What to Know Today
Philadelphia’s public workers face a new danger on the job: gun violence. Gun violence has killed nearly 1,000 people in Philadelphia over the last two years, a crisis the city has struggled to address. Now, for the first time in Philadelphia’s history, blue-collar city workers are regularly getting ensnared in violence while on the job. The Trace’s Mensah M. Dean has the story.
Conflict escalates to gunfire at Atlanta’s “Cop City.” For more than a year, activists have occupied the proposed site of a controversial police training facility in Atlanta forestland, clashing with law enforcement officers seeking to eject them from the encampment. The conflict turned deadly this week, when a protester was killed and a Georgia state trooper injured after a shooting near the site. Because of competing narratives between activists and police, Axios reports, it’s hard to parse how the shooting played out — and what could come next for the protests.
Get the Bulletin in your inbox. Sign up for our newsletters here.Virginia teachers, parents blast safety approach at school board meeting. Community members accused the Newport News school district of prioritizing attendance statistics over student and teacher safety, the Associated Press reports. The meeting followed a revelation that administrators knew the 6-year-old who shot his teacher earlier this month might have had a weapon that day and failed to locate it despite searching his bag. The age of the bulletproof backpack: Gun violence has changed what it means to be a student in America. As they returned to school after the Parkland shooting in 2018, teachers told The Trace that everything had changed for them, too.
Utah newspaper removes obit praising man accused of killing his family. The obituary, published in print and online by the Cedar City Spectrum, described a man who allegedly killed seven members of his family as a dedicated father and successful businessman. According to the Deseret News, the paper removed the piece from its website after it received online backlash and national attention.
Maryland mulls AI gun-detection technology for schools. Newly inaugurated Governor Wes Moore will tell lawmakers today if he’s greenlighting a proposal to pilot ZeroEyes, a Navy SEAL-developed artificial intelligence platform that claims to identify guns via security cameras, in the state’s public schools, The Baltimore Banner reports. Philadelphia’s public transit system OKed a ZeroEyes pilot in November.
Data Point
1,185 — the estimated number of people killed by on- or off-duty police in 2022. That’s about three people per day, and an increase of 31 people over 2021. [Mapping Police Violence]
