Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman

On Tuesday, those barriers broke, sending murky river water rushing into businesses and forcing residents to scramble to safety. About 30 people who did not make it out in time were rescued by firefighters.

“The whole city had a very frantic feel about it,” said Rebecca Nicke, a co-owner of Abernathy’s, a vintage store located about half a block from the barrier, who said she ran for her vehicle and drove toward a hill when she heard the water coming.

“You start shaking,” said Nicke, who salvaged much of her inventory but does not expect to be able to return to her building for weeks. “And everything around me was like a blur.”

The flooding in Davenport, the third-largest city in Iowa, came amid a record-setting year of floods that have devastated cropland, small towns, infrastructure and Native American reservations across a large area of the Midwest. The damage in Davenport was more limited in scope than recent months have brought to parts of Nebraska, Missouri and western Iowa, but it was a reminder of the ongoing risks to the region as rivers rise and rainfall compounds the problems.

In the region around Davenport, the Mississippi has been above major flood stage for 39 days, a record. More rain is in the forecast with few signs of relief ahead.

“We’re not expecting the river to really go down anytime soon,” said Jessica Brooks, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Davenport. “With the levels as high as they are and the flood conditions as they are, any additional rain we get will probably cause additional rises.”

Davenport was not the only place dealing with flooding on Wednesday as storms moved through the region. Heavy rains caused flooding in parts of Michigan and Illinois, where officials closed roads and warned residents not to drive through high waters. In Dearborn Heights, Michigan, the mayor requested an emergency declaration from the state and opened a shelter for flood victims. In Detroit, officials said they would ask residents to help fill sandbags after water breached a sea wall in a residential area.

The new flooding in Davenport, where riverfront parks have been under water for weeks, was confined to several blocks at the city’s core. Dozens of residents and some businesses were affected, but no injuries were reported.

“There’s some property damage and some cars that stayed too long,” said Frank Klipsch, Davenport’s mayor. “They’ll be hard to drive with the steering wheel under water.”

The flooding comes at a time when Democratic presidential hopefuls are crisscrossing Iowa ahead of the state’s first-in-the-country caucuses. Some of them, including Sen. Kamala Harris of California and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, posted messages of support for the city on Twitter.

Davenport residents have long debated whether they should build a permanent wall to protect against floods, as many other cities along the Mississippi have done.

The flood on Tuesday is likely to revive that debate.

“There’ll be people suggesting that,” Klipsch said, noting that not building a permanent flood wall helps protect cities and states south of Davenport.

“How can we embrace the river without just pushing the water down to Arkansas and Missouri?” he said. “We try not to just push our problems downriver.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/davenport-iowa-flooding.html" id="fc9c0868-29ce-37a3-ae07-fcf1c5b8b483">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — For weeks, residents of Davenport, Iowa, looked warily toward the flooded Mississippi River as it encroached on their downtown, the water kept at bay only by temporary barriers lining the street.

Floodwaters Swept Into Davenport, Iowa, Sending Residents Scrambling

But the warmup was expected to take a jarring jump in the coming hours and days — sending the battered region into a temperature roller coaster. The thaw gave cities and towns a chance to begin assessing deaths, injuries and damage to infrastructure that the deep freeze had caused. But the fast-rising temperatures were also causing a new set of risks to contend with, including the potential for flooding, abundant potholes and clogged stormwater drainage systems.

In Wilmington, Illinois, along the Kankakee River, the Police Department warned of flash flooding “that may occur without any warning” as ice moved downstream. In Niagara Falls, New York, crews raced to remove a large tree blocking a creek, a potential flood risk during the coming thaw. And at Oakland University in suburban Detroit, a library was closed Friday because of a water main break that flooded the building.

The difference in temperature that the Chicago region could experience by Monday: 73 degrees, from Thursday morning, when the city saw a low of minus 21 degrees, to Monday, when it may be 52.

