Arizona officer holds Black man at gunpoint while looking for white suspect

Ronald Kerzaya is under investigation and has been reassigned to an ‘administrative role’ following the incident. 

A Tempe, Arizona, police officer is under investigation after he held a Black hotel employee at gunpoint while searching for a white suspect. 

Officer Ronald Kerzaya has been reassigned to an “administrative role,” following the August 29 incident, the police department announced Thursday. 

Kerzaya was one of several officers who responded to a call from Hawthorn Suites about a suspect with a gun who taunted an employee, NBC News reports. The hotel manager’s description of the suspect included that he was white and that he would be exiting through a certain door, according to surveillance footage. 

Read More: Arizona police shoot Black man who failed to show up to court with bean bags

Video from the officer’s body-camera shows him going to that door with his gun drawn. When the door opens, however, out steps a Black male employee named Tre. 

Watch the news report below.

Kerzaya holds Tre at gunpoint for more than 2 minutes while he verifies employment. 

The armed white suspect was not located, according to the report.

“Our initial review indicates that this incident was not handled in accordance with the professionalism and respectful behavior that we, and the public, have for our officers,” the Tempe Police Department said in a statement.

Mayor Corey Woods also noted in a statement, “While the matter is under investigation and we will await the outcome of that examination, from our early review of the body camera footage, the Officer’s actions were not a demonstration of the quality of service or treatment of people that Tempe seeks to, can and must provide.”

Woods said of Tre, “We all can imagine the horrible feelings—the humiliation and fear—that the employee felt during the incident and since.”

Officer Kerzaya has been with the force for 4 years. He was previously involved in the controversial tasing of a Black man holding a baby last year. An internal investigation concluded in did nothing wrong.

Mayor Woods said of Kerzaya’s moment with Tre, “The fact that no one was injured is a great relief, but that does little to reduce the dissatisfaction with this incident.”

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Cuomo says NYC can reopen indoor dining at 25% capacity

Customers are encouraged to report restaurants not in compliance with new restrictions. 

New York City restaurants can resume indoor dining at the end of the month but with certain restrictions. 

Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday (Sept. 9) that the six-month ban on indoor dining will be lifted on Sept. 30, allowing eateries to offer seating at 25% capacity. 

All patrons must agree to have their temperature checked at the door and diners are required to wear masks when not seated at a table, New York Times reports. An individual from each party must also provide information for possible contract tracing.

“Twenty-five percent is not that much, but it’s something where you can do some math and know, more or less, how many customers you can have every day,” said Giovanni Gelfini, owner of the Brooklyn restaurant Santa Panza, according to the Times report. 

Read More: Cuomo announces all New York schools can reopen this fall

Indoor dining in the city was banned in mid-March as the coronavirus pandemic worsened. Many restaurants have struggled with takeout and delivery orders. An estimated 1,000 restaurants have reportedly closed this year due to the pandemic. 

UPDATE: On September 30, indoor dining in NYC can resume at 25% capacity.

Strict restrictions will be in place. pic.twitter.com/ORzwGM67PQ

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) September 9, 2020

“We’ll exist again, that’s the important thing,” restauranteur Julie Lumia tells the Times. “But we really have to see how comfortable everybody feels about going inside. It’s a tricky one.”

Cuomo said the decision to allow indoor service to resume comes after significant improvement with compliance of social distancing restrictions at restaurants and bars. At a news conference, he noted that capacity could be lifted to 50% by Nov. 1.

“Because compliance has gotten so much better, we can now take the next step,” the governor said.

“There’s a whole industry around restaurants, and restaurants also pose a possible risk,” Cuomo explained. “But there’s also a great economic loss when they don’t operate.”

Cuomo said the state is developing a system for customers to use to report restaurants not in compliance. 

“This may not look like the indoor dining that we all know and love, but it is progress for restaurant workers and all New Yorkers,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

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Kool & the Gang member and co-founder Ronald ‘Khalis’ Bell dead at 68

A cause of death for Bell, who died at his home in the US Virgin Islands, is not yet known

Kool & the Gang member and co-founder Ronald “Khalis” Bell has died at 68, his publicist confirmed on Wednesday.

Bell died at his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Wednesday morning with his wife by his side, his publicist Sujata Murthy confirmed to ABC News. His cause of death is not yet known.

Read More: College football player Jamain Stephens, 20, dies from COVID-19

Co-founded with his brother Robert “Kool” Bell in the 1960s, Ronald Bell enjoyed massive success with the R&B and funk band Kool & the Gang, winning a Grammy Award and seven American Music Awards.

The band was honored with the Soul Train Award Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.

Robert Kool Bell and Ronald Bell, of Kool & The Gang arrive at Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation’s Angel Ball 2017 at Cipriani Wall Street on October 23, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation For Cancer Research )

Dennis Thomas, James “JT” Taylor, Robert “Kool” Bell, Ronald Bell, and George Brown of Kool & The Gang pose with their awards backstage during the Songwriters Hall of Fame 49th Annual Induction and Awards Dinner at New York Marriott Marquis Hotel on June 14, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame)

Bell was a self-taught magician who used multiple instruments including the horn lines, bass and synthesizer. He also sang as a part of the musical group.

