Tag: domestic violence

Tech exec found ‘pulverized,’ missing a foot after plunging 20 stories from luxe Chicago condo — and nobody has been charged

A Chicago tech executive was found “pulverized” and missing a foot in a stairwell of the luxury condo building where she lived with her husband, her heartbroken family has revealed — and now they’re fighting for justice.

Caitlin Tracey, 36, died from “multiple injuries” and a “fall from height” after plummeting more than 20 stories down a stairwell at her South Loop building, the Cook County medical examiner ruled.

However, the manner of her death was left “undetermined,” and there have been no charges filed in Tracey’s gruesome demise.

Her husband, Adam Beckerink, 46, a well-known Chicago tax attorney, was charged last month with battering her in her hometown of New Buffalo, Michigan, in January and August 2024. He’s also accused of assaulting cops who tried to arrest him, according to FOX 32.

Beckerink was detained and questioned by Chicago police after he filed a missing persons report for Tracey before her body was found on Oct. 27, but he was later released without charges.

“He had nothing to do with his wife’s death, and he will continue to appear in court. And we will continue to speak through our filings in court on his behalf,” Beckerink’s attorney told local media in March.

Tracey’s family is pushing to keep attention on the case.

Attorneys hired by her loved ones told Fox 32 in March that her body was “pulverized” and her foot was severed in the fall.

Her grieving parents were embroiled in a legal dispute earlier this year over the handling of her remains after Beckerink claimed he had the rights to her body as the surviving spouse.

The parents eventually won custody of her remains, which they brought back to Michigan.

Beckerink, previously a partner at corporate law firm Duane Morris, was fired after the domestic abuse allegations surfaced.

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Texas Cop Pleads Guilty After Shooting Wife In The Face

A disgraced Texas police officer cut a deal after facing charges of shooting his wife in the head, and now the ex-cop will spend the next two decades behind bars.

Galib Chowdhury, 33, was arrested in June 2023 by the same police department that employed him as an officer. Shortly after he admitted to what he described as accidentally shooting his wife, Sadaf Iqbal, then 31, the Houston Police Department fired him. An investigation into the incident revealed a troubled history between the two, including texts Chowdhury sent to Iqbal shortly before that fateful night.

According to reporting by KPRC, a local NBC affiliate, Chowdhury was the one who reported the shooting after midnight on June 12, 2023. At the time, he claimed that he was trying to shoot an intruder and Iqbal got in the way. However, KPRC reported that investigators were suspicious about his story; he reportedly didn’t have any physical description of the supposed suspect, nor did he say where they ran. There was also no damage to the home that would indicate a break-in.

Iqbal sustained a gunshot wound to the head that she survived. According to a GoFundMe page set up for her medical expenses, she is still recovering from her injuries. When she was taken to the hospital, she reportedly refused to give a statement to police and stated that the shooting was an accident. Investigators reportedly suspected domestic violence and asked to search her cellphone, to which she consented.

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Doug Emhoff Responds To Report That He Forcefully Slapped Ex-Girlfriend In 2012

A rep for second gentleman Doug Emhoff on Thursday denied a British tabloid report that he slapped his then-girlfriend during the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

“This report is untrue,” the spokesperson told the news site Semafor. “Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”

Emhoff, who has been helping his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, on the presidential campaign trail, allegedly hit the unnamed woman so hard that she “spun around,” the Daily Mail reported Wednesday. The article cited three friends of hers who said they were familiar with the incident.

Emhoff may have lashed out in a fit of jealousy, the friends said, over a perceived flirtation by the woman toward a valet. She reportedly slapped Emhoff back. The alleged victim declined to speak to the outlet.

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WEF: Climate Change Causes Pakistani Men to Beat up Their Wives

Apparently the problem is not that some Pakistani men are cowardly wife beaters, the problem is climate change.

How climate change affects youth mental health in Pakistan

Aug 8, 2024
Henna Hundal
Sikander Bizenjo
Manager, External Engagements, Engro

  • In 2024, Pakistan has faced devastating floods and extreme heat, hindering its recovery from existing climate crisis-related disasters.
  • While the economic and physical health impacts of climate change are clear, Pakistan’s population is also experiencing the often overlooked mental health ramifications.
  • How can a growing sense of climate anxiety or “eco-anxiety” in locals be addressed?

Pakistan is facing an onslaught of climate disasters. Since record floods in 2022 that affected 33 million residents and caused more than $15 billion in damages, the country has contended with several new crises that have hampered a sustained recovery.