“It’s fairly rare to see this much of a turnaround in temperature in this short of time,” said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Chicagoans will go from a deep freeze Wednesday and Thursday to a mild warmup Friday, as air from the Pacific begins to move into the region. Then there is more weather whiplash: on Saturday, fog and freezing drizzle. On Sunday, more drizzle. On Monday, rain.

In Illinois river cities, officials eyed the warmer forecast nervously. Deputy Chief Don J. Gasparini Jr. of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office said he had been monitoring the Rock River in northern Illinois for the possibility of ice jams and floods.

“With the ice, it’s very unpredictable,” he said. “Because we don’t know when it’s going to jam up and how long the jam will last or how big it will be.”

Gasparini said the rain predicted by meteorologists would also be unwelcome, with the ground frozen and snow piles abundant. “The rain is not going to have any place to go,” he said.

In Newaygo County, Michigan, where a 21-mile ice jam on the Muskegon River had flooded yards and closed a bridge, the warm-up was welcome. Abby Watkins, the director of the county emergency service agency, said she expected the thaw to help clear out the ice and lower water levels. But it was not all good news: With giant ice hunks moving down the river, she said there was the possibility of more localized flooding.

“That ice then can still clog as it’s trying to move downstream,” Watkins said. “It’s kind of like playing a game of ‘Tetris.’ These large chunks of ice are trying to find a path.”

The cold air mass that has now moved east is uncommon, only seen about every five or 10 years, Kluber said. The Midwest’s deep freeze was brought by the polar vortex, a mass of cold air that is normally contained above the North Pole but in recent weeks broke apart, sending a block of icy air toward the United States.

The cold spell caused significant destruction. The deaths of at least 29 people were being linked to the weather system. Among the deceased: A 72-year-old woman found unresponsive in her garage Friday morning in Germantown Hills, Illinois.

Dr. Stathis Poulakidas, a burn surgeon at Chicago’s John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, said nearly 50 patients had sought treatment for frostbite in recent days, about half of them homeless.

Poulakidas said he expected about half those patients to require amputations, ranging from a single finger or toe to a whole arm or foot. Even with temperatures starting to increase, he said the full consequences of the polar vortex would not be known for months.

“When you get frostbite,” he said, “you don’t stop getting frostbite. It kind of evolves over a period of days to weeks to months.”

Other damage to infrastructure was just becoming clear.

In Escanaba, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a water main had broken during the worst of the cold, sending water spewing onto a road, cutting water pressure in the city, and forcing workers to try to contain it behind a berm of snow in subzero temperatures. They had to chop through ice to find shut-off valves.

“It was bubbling out of the ground at a 2-foot height,” said Wendy Taavola, the city’s assistant public works director. “There was a pretty good size lake on one of our avenues.”

Still, by Friday, many cities appeared back to normal. In Chicago, people bustled along downtown sidewalks, and restaurants and shops were open.

“It’s back to the status quo,” said Angie Day, 34, a fundraiser for a nonprofit, as she climbed the stairs to a post office in the Uptown neighborhood Friday morning. She had spent the last two days working from home, but Friday was heading into the office.

The streets in the neighborhood were salted, the sidewalks spotlessly cleared of ice and snow. It was sort of like the whole thing hadn’t happened.

“I think Chicago does a really good job of dealing with cold,” Day said. “We just put on some good winter gear and keep going.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/us/cold-weather-polar-vortex.html" id="15541bdb-dc2e-3185-adb8-8039411abcde">The New York Times</a>.

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

CHICAGO — The bitter cold lifted in the Midwest on Friday, ending days of dangerously low temperatures and allowing a region that had all but vanished into hibernation to re-emerge. In many places, like Chicago, the temperatures climbed just above zero Friday morning but after record-breaking double-digit negatives, that felt surprisingly fine. Offices were back to business, many schools reopened, and people filled neighborhoods that had been ominously empty for days.

