by Dave Williams | Aug 1, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Georgia man and a co-defendant from Africa have been sentenced to prison for committing a string of armed robberies in the Atlanta area.
Kujo Duako, 35, of Ghana was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
Sammetrius Brooks, 33, of Atlanta, had been sentenced previously to 11 years and nine months behind bars, also with three years of supervised release after completing his prison term.
According to Ryan Buchanan, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, the two were involved in a crime spree on Oct. 29 and Oct. 30, 2018, beginning with the botched robbery of a CVS store in the city of South Fulton.
During the robbery, Duako pointed a semi-automatic handgun at an employee and ordered her to walk to the cash register. Rather than comply, the clerk fled to the rear of the store and set off a fire alarm, thwarting the robbery.
Later that day, Duako robbed a Dollar General store in South Fulton, stealing both cash and personal property from an employee on duty.
On the following day, Brooks joined as Duako’s getaway driver, and the two robbed five businesses in South Fulton, Riverdale, College Park, and Fairburn, including a restaurant and bank.
Less than two hours after the bank robbery, law enforcement officers recovered more than $9,000 in cash in Duako’s possession as well as several cellphones stolen from a Sprint store.
“Duako and Brooks terrorized innocent victims and jeopardized their lives during this violent crime spree,” Buchanan said Thursday. “The men’s arrest and prosecution are an example of the excellent coordination that the FBI and our district’s local law enforcement partners routinely leverage to remove dangerous criminals from our communities.”
The case was part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement to reduce violent crime and gun violence. In this instance, the Justice Department worked with the FBI, Clayton County Police Department, Clayton County Sheriff’s Office, South Fulton Police Department, and Riverdale Police Department.
by Dave Williams | Aug 1, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., introduced legislation Thursday that would provide federal funding to build 3 million new homes across the country and reduce rents by an average of 10%.
The bill, to be financed through changes to the federal estate tax, is aimed at filling a housing supply shortage that dates back to the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
“This bill aims to be transformational,” Warnock said Thursday. “The issue is too big to go small.”
In Georgia, 23% of renter households are made up of low-income individuals and families. There is an estimated shortage of 200,000 rental homes affordable for low-income renters.
The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act would create incentives for local governments to eliminate unnecessary land-use restrictions that drive up costs.
“These housing covenants, many of them old, have stayed in place,” Warnock said. “What we’re aiming to do is incentivize local communities to remove these unnecessary barriers.”
Earlier this week, Warnock joined forces with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to introduce related legislation to improve military housing.
“The housing crisis is a multi-faceted issue that must be attacked from different directions,” Warnock said.
Warnock grew up in public housing in Savannah and rose to become senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church before being elected to the Senate.
“This is not just a policy issue for me,” Warnock said. “This is personal.”
A companion to the housing bill Warnock introduced Thursday is being sponsored in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.
by Dave Williams | Aug 1, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A newly formed state Senate committee will look to ensure that female athletes have the right to participate on an even basis with their males counterparts.
Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Senate’s presiding officer, announced Thursday the creation of the Georgia Senate Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports.
“We will not stand idly by while radical politicians, athletic associations, schools, and higher education institutions push policies threatening this right,” Jones said. “I created this committee to investigate policies athletic associations, schools, colleges, and universities have implemented regarding the protection of women’s sports.”
State policy makers already have been active on the issue. The Georgia High School Athletic Association’s executive committee voted two years ago to ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity rather than their birth gender.
The committee acted after the General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed election-year legislation authorizing the association to impose the transgender athletes ban.
Supporters argued that allowing transgender males to compete in girls’ sports gives them an unfair advantage over girls born female because transgender males tend to possess both greater strength and speed.
Legislative Democrats, transgender students and their parents countered that the policy discriminates against a group of students who already are victims of prejudice. They cited above-average suicide rates among transgender teens.
The new committee will include seven Republicans and two Democrats. The panel will have until Dec. 15 to issue findings and recommendations.
by Dave Williams | Jul 31, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A tearful Georgia woman told a U.S. Senate subcommittee a harrowing story Wednesday of giving birth while serving a five-year sentence in a state prison.
