National Roundup

Iowa
Voters will decide gun rights constitutional amendment
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republicans in the Iowa Legislature have passed a resolution to add gun rights language to the Iowa Constitution and, if approved by voters, it would make Iowa one of only four states with language that could make it easier to strike down gun laws.

Republican lawmakers approved the resolution Thursday with all Democrats in both chambers voting no. Voters will decide on the resolution in the November 2022 general election.

The Legislature also passed the resolution in 2019. The Iowa Constitution requires proposed constitutional amendments to be approved twice before being placed on the ballot.

Republicans have tried for years to approve the amendment to more broadly guarantee guns rights in Iowa. It also adds a requirement that laws restricting gun rights be subject to strict scrutiny, the highest standard of judicial review.

Opponents said that could lead to courts striking down restrictions on gun background checks, permits required to carry a gun, and a ban on gun possession by people convicted of a felony.

Only Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri have passed similar language. Those states have among the highest rate of deaths from gun injuries in the nation, Democratic Rep. Bruce Hunter said.

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2018 shows Alabama with the second highest gun death rate. Missouri was tied with Wyoming for third and Louisiana was fourth.

Iowa was 43rd in the nation, which Hunter said credits to historically strong gun laws that could face legal challenges under the new amendment.

“In the wake of gun violence that is happening across the country today, we are reacting by saying no to commonsense gun safety laws,” he said.

Republican Rep. Steven Holt of Denison said Iowa is one of only six states to not have gun rights language in its constitution. He said federal Second Amendment challenges have been upheld by narrow U.S. Supreme Court decisions and that placing language in the Iowa Constitution would protect those rights for Iowans.

He said state gun laws should meet the highest of legal standards.

“There should be a strict standard to a very important fundamental right so if current and future laws narrowly tailored to advance that compelling government interest they will be saved,” he said.

California
2 arrests in attack on famed San Francisco private eye
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two men have been arrested in connection with an attempted robbery that left famed San Francisco private investigator Jack Palladino on life support, police said Sunday.

Palladino himself may have inadvertently helped detectives make the arrests after photographs were recovered from a camera the suspects unsuccessfully tried to steal, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Palladino, who worked on high-profile cases ranging from the Jonestown mass suicides to celebrity and political scandals, suffered a head injury in the violent attack Jan. 28.

Lawrence Thomas, 24, of Pittsburg, and Tyjone Flournoy, 23, of San Francisco were jailed Sunday, police said. It wasn’t immediately known if they have attorneys.

Palladino, 76, remained unconscious but received news of the arrests from his wife and fellow private detective Sandra Sutherland on Saturday night.

“I said, ‘Guess what Jack, they got the bastards, and it was all your doing,’” Sutherland told the Chronicle on Sunday.

Palladino had just stepped outside his San Francisco home to try out his new camera when a car pulled up and a man jumped out to grab it from him, police and the detective’s stepson Nick Chapman told the newspaper.

As the suspect grabbed the camera, Palladino fell and hit his head on the pavement. Palladino was not expected to survive after undergoing surgery to stop the massive bleeding, the Chronicle said.

Palladino was wrapping up one final case before joining his wife in retirement. Since the 1980s, the two conducted investigations out of their Victorian home in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, on behalf of the famous and powerful as well as the underdogs.

Their clients included Bill Clinton, whose 1992 presidential campaign hired Palladino to quell rumors of his extramarital affairs, and Courtney Love, who hired Palladino to talk to journalists investigating whether she played a role in the 1994 death of her husband, rock star Kurt Cobain.

In the 1990s, he ran a counter-investigation to the tobacco industry’s campaign to smear whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand.

Palladino’s career began even before he graduated from University of California, Berkeley’s law school when the family of Patty Hearst hired him to assist in investigating her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Party.


New York
Videos show police officers pepper-spraying 9-year-old girl
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Police in Rochester released two body-camera videos Sunday of officers restraining a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what police called a chemical “irritant.”

The Democrat and Chronicle  reported that prior to the release of the videos, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren expressed her concern for the “child that was harmed during this incident that happened on Friday.”

A total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the report of “family trouble” on Friday. The girl can be heard in the body-camera videos from officers at the scene screaming frantically for her father as the officers try to restrain her.

At a news conference Sunday, Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal.

“She indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom,” he said.

Officers tried to force the girl into a patrol car but she pulled away and kicked at them. In a statement Saturday, the police department said this action “required” an officer to take the girl down to the ground. Then, the department said, “for the minor’s safety and at the request of the custodial parent on scene,” the child was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Police said the girl disobeyed commands to put her feet in the car. An officer was then “required” to spray an “irritant” in the handcuffed girl’s face, the department said Saturday.

Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan described the irritant as pepper spray. She declined to defend the officers’ actions.

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK. It’s not,” Herriott-Sullivan said.

The Rochester Police Department has faced scrutiny since  the death of Daniel Prude  last year after officers from the department put a hood over his head and pressed his face into the pavement.