In Wilmington, Illinois, the Police Department warned of flash flooding as ice moved downstream. And at Oakland University in Detroit, a library was closed Friday because of a water main break that flooded the building.

The difference in temperature that the Chicago region could experience by Monday: 73 degrees, from Thursday morning, when the city saw a low of 21 degrees below zero, to Monday, when it may be 52.

The cold spell caused significant destruction. The deaths of at least 25 people were being linked to the weather system. Among the deceased: A 72-year-old woman found unresponsive in her garage Friday morning in Germantown Hills, Illinois.

The cold spell caused significant destruction. The deaths of at least 22 people were being linked to the weather system. Among the deceased: A 72-year-old woman found unresponsive in her garage Friday morning in Germantown Hills, Illinois.

In Wilmington, Illinois, along the Kankakee River, the Police Department warned of flash flooding “that may occur without any warning” as ice moved downstream. And at Oakland University in suburban Detroit, a library was closed Friday because of a water main break that flooded the building.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, became the city’s first patrolman in almost 50 years to be convicted of murder. The teenager, Laquan McDonald, became a national symbol of police brutality. The city’s police department was overhauled. And the powerful mayor, battered by the fallout, stunned Chicago by announcing he would not run again.

On Friday, Van Dyke, an officer no longer, was sentenced to just shy of seven years in an Illinois prison for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, one for every bullet he fired on that October night in 2014. Though an appeal is possible, the sentence provided a measure of finality.

But the final chapter left few people satisfied.

Laquan’s great-uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter, said it was a qualified victory that a police officer was going to prison for murder. But he said the sentence was far too short, and reduced Laquan to “a second-class citizen.”

But Van Dyke’s family had pleaded for leniency. His lawyers submitted to the judge dozens of letters from supporters, including a plea from one of his two daughters, who said she fell into a depression after the verdict.

In the end, Judge Vincent Gaughan, of the Cook County Circuit Court, acknowledged that “this is a tragedy for both sides.”

“This is not pleasant and this is not easy,” Gaughan said in delivering his ruling.

Van Dyke’s sentencing comes only one day after the acquittals of three fellow police officers who were accused of attempting to cover up his crime.

Prosecutors had asked Gaughan to sentence Van Dyke to at least 18 years in prison.

Just before learning his sentence, Van Dyke read a short statement.

Shooting Laquan was “the last thing I ever wanted to do,” said Van Dyke. “People have the right to judge my actions, however no one knows what I was thinking in that critical moment.”

Joseph McMahon, the special prosecutor, said he was satisfied with the sentence even though it was much less than what he had sought.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/us/jason-van-dyke-sentencing-laquan-mcdonald.html" id="6545e007-142e-3fdd-ab25-6532479a3c4c">The New York Times</a>.

Jason Van Dyke Sentenced to Nearly 7 Years for Murdering Laquan McDonald

CHICAGO — On a bleak stretch of road outside a Burger King four years ago, a white police officer opened fire on a black teenage boy. Captured on a dashboard camera, the killing reshaped Chicago.

“This is not pleasant and this is not easy,” said Judge Vincent Gaughan of the Cook County Circuit Court, who announced the sentence. “This is a tragedy for both sides.”

Jurors convicted Van Dyke in October of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, one for each bullet he fired. Prosecutors asked Gaughan to sentence him to at least 18 years in prison. Van Dyke’s lawyers suggested probation.

Just before learning his sentence of 81 months, Van Dyke rose and read a short statement.

“The last thing I ever wanted to do ... was to shoot Laquan McDonald,” said Van Dyke. “People have the right to judge my actions, however no one knows what I was thinking in that critical moment.”

Van Dyke, who is white, and McDonald, who was black and 17, came to personify the decades of tension between Chicago police and the city’s African-American residents.

McDonald’s death Oct. 20, 2014, at first stirred little public outcry and only cursory media coverage. That changed more than a year later when Van Dyke, 40, was charged with murder and when police dash camera video was released showing McDonald, who was carrying a knife, veering away from police before crumpling to the street as the gunshots started.

