•Arrested Nigerian American Mathias Ometu

‘You’re choking me!’ Black jogger, 33, screams as he’s forcefully arrested in San Antonio and then detained for two days in case of mistaken identity -despite victim in the case telling cops they had the wrong man.

Nigerian American Mathias Ometu, a 33-year-old insurance adjuster, was arrested by police for “jogging while black’ in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday.

Authorities said they were in the area looking for a domestic violence suspect at and had “reasonable suspicion” that Ometu matched the description.

Ometu, who was jogging at the time, refused to give officers his name and date of birth after they arrested him.

The Texas Penal Code states that a person being detained or questioned by police is not required to provide identifying information.

Cell phone footage showed officer forcing Ometu into the back seat while he screamed “you’re choking me” several times.

The victim told officers that Ometu was not the suspect, but he was still detained and charged with assault of an officer.

Ometu was then transported to Municipal Court for “identification purposes,” according to the report. He was charged with two counts of assault on a peace officer.

He was initially assigned to a court-appointed defense attorney who died in 2011. Court records show that another lawyer has since been appointed to him.

Ometu’s arrest for “jogging while black” came after the February killing of Ahmaud Arbey, a 25-year-old Georgia man who was shot dead by two white men while jogging through a neighborhood. The suspects said they suspected him of being a robber, despite having no concrete evidence.

A police department spokeswoman said in a statement released Thursday that the incident was under administrative review.

“The individual contacted was in close proximity to the call, and he matched the physical and clothing description provided by the victim,” the statement said, which did not indicate whether their intended suspect had been apprehended.

Rodriguez, who witnessed the incident with Maas, told CNN that at no time did Ometu appear aggressive with the officers.

Additional footage taken by Rodriguez shows Ometu handcuffed and calmly standing by the police cruiser for around six minutes before officers begin pushing him.

Rodriguez said she was walking her dog around 2pm that day when she saw Ometu jogging.

Suddenly, police arrived and approached Ometu to speak with him. After about 20 minutes they placed him in handcuffs.

Rodriguez then walked to a nearby office where Maas was working and knocked on the window to get his attention. The pair then began filming the incident. 

“His crime was jogging while black. They made up any reason to harass this guy,” Maas wrote on Facebook regarding the footage.

Maas also alleged that the officers used Tasers on Ometu, but that was not shown in video footage.

The couple said the incident lasted around an hour, but they only captured 20 minutes of the encounter.

The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office is waiting for the police department to finish their investigation before they “review all evidence and decide how to proceed with any potential criminal case,” attorney Joe Gonzales told CNN.   

In a statement, the San Antonio Police Department defended the action of its officers.

“The suspect fled before police arrived, but the victim provided officers with the suspect’s information and officers also obtained information that the suspect was also wanted for a felony robbery warrant,” the statement read.

“The individual contacted was in close proximity to the call and he matched the physical and clothing description provided by the victim. 

“That was the only reason he was stopped and questioned as the officers legitimately believed he was the wanted suspect.”

The department added that video of the incident will be reviewed to ensure proper protocol was followed.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg spoke out against the incident and said he wants an investigation conducted.

“I am seeking a full accounting of this incident, which is currently under investigation. We have to approach this situation seriously because every single resident deserves fair and equitable treatment from their city,” he wrote on Twitter.

Julian Castro, a former presidential hopeful, also publicly condemned the incident on Twitter.

“Mathias Ometu was jogging in San Antonio and was wrongfully detained by SATXPolice,” he wrote.

Victor Ometu, Mathias Ometu’s father, said that he contacted his son’s friend, who paid a portion of Mathias Ometu’s bail, which was set at $20,000.

Mathias Ometu was released Thursday, officials said.

“You can’t just arrest someone for anything,” Victor Ometu said. “I imagine he’s scared. He’s never been in trouble before.”

• Based on reports by Daly Mail (UK).

Larry Hughes, Dalhousie University

On July 20, the tanker Cabo de Hornos delivered an estimated 450,000 barrels of crude oil to the Irving Oil refinery’s Canaport storage facilities in Saint John, N.B.

What made Cabo de Hornos’s delivery different was that it was the first time crude oil had arrived in Saint John by ship from Alberta. It came via the Trans Mountain pipeline to the Westbridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C., and then through the Panama Canal.

By the end of April next year, a second tanker will arrive at Canaport carrying 350,000 to one million barrels of Western Canadian crude oil. In this case, the oil will have come via pipeline from Alberta to a crude oil exporting terminal in Texas or Louisiana.

For most of the Saint John refinery’s 50 years of operation, it has relied on crude oil from sources outside Canada, including Saudi Arabia, the United States, Norway and Nigeria, to meet most of its demand. In 2019, about 80 per cent came from non-Canadian sources, with the remainder from offshore Newfoundland and Labrador by tanker and Western Canada by rail.

Any event — such as a COVID-19 outbreak in any of these oil-supplying countries — that disrupts the flow of crude oil to the refinery threatens the energy security of most people in Atlantic Canada.

