Iyanla Vanzant Aims to Fix Policing in America By Healing Police Officers, OK Beloved
The spiritual healer known for fixing people’s lives wants to use her skills to help improve the strain between police and the Black community.
Iyanla Vanzant opened up about working with police departments to help end the “trauma” caused by fatal police encounters. While speaking with The Grio, the “Iyanla Fix My Life” star described the policing issue as “sudden, unexpected events or experiences that have a disparate or serious impact on mental, emotional and sometimes physical health.”
“We need to recognize that we’re in an ancestral pattern,” she said. “This person was hung, and before you could mourn that, that person was hung. This person was whipped.”
The Peace From Broken Pieces author explained how society needs to move away from “political intervention” with policing issues and move toward mental health awareness and healing from the traumatic experiences, AOL reports. Her hopes include working with police departments and implementing some of the healing practices she’s preached in her books and on her hit OWN reality show.
“Before you can see me as whatever my human expression is, Black, Latin[x], whatever, brown and be sensitive to that, you got to see me as a human being … you can’t see me as a human if you don’t feel like a human,” Vanzant said.
She touched on the “support and mental health intervention” police officers are in need of.
“I think that we are forgetting that police officers are human,” she said. “They came from dysfunctional families. Some of them didn’t have daddies. Some of them had mothers who were drunks. Some of them grew up in foster care.”
She continued. “How many of them have been abandoned, abused, sexually violated? And now you’ve got a badge and a gun,” Vanzant said. “So before we can even deal with racial sensitivities, these people need to be trained as human beings.”
Her message comes as the country demands improved training for police officers following the latest series of fatal police shootings including the killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright and 15-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant.
Mickey D’s Partners With Biden Administration to Spread Information on COVID Vaccinations
Trying to do their part to make information regarding the coronavirus vaccine more accessible to the public, fast-food giant McDonald’s has partnered with the Biden administration to make getting information even easier for the millions of customers who enjoy McDonald’s.
“We all want to protect ourselves and our loved ones and be together with our communities again. McDonald’s is excited to be doing our part for the people we serve, providing them with simple information that can help keep them safe,” Genna Gent, McDonald’s USA vice president for Global Public Policy and Government Relations, said in a written statement. “This is a team effort—it takes all of us. We’re proud to enter this partnership to provide trusted, independently verified information about COVID-19 vaccines to our customers in the nearly 14,000 communities we serve.”
The collaborative initiative will start later this month when a McDonald’s billboard with COVID-19 vaccine information will appear in Times Square in the center of New York City. Then, in July, McDonald’s will have informative seals on its hot McCafé® cups and McDelivery® stickers that will lead customers to vaccines.gov. On this website, they can learn more about how they can protect themselves and the people they love from COVID-19, as well as where to find vaccine appointments near them. There will also be new packaging and ads that will feature art from the national “We Can Do This”campaign, setting the campaign’s slogan against a map of the United States.
“Getting vaccinated is easy. More than 150 million people have already gotten at least one dose of vaccine, and millions more are getting vaccinated every day,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “Thanks to McDonald’s, people will now be able to get trusted information about vaccines when they grab a cup of coffee or order a meal. Ending this pandemic requires all of us working together to do our part, including encouraging our friends and family to get vaccinated. This effort will help more people make informed decisions about their health and learn about steps they can take to protect themselves and their communities.”
‘God’s Plan’: Drake’s $50K Scholarship Recipient Graduates With Her Master’s
The young woman Drake was seen handing a $50K scholarship to in his 2018 “God’s Plan” music video has graduated with her master’s degree.
Destiny James was among the lucky recipients of $996,631.90 worth of philanthropic endeavors Drake filmed for the catchy rap track. Shot in the city of Miami, the Toronto emcee was seen paying off student debt, buying groceries, giving money to single mothers, and toys to children.
Now, three years later, James took to social media on Wednesday to give fans an update on how Drake’s good deed affected her life.