Protesters marched repeatedly in the weeks that followed, forcing out the Chicago police superintendent, successfully pushing for policy changes and weakening Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose administration had fought to keep the video out of public view.

“It wasn’t the knife in Laquan’s hand that made the defendant kill him that night,” a prosecutor, Jody Gleason, said during closing arguments. “It was his indifference to the value of Laquan’s life.”

Van Dyke testified in his own defense. “I just kept on looking at that knife and I shot at it,” he told jurors.

CHICAGO — Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who fired 16 deadly shots into Laquan McDonald more than four years ago, was sentenced Friday to just shy of seven years in an Illinois prison, providing a measure of finality in a case that laid bare this city’s racial divisions and led to an overhaul of its long-troubled Police Department.

“This is not pleasant, and this is not easy,” said Judge Vincent Gaughan of the Cook County Circuit Court, who announced the sentence. “This is a tragedy for both sides.”

“The last thing I ever wanted to do ... was to shoot Laquan McDonald,” said Van Dyke, who spoke softly and read from a piece of paper. “People have the right to judge my actions, however no one knows what I was thinking in that critical moment.”

Van Dyke, who is white, and McDonald, who was black and 17, came to personify the decades of tension between Chicago police and the city’s African-American residents. Last year’s trial was seen by many Chicagoans as a referendum on whether officers could ever be held accountable for taking a life. Nervous crowds gathered across the city to listen to the verdict and broke out into chants of “Justice for Laquan!” when the court clerk read out “guilty” over and over.

More than four years after McDonald’s death, the case continues to shape policing and politics in Chicago. The Police Department agreed last year to a court-enforced consent decree after a federal investigation found a pattern of discrimination. Emanuel, a Democrat whose term ends this year, announced on the eve of Van Dyke’s trial that he would not seek re-election. And Thursday, three Chicago officers charged with conspiring to cover up the circumstances of McDonald’s death were acquitted in a separate trial, leading some activists to lament a police “code of silence” that even Emanuel has acknowledged to be pervasive.

“We cannot improve the safety of our communities if our police force is not held accountable for its actions and the very real culture of the code of silence goes unpunished,” Toni Preckwinkle, a leading candidate in a large field of mayoral hopefuls, said in a statement after Thursday’s verdicts.

At Van Dyke’s trial, prosecutors played the dash camera video for jurors over and over. They showed gruesome autopsy photographs. They emphasized that Van Dyke was the only officer to fire his gun.

“It wasn’t the knife in Laquan's hand that made the defendant kill him that night,” a prosecutor, Jody Gleason, said during closing arguments. “It was his indifference to the value of Laquan's life.”

A longtime officer who had never been involved in a shooting before, Van Dyke testified in his own defense, growing emotional at times and insisting that he acted as he was trained. “I just kept on looking at that knife and I shot at it,” he told jurors, who were ultimately unswayed.

Van Dyke, the first Chicago police officer convicted of murder for an on-duty shooting in nearly 50 years, has spent recent months at the Rock Island County Jail in western Illinois. In post-trial court appearances, Van Dyke, who was clean-shaven and well-dressed during his trial, had a scruffy beard and wore a yellow jumpsuit. He is widely expected to appeal his conviction.

Before sentencing, prosecutors, defense lawyers and courthouse observers offered wildly divergent theories on the punishment he might face. In the rare instances when other U.S. police officers have been convicted in deadly shootings, sentences have varied greatly. Peter Liang, a former New York City officer found guilty of manslaughter, was sentenced to probation and community service in 2016. Roy Oliver, a former Texas officer, received a 15-year prison term last year for murder. David Warren, a former New Orleans officer convicted in the killing of an unarmed civilian after Hurricane Katrina, received a term of 25 years and 9 months.

