, according to the Kansas City Star. He was previously imprisoned for child sex crimes, aggravated assault and criminal damage to property committed between 2003 and 2006.

The plea deal means Dupree could receive a 15-year sentence as an alternative of life. The Kansas City Star also reports that the brand new sentence will run concurrently with the one he’s currently serving, meaning he’ll only serve an extra 4 to five years. Sentencing will happen on November 22.

“I saw a bunch of bleach bottles in his trash,” his neighbor testified in September 2023, after telling jurors that Dupree asked him to help move the body. “I knew he was trying to clean up that shit.”