Among the swarms of encouraging comments she received, the Grammy Award-winning rapper also sent his love by writing, “LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DES,” as captured by Essence. The Denmark, South Carolina, native also went viral on Twitter after one user uploaded a side-by-side photo titled “How it started, how it’s going.”
A 2018 tweet from user Ment Nelson outlined a few of Drake’s charitable acts in the music video. “Drake surprised students at Miami Senior High by filming a music video, and donating $25K. He then visited the University of Miami where he donated a $50K scholarship to a random student who just so happened to be Destiny James of Denmark, South Carolina #GodsPlan,” it read.
“Drake just gave me $50,000 y’all. Oh my God,” she said in a video alongside the rapper. He returned the love by kissing her on the forehead.
James completed her undergraduate study at the University of Miami in 2019, the year after Drake awarded her the scholarship. The Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc member went on to graduate school where she’s set to receive a Master’s of Public Health from the University of North Carolina.
History Made When All-Black Line Starts an NHL Game
There is, surprisingly, history still being made in sports that most wouldn’t have even considered. This is especially true in hockey, where more needs to be accomplished when it comes to feats involving Black players.
Earlier this week, according to People, a National Hockey League team placed an all-Black starting line in a game for the first time in the history of the professional sports league. The NHL was founded in 1917.
For a league whose roster of players is approximately 3% Black, it was definitely an accomplishment.
Tampa Bay Lightning players Daniel Walcott, Mathieu Joseph, and Gemel Smith started for the team at Monday night’s game against the Florida Panthers. .
“First of all, they’re all in the NHL for a reason,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper told ESPN. “They deserve to be here and have worked their tails off. To have them all together, they had a little chemistry. Moving forward in the league, you hope it isn’t a story any more and will be the norm. It was a pretty cool moment for all those guys.”
Walcott said he hopes that young Black kids seeing this would have an interest in playing hockey now. He added that Cooper told him he would be starting the game but made no mention other Black players starting on the line as well.
“A whirlwind of emotion, a long time coming,” Walcott said. “To get into that starting lineup was great. … Coop did something really special here to promote this for young kids.”
“It was great, man,” Joseph said. “A step in the right direction. It was fun to have some progress and it was great to see and I was glad I was part of it. … Any players of color in this league want to showcase to our families or other people of color. I thank the coaching staff for doing this.”
Black Business Owner Shot And Killed Burglar; Served One Year Awaiting Trial
The family and friends of a Black man awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges for defending his business from a burglar are saying he is innocent.
LaRue Bratcher is the owner of marijuana smoke shop, Premium Smoke L.L.C., located in Oklahoma City, and last year, he shot and killed a man who tried to steal from his business, The Atlanta Black Star reported.
“Someone broke into his place,” Bratcher’s uncle Derrick Neighbors said at a Saturday rally for Bratcher. “He didn’t go out looking for trouble. He was in his own place of business.” His trial is set to begin later this month, reported KWTV.
Bratcher was originally arrested for second-degree murder for killing 42-year-old Daniel Hardwick, who is white, the suspect in the burglary. It is alleged that Bratcher initially tried to fire a warning shot, but it accidentally struck Hardwick. This incident would have been Hardwick’s second attempted break-in in as many days.
“He was trying to break in when the business owner, who was inside the business at the time, apparently opened fire with a handgun, striking and killing the man who was breaking in,” Msgt. Gary Knight with the Oklahoma City Police Department said, according to KFOR.
Police were quick to point out his business license had expired via a call to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, which lead to his initial arrest of growing marijuana without a license and the confiscation of 480 marijuana plants, which were estimated to cost about $1.5 million.
While Bratcher was out on bond, officers raided his home and pointed their guns at his wife who was holding their six-month-old, according to Vicky Bratcher, LaRue’s wife.
“It was a horrible experience,” she said.
Late last year, Bratcher’s charges were updated to first-degree murder.
“It’s just me with the kids and to know that you go from one charge to the next charge and not knowing what’s going to happen,” Bratcher’s wife said. “It’s like our life is at suspense right now.” She’s been managing the store alone since the shooting last year.