In February 2024, flash floods further upended lives and livelihoods in the southwestern coastal region of Gwadar – the heart of a billion-dollar investment under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The summer of 2024 has been marked by searing heat with thousands of Pakistanis succumbing to heatstroke and inundating healthcare facilities.

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Legalizing Marijuana Leads To ‘Substantial Decrease’ In Intimate Partner Violence, Study Shows

A new analysis of violence between intimate partners concludes that legalizing marijuana for adult use “results in a substantial decrease in rates of intimate partner violence.”

The finding also indicate that recreational cannabis legalization “substantially impacts the relationship between heavy drinking” and intimate partner violence (IPV), possibly as the result of people substituting marijuana for alcohol.

Author Samantha Gene Baldwin, a Georgetown master of public policy student, wrote in the thesis that the findings are “surprising,” saying the links between recreational marijuana legalization (RML) and IPV “require careful consideration.”

“As marijuana use is a known risk factor for IPV and legalization of recreational marijuana typically increases usage, RML could be expected to increase rates of IPV,” Baldwin wrote, adding: “Reduced alcohol use could complicate this relationship if marijuana acts as a substitute to alcohol. As alcohol consumption is a greater risk factor for IPV than marijuana use, any reduction in alcohol consumption would lessen the impact of RML on IPV.”

The study drew on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which includes details of crimes that are reported to police. Baldwin used data from 2013–2019, deciding not to include data from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis found that “legalization of recreational marijuana results in 56.6 fewer reported incidents of IPV per 100,000 people.”

Pregnant women in Missouri can’t get divorced. Critics say it fuels domestic violence

The turning point for Destonee was a car ride.

She describes a scene of emotional abuse: Pregnant with her third child, her husband yelled at her while her older two kids listened in the car. “He would call me awful things in front of them,” she says. “And soon my son would call me those names too.”

She made up her mind to leave him, but when she went to a lawyer to file for divorce, she was told to come back when she was no longer pregnant.

Destonee requested she be identified by only her first name. She says she still lives with abusive threats from her ex-husband. She couldn’t end her marriage because Missouri law requires women seeking divorce to disclose whether they’re pregnant — and state judges won’t finalize divorces during a pregnancy. Established in the 1970s, the rule was intended to make sure men were financially accountable for the children they fathered.

Advocates in Missouri are now pushing to change this law, arguing that it’s being weaponized against victims of domestic violence and contributes to the contraction of women’s reproductive freedoms in a post-Roe v. Wade landscape.

“In Missouri, it feels as though they have really closed down every door in terms of reproductive autonomy,” says Kristen Marinaccio, an attorney and expert in divorce law who has examined these kinds of laws in Missouri and other states. She says beyond the legal and financial ties of marriage, there is powerful emotional weight to legally terminating a marriage. “You might just think, well, it’s a piece of paper,” she says, “but that piece of paper that tells you you’re no longer in this horrible marriage is really freeing for a lot of clients.”

After hearing stories about survivors unable to leave marriages, state Rep. Ashley Aune introduced House Bill 2402. It would allow pregnant women to finalize divorce in Missouri.

Aune says that the law has gone unexamined for too long and that policymakers need to give women the right to leave a dangerous or even life-threatening situation. “How can you look that person in the eye and say, ‘No, I think you should stay with that person,'” says Aune, a Democrat. “That’s wild to me.”

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‘Wife beater Alaska mayor’s domestic abuser sons’ girlfriends are BOTH found dead at his home two years apart’ – with local cops accused of slow-walking probes into their deaths

A wife beater Alaska mayor’s two abusive sons each dated a woman who turned up dead at the lawmaker’s home two years apart – but no-one has ever been charged.

Jennifer Kirk and Sue Sue Norton were found dead with signs of strangulation and beating in 2018 and 2020 in the Alaskan town, Kotzebue. 

Both women were dating the ex-mayor Clement Richards’s sons at the time, with cops accused by ProPublica of inaction following the two women’s deaths.

Richards was previously convicted of beating his wife Annette, while his two sons Anthony and Amos also have a history of domestic violence.  Anthony had been convicted of beating Kirk prior to her death in May 2018, which cops claimed was a suicide. 

Amos admitted kicking Norton in the stomach while she was six months pregnant before she was killed in March 2020.

Despite those convictions – and a long track record of abuse allegations from multiple other women – neither of the sons have been charged in their deaths.

Holes in the police investigations and the judicial process have raised serious questions over a potential cover-up, after ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News jointly reported the story.