Crude oil supply

Relying on non-Canadian suppliers has never been an issue for the refinery. Even during the low points of Canadian-Saudi relations in the summer of 2018 and periods of increased tension in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has been one of its principal suppliers. (Part of this may be attributable to the fact that about 60 per cent of the refinery’s output is shipped to New England and U.S.-Saudi relations could be affected if Saudi Arabia’s supplies to the Saint John refinery were disrupted.)

However, COVID-19 is a concern for those running the refinery. In April, Irving Oil applied to the Canadian Transportation Agency to use tankers from unspecified, non-Canadian suppliers for these two shipments, as per the requirements of the Coasting Trade Act. In each application it was made clear that the company’s overriding concern was the impact COVID-19 could have on about 80 per cent of its crude oil supply shipped from non-Canadian sources.

This is a legitimate concern.

Globally, the health of ships’ crews has become an increasingly critical issue since the start of the pandemic. In many countries, fear of COVID-19 on ships has stopped shipboard crews from disembarking and returning home to their families, and new crews from boarding ships.

This is forcing shipboard crews to continue working well beyond the end of their contractual period of employment. Reports of mental anguish, self-harm and suicide have also been reported.

A COVID-19 outbreak in an oil-producing country or on board a tanker could disrupt the flow of crude oil to the Saint John refinery and, consequentially, disrupt the flow of its refined products to most of Atlantic Canada and New England.

Oil consumption in Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canadians consume about 20 per cent more gasoline per capita than Canadians as a whole. With limited access to natural gas, about 31 per cent of the energy used for space heating in the region comes from heating oil (compared with 5.1 per cent nationally).

Irving Oil’s decision to find alternate ways to access Western Canadian crude oil from British Columbia via the Panama Canal or the U.S. Gulf Coast will undoubtedly increase the diversity of its supply. However, Irving’s concerns over COVID-19 and its international suppliers and shippers are equally applicable to Western Canada’s oilfields and any ships used to carry the crude oil.

To be fair, Irving has few other choices: crude-by-rail is a possibility, but there is limited capacity in its rail yard; TransCanada killed the Energy East project and even if it could be revived, it would take years to complete.

Read more: Regulations alone didn't sink the Energy East pipeline

While restructuring Atlantic Canada’s energy system to become less reliant on oil is the obvious answer, there are few short-term solutions. For example, although Churchill Falls could meet part of the region’s energy demand for electricity, heating and transportation, it will not be available until 2041, when the electricity sales contract between Newfoundland and Labrador and Québec comes to an end.

Without access to low-cost electric vehicles and easily accessible charging stations, gasoline will remain the principal fuel of choice for transportation in Atlantic Canada. On the other hand, there are alternatives for space heating, notably electricity and wood, each of which already meet about 30 per cent of the region’s residential demand for heating.

In the meantime, Atlantic Canadians can hope for an effective, widely accepted vaccine and prepare for periodic oil supply disruptions.

Larry Hughes, Professor and Founding Fellow at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance, Dalhousie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mark Winfield, York University, Canada

Now into the third year of its mandate, the Ontario government under Premier Doug Ford is being assessed for its handling of the COVID-19 crisis. The impressions are mixed.

On a personal level, the premier’s responses to the pandemic have generally been regarded favourably. He has at times conveyed deep personal empathy for those affected by COVID-19 and their families.

At the same time, the province has struggled to provide effective responses to the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly uncertain of what direction to take or of the scope of its own authority and capacity.

Controversies over the government’s plans to reopen elementary schools without reducing class sizes are the latest in series of stumbles in managing the crisis.

‘Have fun’

The Ontario government was initially slow to recognize the scope of the pandemic and the risks it posed. COVID-19’s global spread was apparent by early March, yet the premier confidently advised Ontarians to “go away” and “have fun” over the March break holiday.

By the time a provincial lockdown was imposed on March 18, most of those travellers were already back in Ontario. Some brought the virus with them, where it began to spread into the community, most critically to long-term care facilities.

The disaster that ensued in long-term care centres has been well-documented. More than 1,450 long-term care residents have died of COVID-19. More may have perished due to neglect as portions of the care system, particularly in for-profit facilities, effectively collapsed.

Read more: The coronavirus exposes the perils of profit in seniors' housing

The province was again slow to respond, despite well-known risks in the sector, especially its increasing reliance on part-time itinerant staff, and more general concerns over the quality and level of care being provided in long-term care facilities. Many of these issues had been highlighted less than a year earlier in the July 2019 report of the inquiry into the murders of nursing home residents by nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer.

The province’s promise of an “iron ring of protection” for care facility residents failed. The government then studiously avoided a formal judicial inquiry into the COVID-19 care home disaster, opting for a less formal commission, which will lack public testimony, under oath, by key officials in system.

Seasonal workers

Early warning bells were also sounded around the potential risks to large numbers of temporary foreign farm workers employed in Ontario. Crowded, unsanitary living conditions, as well as the vulnerability to deportation for workers who lack permanent resident status if fired by their employers, were again well-known long before the arrival of COVID-19.