Bratcher is being represented by attorney Clay Curtis, one of Oklahoma’s best lawyers, named Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year, according to the Oklahoma Gazette.
Oldest Tulsa Massacre Survivor Turns 107 as Fight Against the City Continues
According to Tulsa World, Viola Fletcher, who turned 107, is believed to be the oldest survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma.
According to Justice For Greenwood, “the match to the fuel of racial resentment that was lit on the morning of May 31, 1921,” when a White mob attacked the Greenwood district of Tulsa.
Photo credit- Twitter- @dreisenheath
NowThis presented a tribute video to Fletcher where personal messages from the likes of actors Danny Glover and Piper Perabo and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker were shared.
“For you showing strength, letting the world know of truths that tried to be buried—today we celebrate your love and your light,” Booker said in the video. “You are touching generations not yet born.”
Fletcher, who grew up in a family of sharecroppers, is one of the state’s oldest residents. She was born Viola Ford in 1914 in Comanche County. Fletcher’s family ultimately settled in the Tulsa area. Fletcher, who will participate virtually, and other survivors will serve as headliners of the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, scheduled for May 28 to 30 in the Greenwood District.
Also, Fletcher and others are engaged in a legal battle. Justice For Greenwood explained that nearly 100 years after the massacre, 11 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the City of Tulsa and six other defendants demanding accountability and restitution for continued harm.
Photo credit- Instagram
“Fletcher is one of the plaintiffs in a state reparations lawsuit filed last year, along with two other massacre survivors, Lessie Randle, 106, of Tulsa and Hughes Van Ellis, 100, of Aurora, CO,” Tulsa World reported.
Even learning about topics such as the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in educational settings is being debated in Oklahoma. The Hill explained that Governor Kevin Stitt has signed a bill (HB 1775) banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
Photo credit- Twitter- @OKPolicy
“Now more than ever we need policies that bring us together, not rip us apart,” Still said, in a May 7 video he shared on Twitter. “I firmly believe that not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex.”
Additionally, The Journal Recordpublished an opinion piece by Ahniwake Rose, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute.
“If signed into law, HB 1775 would prevent public schools and universities from fully teaching about the inequality and racism threaded throughout our history and public systems. It would have a chilling effect on teachers wanting to examine atrocities like the Trail of Tears and the Tulsa Race Massacre, events that influence the daily lives of Oklahomans,” Rose wrote. “It also would ban mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling.”
President Biden Keeps Diversity Pledge, Announces Third Slate Of Judicial Nominees
President Joe Biden announced three U.S. Court Of Appeals judicial nominees and three District Court judicial nominees in his third slate of judicial nominations.
According to the White House, the nominees “will bring deep credentials and qualifications to the federal bench, as well as career-long devotion to our Constitution and the rule of law.”
The judicial nominees show President Biden’s pledge to add diversity to his cabinet and judicial selections. The nominees include groundbreaking African American and Hispanic nominees and the third active Native American federal judge serving in the United States.
“President Biden has spent decades committed to strengthening the federal bench, which is why he continues to move at a historically fast pace with respect to judicial nominations,” the White House said in a release. “His first announcement of candidates for the judiciary was made faster than any that of any new President in modern American history, and today’s announcement further continues that trend.”
Circuit Court Nominees
Gustavo A. Gelpi Jr. has been nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Gelpi is a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and has served as chief judge of the court since 2018.
Gelpi is the second judge of Hispanic origin to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the second judge from Puerto Rico ever to sit on the First Circuit.
He previously served as a magistrate judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico from 2001 to 2006 and prior to his appointment worked in the litigation department of the McConnell Valdés law firm. Judge Gelpí was also the solicitor general of Puerto Rico from 1999 to 2000.
Eunice C. Lee, an assistant federal defender with the Federal Defenders of New York, has been nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Lee worked two decades with the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York. She also served as an adjunct assistant professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law from 2003 to 2019, teaching a criminal appellate defense clinic.