According to ABC, he wrote and composed some of Kool & the Gang’s biggest songs including “Celebration,” “Cherish,” “Jungle Boogie” and “Summer Madness.” “Summer Madness,” in particular, was used in several films including Baby Boy and Rocky. The song also appeared in a 2006 Nike commercial starring LeBron James. More recently, the song was sampled by singer Jhene Aiko for her song “Summer 2020.”

Read More: John Thompson, Hall of Fame basketball coach who led Georgetown to title, dead at 78

The musician was reportedly working on new material including a solo project, Kool Baby Brotha Band. Bell was also working on a series of animated shorts called Kool TV about his childhood with his brother and their storied career.

Bell is survived by his 10 children.

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Woodward IDs Florida county targeted by Russians, a claim countered by local officials

TALLAHASSEE — A new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward contends that Russian hackers successfully penetrated the voter files of St. Lucie County in 2016, a claim election officials in the county previously denied in interviews with POLITICO.

The identity of two counties accessed by Russians during the last presidential election has been a mystery since special counsel Robert Mueller disclosed in 2019 that Russian hackers had penetrated voting registration systems in the battleground state.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May 2019 briefed Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s congressional delegation about the Russian attack and disclosed that hackers had accessed files in two counties. No vote totals were affected, but federal officials asked that the names of the two counties be kept confidential.

POLITICO last year identified Washington County in the Florida Panhandle as one of the two counties.

A high-level official privately had identified St. Lucie as the second county. But St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker and her systems administrator, John Spradlin, told POLITICO in December 2019 that their system had not been infiltrated.

“I would be the first guy to know about it. I’m the IT guy,” Spradlin said in an interview at a conference of state election supervisors held at a central Florida golf resort.

Spradlin said federal officials had given the county no information to suggest that its systems had been penetrated during the 2016 election.

“Nothing happened in 2016,” Spradlin said.

St. Lucie — like other counties — had received a warning about phishing emails designed to mimic ones from a voter registration system vendor, he said.

“All we knew about was the whole thing with those phishing emails,” said Spradlin. Any talk of Russians penetrating voter registration systems in St. Lucie “would be news to me,” he said in 2019.

Walker stood next to Spradlin as he answered questions about the Russians.

Walker, a Democrat, could not immediately be reached for comment late Thursday.

State officials met the news with shock.

“This is very, very, very concerning to me that this happened in St. Lucie County, especially going into this contentious election season,” said state Sen. Gayle Harrell, who represents a large portion of St. Lucie County. “I will certainly be reaching out to Gertrude Walker to hear from her directly about what she has done to make sure our county election infrastructure is safe.”

CNN, reporting on an advance copy of Woodward’s book, said it identified St. Lucie and Washington counties as the two Florida jurisdictions successfully breached by the Russians.

Washington County, which has roughly 25,000 residents, is in the middle of the Panhandle. Trump in 2016 received 77 percent of the more than 11,000 votes cast in the county.

Trump won St. Lucie in 2016 with less than 50 percent of nearly 141,000 votes cast. Former President Barack Obama had won the county four years earlier.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said the details revealed in Woodward’s book show why local and state officials need to be notified when election systems are breached.

“These reports continue to demonstrate just how much voters are unwisely kept in the dark by our government about election meddling and how this confusion only serves to destabilize trust in our democracy,” Murphy said in a written statement. “We cannot fight back against foreign interference if voters are not aware of potential intrusions and cannot take steps to verify the integrity of their voting information.”

Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican, repeated his call for the information to be declassified and has asked Walker for a report on any internal changes she has made.

“At least a year ago myself and most members of the Florida delegation asked information on this to be declassified,” he said. “It still has not been so I cannot speak about what I know from classified briefings.”

Matt Dixon and Marc Caputo contributed to this report.

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WH to end COVID-19 screenings for international passengers

Inbound flights from high-risk countries have been monitored since the CDC began flagging travelers coming through Wuhan, China.

International travelers arriving in the United States will no longer be subjected to enhanced screening for COVID-19 at the airport, the White House announced Monday. 

Since January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been screening travelers for symptoms of the potentially deadly contagion at select airports.

Inbound flights from high-risk countries have been monitored since the CDC began flagging travelers coming from or through Wuhan, China. The outbreak was first identified in the city in December 2019. 

Read More: COVID-19 vaccine trial paused after participant gets ‘unexplained illness’

Passengers on these flights have been funneled through 15 U.S. airports since March.

International travelers arriving at the San Francisco International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, had a temperature and symptoms check, and were required to provide information that could be used for contact tracing for infections. 

The U.S. government said this week that the screenings and funneling will come to an end beginning Sept. 14, Yahoo News reports.

Critics have described the move as another “out of sight, out of mind” approach by the Trump administration.

For months, Trump has publicly downplayed the significance of the virus that has reportedly killed around 190,000 people in the United States.

An earlier report on theGRIO noted that the president admitted that COVID-19 was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” but still downplayed the virus to veteran reporter Bob Woodward.

‘Rage,’ is the latest offering from the award-winning journalist and CNN obtained exclusive excerpts of the book ahead of its Sept. 15 release. Woodward interviewed the president and he admitted that he knew how crippling coronavirus could be.

The audiotapes were published by the outlet on Wednesday.

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