In Van Dyke’s case, his lawyers suggested probation, which Illinois law allows for second-degree murder, and emphasized that he had no criminal history. They submitted dozens of letters from supporters urging Gaughan to be lenient, including a plea from one of Van Dyke’s two daughters, who said she fell into a depression after the verdict.

“It’s time for him to hug and kiss his wife and protect his family,” the daughter, who is in high school, wrote to Gaughan. “Bring my dad home.”

But the aggravated battery charges carry a mandatory six-year prison term, leading some to theorize that the minimum sentence might be 96 years in prison if that was applied for all 16 counts. In a pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors suggested a middle road, in which Van Dyke would serve at least 18 years but not what would in effect be a life sentence.

Davenport was not the only place dealing with flooding on Wednesday as storms moved through the region.

In Douglas County, Missouri, a 59-year-old man, who was apparently homeless and camping near a creek, was found drowned Wednesday after a flash flood swept through the area.

Heavy rains also caused flooding in parts of Michigan and Illinois, where officials closed roads and warned residents not to drive through high waters. In Dearborn Heights, Michigan, the mayor requested an emergency declaration from the state and opened a shelter for flood victims. In Detroit, officials said they would ask residents to help fill sandbags after water breached a sea wall in a residential area.

This article originally appeared in <a id="fc9c0868-29ce-37a3-ae07-fcf1c5b8b483" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/davenport-iowa-flooding.html">The New York Times</a>.

Floodwaters swept into Davenport, Iowa, sending residents scrambling

<h1>The officer, Jason Van Dyke, became the city’s first patrolman in almost 50 years to be convicted of murder.</h1>

The teenager, Laquan McDonald, became a national symbol of police brutality. The city’s police department, one of the country’s largest, was overhauled. And the powerful mayor, battered by the fallout, stunned Chicago by announcing he would not run again.

On Friday, Van Dyke, an officer no longer, was sentenced to just shy of seven years in an Illinois prison for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, one for every bullet he fired on that October night in 2014. Though an appeal is possible, the sentence provided a measure of finality in a case that dominated Chicago’s news cycles for years, laying bare this city’s racial divisions and upending its government.

William Calloway, an activist who had pressed for the release of the video in 2015, said he was “heartbroken” by the sentence of 81 months.

Van Dyke “deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars,” he said. “That’s a slap in the face to us and a slap on the wrist to him.”

“It’s time for him to hug and kiss his wife and protect his family,” the daughter, who is in high school, wrote to Judge Vincent Gaughan. “Bring my dad home.”

In the end, Gaughan, of the Cook County Circuit Court, acknowledged that “this is a tragedy for both sides.”

Van Dyke’s sentencing comes only one day after the acquittals of three fellow police officers who were accused of attempting to cover up his crime, a ruling that left many Chicagoans stunned and furious. And even with Van Dyke’s conviction and sentence, there remained an unsettled question in Chicago of whether anything in the police department — and what many see as a decades-old “code of silence” in which officers conceal and conspire to protect their own — had really changed.

For several hours in a cramped courtroom Friday, residents who had filed complaints against Van Dyke years ago testified for the prosecution about those encounters. One man said he had been called the N-word. Another cried and said he had to undergo surgery after being manhandled. Another, a young black man who said he was wrongly arrested, chuckled and said, “He’s definitely in the right attire” when asked to identify Van Dyke in the courtroom.

Hunter, the spokesman for the McDonald family, told Gaughan how he had used Laquan’s final paycheck from his construction job, issued four days after his death, to buy the suit the teenager was buried in.

“Please think about me and about my life when you sentence this person to prison,” Hunter said in court, reading a statement written from the perspective of Laquan. “Why should this person who has ended my life forever because he chose to become judge, jury and executioner — and has never asked for forgiveness — be free when I am dead.”

Van Dyke, who has grown a patchy beard and become noticeably thinner since going to jail, sat expressionless throughout much of Friday’s testimony. He wore a faded yellow jail jumpsuit. And when he entered and exited the courtroom, he clasped his hands behind his back, flanked by sheriff’s deputies.