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US Supreme Court hears arguments over domestic-violence gun curbs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday was hearing arguments on the legality of a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns in the latest major case to test the willingness of its conservative majority to further expand gun rights.

The justices heard an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s ruling striking down the law – intended to protect victims of domestic abuse – as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the measure failed a stringent test set by the Supreme Court in a 2022 ruling that required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to survive a Second Amendment challenge.

Some of the conservative justices questioned Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the law on behalf of the Biden administration, and expressed skepticism about her argument that the Second Amendment permits laws that prohibit people who are not law abiding and responsible from possessing firearms, including domestic abusers.

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Due Process Demands Stricter Standards for Restraining Orders That Negate Gun Rights

Since 1994, federal law has prohibited gun possession by people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Although that provision may seem like a commonsensical safeguard, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled last February that it was not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test prescribed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. On Tuesday, in United States v. Rahimi, the Supreme Court will consider whether the 5th Circuit was right about that.

Rahimi is primarily about the contours of the right to keep and bear arms as it was traditionally understood. But a Cato Institute brief notes that the case also raises the question of what due process requires when the government seeks to deprive someone of that right.

Under 18 USC 922(g)(8), which Congress approved as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, it is a felony, currently punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for someone to possess or receive a firearm when he is subject to a court order that restrains him from “harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner” or the partner’s child or from “engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury” to the partner or the partner’s child. The order must be preceded by a hearing of which the respondent “received actual notice,” and it must include either a finding that the respondent poses “a credible threat” or language that “prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” that “would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury.”

To issue an order, in other words, a judge need not conclude that the respondent actually poses a threat. To trigger the loss of gun rights, the order need only include boilerplate regarding the use of force. And as 5th Circuit Judge James C. Ho noted in his concurring opinion last February, orders that include such language are “often used as a tactical device in divorce proceedings,” “are granted to virtually all who apply,” are “a tempting target for abuse,” and in some cases have been used to disarm the victims of domestic violence, leaving them “in greater danger than before.”

Are the procedural protections specified by Section 922(g)(8) enough to guarantee the “due process” that the Fifth Amendment demands before someone can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property”? The Cato Institute, joined by the Goldwater Institute, thinks not.

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Georgia fired a state trooper for his conduct. Now he leads Seward County’s Homeland Security task force.

The Seward County Homeland Security task force, sometimes using the controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture, seized $11.8 million from Interstate 80 drivers through civil and criminal forfeiture in its first 32 months.

The Seward-based head of that law enforcement task force trains and supervises officers – despite being barred from becoming a Nebraska police officer himself.

Blake Swicord was fired as a state trooper in Georgia after selling guns to a pardoned felon and allegedly sending sexually explicit texts and photos from his police-issued phone. Swicord, who claims he was wrongfully terminated, then was arrested on suspicion of battery following an alleged domestic violence incident with his then-girlfriend.

The Nebraska agency in charge of law enforcement training has twice denied Swicord admission, saying he didn’t meet the good character requirement for entry. That agency said Swicord failed to disclose his arrest or his firing on his application, as first reported by the Lincoln Journal Star. On Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court dismissed his latest appeal.

Homeland Security officials told the Flatwater Free Press this week that they had no knowledge of Swicord’s previous dismissal or arrest when he was first placed into a Homeland Security role in 2019. They said they learned of Swicord’s troubles in April 2021, when an assistant U.S. attorney told the agency that the Nebraska Supreme Court had denied Swicord’s first appeal in his quest for police certification.

Swicord will remain in his job as task force coordinator as he continues his legal battle, Seward County Sheriff Mike Vance told a reporter during Tuesday’s Seward County Board meeting.

Vance has previously said he would have to let Swicord go if he can’t become a Nebraska police officer. Vance and dozens of Swicord’s colleagues have praised the 27-year police veteran for his leadership, interdiction skills and professionalism.

“Since his employment with my agency, Mr. Swicord has shown nothing but the upmost integrity and professionalism,” Vance wrote supporting Swicord in 2019. “After conducting this extensive background check I feel very sure that Mr. Swicord is a man of integrity and very honest at all times.”

The Police Standards Advisory Council, which oversees law enforcement certification in Nebraska, has acknowledged Swicord’s qualifications. It also ruled twice that he can’t go through training to become a Nebraska police officer.

“His actions in the application process demonstrate to this body that the petitioner cannot be considered to be a person who can be characterized as being truthful, honest or trustworthy,” the council wrote in its 2019 decision.

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