Read more: Migrant workers face further social isolation and mental health challenges during coronavirus pandemic

Yet the province failed to take proactive action, despite having substantial legal authority to set and enforce standards and practices for farm operators under occupational health and safety, public health and agricultural legislation.

Those responsibilities were left to the ad hoc efforts of local health units, most notably in Windsor-Essex. The result was more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19 among temporary farm workers and at least three deaths.

School reopenings

The government’s latest missteps have been around the reopening of schools in September. Major concerns are being raised by health experts, school boards, teachers and parents about the government’s approach to opening elementary schools.

Read more: Coronavirus outbreaks are inevitable as Ontario plans to reopen schools

The government seems to be proceeding on a largely business-as-usual model with normal, pre-pandemic class sizes. Personal protective equipment will be provided for teachers, and masks are required for students in grades 4 to 8, and are recommended for younger children.

But health experts and public health authorities have highlighted the need to reduce class sizes to control COVID-19 in schools. With smaller classes, any outbreak would be limited to a smaller group. Teachers are also far more likely to be able to manage the behaviour of their students in smaller classes.

The Ford government, overall, has presented an image of deep concern and empathy for the victims of the pandemic. But it’s flailing when it comes to delivering the kinds of concrete, proactive measures that COVID-19 requires. The premier’s own management style remains more like that of a city councillor — someone who is genuinely trying to help his constituents, but suggests he’s up against forces beyond his control.

‘Final sign-off’

This is an odd stance for a premier who once declared that he had “final sign-off on everything in this province.” At times the government has seemed unable to grasp the scope of the many tools at its disposal to deal with the pandemic.

The province is spending nearly $6 billion annually to keep hydro rates artificially low. In that context, it should be able to find the means to implement a safer and more effective plan for reopening public schools, where there are significant risks of triggering a second wave of COVID-19.

Despite its challenges in dealing with COVID-19, the province has been quietly efficient in the ongoing pursuit of its pro-business agenda. In fact, in many ways, that agenda has accelerated under the cover of the pandemic.

The land development industry continues to be a favourite of the government. Proposed revisions to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe region released in June would compel municipalities to make land available to developers to accommodate doubtful projections of population growth to 2051.

The same proposed amendments would permit aggregate extraction operations (for example, gravel pits and quarries) in the habitat of endangered and threatened species. The province’s environmental assessment process, in place since the mid-1970s, was largely dismantled through the government’s omnibus “Economic Recovery Act” pushed through the legislature in July.

Read more: The erosion of Ontario’s Endangered Species Act threatens iconic Algonquin wolf

Where the government’s combination of empathy, administrative ineptitude and responsiveness to whatever developers and other industries seem to ask of it will lead is unknown. But that doesn’t serve the interests of Ontario residents very well. Nor does it provide a very strong basis on which to head into an election less than two years away.

Mark Winfield, Professor of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University

Donald Trump delivered his second Republican Party acceptance speech from the White House on Aug. 27, shattering the norm that presidents do not campaign at the public’s expense, and describing a nation in crisis.

Trump spoke of internal enemies intent on destroying the American way of life and offered himself as the nation’s only protection against widespread rampaging violence.

It was a speech meant to draw a stark contrast between Trump’s view of America and what he portrayed as his Democratic opponent Joseph Biden’s view of America.

I’ve been analyzing Trump’s rhetoric since 2015. I wrote about Trump’s appeal to authoritarian voters at his 2016 nomination acceptance speech in my new book, “Demagogue For President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”

This year’s speech was a repeat performance.

Trump repeatedly tried to create a sense of urgency about his reelection, calling this the “most important election in the history of our country.”

Trump said that “if the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.”

“No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump warned.

Biden borrowed from Trump’s playbook, tweeting out a response to the speech.

‘A wicked nation’

The months long protests against police violence and systemic racism against African Americans, the movement to pull down Confederate monuments, and even The New York Times’ 1619 Project provided the background for Trump’s attack on Biden’s view of America and his defense of his own record in office.

Trump claimed that “Joe Biden and his party repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic and social injustice.” He told his audience that “in the left’s backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just, and exceptional nation on earth. Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins.”

In so doing, Trump’s speech rejected the concerns that a majority of Americans have about systemic racism while it offered solace to those Americans who think that the movement has gone too far.

Trump spoke in stark terms about the choice facing Americans in November. “This election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it,” he said.

And Trump promised to be the nation’s hero. He said that he would protect “the patriotic heroes who keep America safe,” while his opponents would “stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag-burners.”

He quoted one of his own memes, saying he is the only thing standing between vulnerable Americans and what he calls the nation’s dangerous enemies within. “Always remember,” he said, “they are coming after me, because I am fighting for you.”

Trump’s Republican nomination acceptance speech didn’t reach across the aisle to draw in the support of Democrats or Democrat-leaning Independents. It wasn’t a speech for all of America – it was a speech designed to appeal to Trump’s base and terrify them into voting for him. That’s authoritarian.

Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.