Frey nominates O’Hara to be next Minneapolis police chief

The nominee for Minneapolis’ next chief of police was announced Thursday.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey formally announced Brian O’Hara as his nominee for the role at a morning news conference after sources confirmed his nomination to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

KSTP previously reported that O’Hara was one of three finalists for the job. He’s currently a deputy mayor of police services in Newark, New Jersey.

Interim Minneapolis Police Chief Amelia Huffman was not included in the search committee’s final three candidates.

Moscow's proxies in occupied Ukraine regions report big votes to join Russia

Russian-installed officials in occupied regions of Ukraine reported huge majorities on Tuesday in favour of becoming part of Russia after five days of voting in so-called referendums that Kyiv and the West denounced as a sham.

Hastily arranged votes had taken place in four areas - the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and to the south Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - that make up about 15% of Ukrainian territory.

Luhansk authorities said 98.4% of people there had voted to join Russia. In Zaporizhzhia, a Russian-appointed official put the figure at 93.1%. In Kherson, the head of the voting committee put the "yes" vote at above 87%.

Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said 99.2% of participants in the region had voted to join Russia. All four areas said all ballots had been counted.

The Cherokee Nation is again calling on Congress to deliver on a 200-year-old promise

The Cherokee Nation is renewing its campaign for representation in Congress, calling on federal legislators to honor a treaty that the US government made nearly 200 years ago.

In a video released last week, the tribal nation reasserted its demand that Congress seat its delegate in the House of Representatives – a right stipulated by the 1835 Treaty of New Echota.

Under the treaty, brokered between the US government and a minority group of Cherokee leaders who claimed to represent the tribe, the Cherokee were ultimately made to give up their ancestral land in the South and relocate to present-day Oklahoma. Though a majority of the Cherokee people – including then-Principal Chief John Ross – opposed the treaty, it was ratified in 1836. About a quarter of the tribe’s population died of disease, starvation and exhaustion on the resulting journey now known as the Trail of Tears.

In exchange for their homelands, the Cherokee were promised $5 million, new land and other provisions, among them a delegate in the House of Representatives. “For two centuries, Congress has failed to honor that promise,” Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in the video, referring to the delegate. “However, the Treaty of New Echota has no expiration date. The obligation to seat a Cherokee Nation delegate is as binding today as it was in 1835.”

Family says fatal shooting case shows ‘stand your ground’ defense doesn’t work for Black men

William “Marc” Wilson was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a shooting that he says was in self-defense against a racist attack on a Georgia highway, and his family and lawyers say the case reveals a racial double standard for “stand your ground” laws.

“If you put me in Marc’s shoes, there’s no way that I would've been prosecuted,” Wilson’s cousin, Chance Pridgen, who is white, told Yahoo News. “Odds are I would've been given a medal — probably gotten a parade in my name. It’s unreal how he was treated just because he’s a little bit more tan than I am.”

Wilson, a biracial Black man, 21 years old at the time of the shooting on June 14, 2020, fired his legal handgun at a pickup truck of white teens who he says were yelling racial slurs at him and trying to run him and his white girlfriend off the road near Statesboro, Ga. One of those bullets struck and killed 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson, who was in the back seat of the truck.

After an emotional seven-day trial late last month in Bulloch County Superior Court, a jury found Wilson guilty of felony-level involuntary manslaughter. Wilson was acquitted on the other charges, including felony murder, which carried with it a potential life prison sentence. He is set to be sentenced Tuesday.

Harvey Mayor's Security Fires Shots at Robbery Suspect in Chicago

A security detail for Harvey Mayor Christopher Clark fired shots at a masked individual who pointed a weapon at them during an attempted robbery on Chicago's North Side, officials said Wednesday.

According to a statement from the mayor's office, the incident occurred just before 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Members of the mayor's security detail observed a man, wearing a black ski mask, exit a Jeep and point a gun at an 86-year-old man in an attempted robbery in the 1500 block of North Halsted.

That security detail then exited their vehicle near the mayor's residence and attempted to intercept the suspect. The man then pointed his weapon at the security officers, and at least one of the officers then opened fire, striking the Jeep.