Jessica Umberger, who now serves as a care navigator for the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative in Atlanta, said she was forced to undergo a Cesarean section against her will because she had had one 18 years earlier. She gave birth to a daughter, Jordan, in August 2018 at the state Department of Corrections’ Helms facility in Atlanta.
“I had only two short hours to hold and look at my baby,” Umberger testified at a hearing held by the Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights, chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “It would be the last time I would see her for about three years.”
Umberger said her troubles didn’t end after she gave birth. After being transferred to Lee Arrendale State Prison in Habersham County, she said she was held in solitary confinement for three weeks after complaining that her cell was unsanitary.
She said she received no medical support while she was in solitary, and her C-section wound became infected.
“I didn’t think I would make it out of there alive,” she said.
The subcommittee launched an investigation last February into abuse of pregnant women in prison. The subcommittee interviewed more than 100 current or formerly incarcerated women, civil rights lawyers, medical providers, and academics.
“We identified over 200 human rights abuses in state prisons and jails,” Ossoff said at the start of Wednesday’s hearing. “We’ve heard from mothers forced to give birth in prison showers, in hallways, or on dirty cell floors, mothers who gave birth into toilets. … These women repeatedly requested and even begged for help, but help came too late if at all.”
“You cannot say in America that you’re pro-life and allow the horrors that are going on right now in American prisons to continue,” added Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “Federal action is needed to ensure that we treat incarcerated women with the dignity they deserve.”
Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University, testified that there are no national statistics available on the incidence of abuse of incarcerated pregnant women.
“If we don’t know how many pregnant women are behind bars, then people think they don’t exist,” she said. “And if people think they don’t exist, it makes it easy for prisons and jails to neglect their health-care needs. … Without data, we cannot know the full scope of the problem.”
Sufrin said 41 states have laws on the books prohibiting incarcerated women from being shackled, but prison officials frequently ignore those laws.
“The fact that in 2024, pregnant women are shackled while giving birth, putting them and their babies at risk, is a profound assault on their dignity, safety, and human rights,” she said.
Ossoff said the subcommittee’s investigation remains active and ongoing.
by Dave Williams | Jul 31, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State School Superintendent Richard Woods has apologized for failing to effectively communicate why he is not recommending adding an Advanced Placement African American studies course to the state’s curriculum offerings.
But in a statement released Wednesday, Woods said he has not changed his mind about not moving forward during the new school year with an AP course that was piloted in several school districts in 2023-24.
Woods said he came to his decision after reading the course standards and framework and concluding that they violated the controversial “divisive concepts’ law the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed two years ago. The bill, which passed along party lines, prohibits teaching U.S. history in a way that might make any student feel guilty or that they are superior or inferior to anyone else based on their race.
Wood wrote that the course’s most glaring violation is on the topic of “intersectionality,” which focuses on how interlocking systems of oppression play out in individual lives.
“If the Advanced Placement course had presented a comparative narrative with opposing views on this and other topics, an argument could be made that the course did not violate Georgia law,” he wrote. “If I moved this forward for approval, I would break my oath of office and ask the state Board of Education and our local school districts to ignore the law.”
Following word of Woods’ decision on the AP course last week, legislative Democrats and educators protested for the same reasons they opposed the divisive concepts bill in 2022. They argued that scrapping the course would amount to failing to teach Georgia students the full history of the state and the nation, both the good and the bad.
On Wednesday, Woods responded that students wishing to take African American studies still have options.
“Can students currently take a course on African American studies? Yes,” he wrote. “I passed an African American studies course in 2020. Though not specific in content, districts have had the ability to offer this course to all students, not just those taking an AP class.
“Can a district use the AP African American studies standards and framework as its accepted content for the state course? Yes. Under Georgia policy, a district may do this without the state school superintendent’s or the state Board of Education’s approval.
“Students may take the associated AP test to possibly receive college credit. However, the content may be challenged at the local level for violating (the divisive concept law) if all of the AP course content is adopted.”
Woods said he has asked for a legal clarification of the law.
“Should the ruling reverse my decision, then I will follow the law,” he wrote.