Just before learning his sentence, Van Dyke rose and read a short statement.

Shooting Laquan was “the last thing I ever wanted to do,” said Van Dyke, who spoke softly and read from a piece of paper. “People have the right to judge my actions, however no one knows what I was thinking in that critical moment.”

Afterward, Joseph McMahon, the special prosecutor, said he was satisfied with the sentence even though it was much less than what he had sought.

“It strikes a balance between holding Jason Van Dyke accountable and also recognizing his service as a police officer,” McMahon said. He said the “system worked” and that “justice was served for Jason Van Dyke.”

And though his lawyers had requested probation, Daniel Herbert, a lawyer for Van Dyke, said his client “truly felt great.”

“He was not just relieved: he was happy,” he said.

Van Dyke and Laquan came to personify the decades of tension between the Chicago police and the city’s African-American residents. Last year’s trial was seen by many Chicagoans as a referendum on whether officers could ever be held accountable for taking a life. Nervous crowds gathered across the city to listen to the verdict and broke out into chants of “Justice for Laquan!” when the court clerk read out “guilty” over and over.

Laquan’s death at first stirred little public outcry and only cursory media coverage. That changed more than a year later when Van Dyke, 40, was charged with murder and when police dashboard camera video was released showing Laquan, who was carrying a knife, veering away from police before crumpling to the street as the gunshots started.

More than four years after Laquan’s death, the case continues to shape policing and politics in Chicago. The Police Department agreed last year to a court-enforced consent decree after a federal investigation found a pattern of discrimination. Emanuel, a Democrat whose term ends this year, announced on the eve of Van Dyke’s trial that he would not seek re-election. And on Thursday, three Chicago officers charged with conspiring to cover up the circumstances of Laquan’s death were acquitted in a separate trial, leading some activists to lament a police “code of silence” that even Emanuel has acknowledged to be pervasive.

“We cannot improve the safety of our communities if our police force is not held accountable for its actions and the very real culture of the code of silence goes unpunished,” Toni Preckwinkle, a leading candidate in a large field of mayoral hopefuls, said in a statement after Thursday’s verdicts. On Friday, she said that the justice system had “failed Laquan.”

“Chicago cannot move forward when law enforcement is not held accountable,” she said in a statement. “The two sentences this week show the bias, lack of equity and police code of silence in our criminal justice system.”

At Van Dyke’s trial, prosecutors played the dashboard camera video for jurors over and over. They showed gruesome autopsy photographs. They emphasized that Van Dyke was the only officer to fire his gun.

In the rare instances when other American police officers have been convicted in deadly shootings, sentences have varied greatly. Peter Liang, a former New York City officer found guilty of manslaughter, was sentenced to probation and community service in 2016. Roy Oliver, a former Texas officer, received a 15-year prison term last year for murder. David Warren, a former New Orleans officer convicted in the killing of an unarmed civilian after Hurricane Katrina, received a term of 25 years and nine months.

Jason Van Dyke sentenced to nearly 7 years for murdering Laquan McDonald

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Pulse Ghana is the most followed news and entertainment platform, informing and engaging young Ghanaians round the clock, providing updates by the hour.

Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman

Articles written by the author

Floodwaters Swept Into Davenport, Iowa, Sending Residents Scrambling

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

Weather Whiplash in the Midwest: From Deep Freeze to Melt, Bringing New Risks

Jason Van Dyke Sentenced to Nearly 7 Years for Murdering Laquan McDonald

Jason Van Dyke Sentenced to Nearly 7 Years for Murdering Laquan McDonald

Jason Van Dyke Sentenced to Nearly 7 Years for Murdering Laquan McDonald

Floodwaters swept into Davenport, Iowa, sending residents scrambling

Jason Van Dyke sentenced to nearly 7 years for murdering Laquan McDonald