Featured Story
Anthony Borges, a victim of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was given the rights to the shooter’s name as part of a negotiated civil settlement — meaning that the shooter can’t grant an interview without Borges’ written consent. “The idea now is to shut him out,” Borges’ lawyer said. “He will not be the one who decides when or how the story gets told.” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
From The Trace
Today, new laws take effect in Tennessee and Georgia that Republican legislators say will prevent banks and credit card companies from tracking firearm purchases, joining at least a dozen other GOP-led states (and one led by Democrats) that have passed similar measures in the past two years.
These laws bar financial institutions from using a special four-digit number known as a merchant category code to identify transactions at gun stores. Republicans have promoted the bans as a necessary defense against gun registries and government spying — but banking experts say it’s not clear that merchant codes would provide these companies with any information they don’t already have. The Trace’s Champe Barton explains.
What to Know Today
A grand jury indicted former Uvalde, Texas, school district police chief Pete Arredondo and former district officer Adrian Gonzales on multiple state felony charges of child endangerment for their roles in the botched law enforcement response to the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School. These are the first criminal charges brought against police who were called to the mass shooting, in which 19 fourth graders and two teachers were killed. [The Texas Tribune]
Last spring, Boston set a goal to reduce homicides by 20 percent over three years — and already, the city has already seen a remarkable 78 percent reduction, with only four homicides so far in 2024. Officials acknowledge that the decline coincides with a national trend, as large cities across the country saw violent crime decline in the first quarter of this year, but they’re hopeful that city-led violence prevention efforts are playing a role. [The New York Times]
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker campaigned on a promise to make the city safer by any means necessary — and since Parker took office in January, some community members have worried that her pledge could include ramping up the use of stop-and-frisk policing. A new report by the ACLU of Pennsylvania examines the Philadelphia Police Department’s compliance with a 13-year-old federal consent decree on stop-and-frisk, finding that though officers are making fewer stops and finding more firearms, they are still stopping a disproportionate number of Black and Latino people. [American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania]
Hunter Biden was convicted last month of three felonies related to the purchase of a Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018. But the Delaware gun store that sold him the weapon violated the law, too: Handguns are only permitted to be sold to state residents, and the president’s son wasn’t a legal resident of Delaware at the time of the sale. The shop sold Biden the gun even though he provided no government-issued proof of residency. [USA TODAY]
Alma Beauvais contributed to this section.
Announcements
The Trace received two first-place awards in the 2024 Society for Features Journalism’s Excellence-in-Features contest. Our project “Chicago Stories of Survival,” led by engagement reporter Justin Agrelo, was honored as “a shining example of how journalism can be a powerful force for empowering communities to tell their own stories.” Senior news writer Jennifer Mascia’s work was recognized as “an outstanding use of data journalism and research to understand a societal issue”; you can read one of her award-winning stories here.
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Data Point
10 and 29 — the number of criminal charges levied against former Uvalde, Texas, school district police chief Pete Arredondo and former district officer Adrian Gonzales, respectively. [The Texas Tribune]