Lee is the second African American woman to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Lee has represented over 380 indigent clients in proceedings before state and federal appellate courts on direct appeal, in post-judgment motions, and in habeas proceedings.
Veronica S. Rossman served as senior counsel to the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Districts of Colorado and Wyoming since 2017. From 2015 to 2017 Rossman served as the appellate division chief of her office, and she previously worked as an assistant federal public defender in the Appellate Division from 2010 to 2015.
District Court Nominees
Angel Kelley has been nominated for the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. Kelley has served as an associate judge on the Massachusetts state court since 2009, with an initial appointment to the district court then appointed to the superior court in 2013. Judge Kelley served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2009.
King is also an appointed commissioner on the Washington State Gambling Commission and previously taught federal Indian Law at the Seattle University School of Law.
Karen M. Williams has been nominated for the U.S. District Court For the District of New Jersey. Williams has served as a U.S. magistrate jdge for the U.S. District Court in the District of New Jersey since 2009. Williams currently serves as an adjunct professor at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. Prior to her appointment, Judge Williams spent more than 15 years in private practice at Jasinski & Williams, P.C. in Atlantic City,
Entrepreneurs need to cultivate two superpowers to grow their businesses and bring their ideas to life: creativity and organization. It’s not enough to have one without the other.
But creatives frequently neglect process and structure when they start monetizing their work, and this is a big mistake, according to Dallas-based entrepreneur Shawnee Leonard.
“It’s all fun and games claiming to be an organized mess with your creative process, until you start losing money,” says Shawnee. “Organization is an underrated skill and people don’t appreciate it until it’s too late. I tell people to get organized from the very beginning.”
Shawnee runs a social media and marketing consultancy and founded The Ten Ninety-Nine, a freelancer collective in Dallas. She also runs Moxie Brides magazine, organizes events and PR, and much more. Shawnee is what’s known as a multi-hyphenate: a creative businessperson who wears many hats across different projects.
If your work is an exciting juggling act like Shawnee’s, and you start getting disorganized, you put your revenue at risk. You also jeopardize your own creative energy by being vulnerable to burnout. The Anatomy of Work Index, a survey of over 13,000 global knowledge workers, reports that burnout is on the rise and 76% of workers struggle to disconnect from work. Creatives need to manage and protect themselves from unnecessary tasks, other people’s competing priorities, and sometimes their own unfocused ambition.
The research also brings hope, however, with the finding that individuals can save over six hours per week by improving the processes they use to work. Creatives in our Asana community agree: process and organization make the difference between burnout and growth, between chaos and clarity.
You may not think of yourself as the “organized type,” or worry that structure will hold back your imagination. But the opposite turned out to be true for Destiny Taylor, a Los Angeles-based content producer and social media strategist.
Destiny began her YouTube vlog as a college student and successfully monetized it while holding a full-time job. It now has over 84,000 subscribers. Her biggest challenge when she started was to manage and prioritize all the moving pieces amid her other responsibilities. “I tried spreadsheets,” Destiny says, “but they were boring and I always fell off. I even tried notebooks and they always magically went missing. I thought, ‘I’m not good at this admin stuff. I’m only good at the creative stuff.’”
She accepted this as a fact until she found a tool that actually worked for her. “It only took me a week to realize the problem was my spreadsheet, my notebook, and everything else I’d tried and failed miserably with. But I never got bored with Asana. It allowed my projects to come to life.”
Here are three ways that better organization and the right work management platform can help you run a business and make your goals a reality—all while protecting and boosting your creative talent.
Catch inspiration—and never lose it
Good ideas don’t always respect office hours. Rather than scribbling them on a paper napkin, use Asana and its mobile app to jot down inspiration and to-do list items as they come, making sure they’re easy to find when it’s time to dig deeper. If you wake up in the middle of the night with a great blog post topic, it’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready. (You can try Asana for free here.)
Ariel Harris, the Oakland-based CEO of health and fitness startup Gym Hooky, keeps all her business ideas in Asana. (She’s also a certified health coach and personal trainer with a client base that includes Facebook and Stanford University.) Ariel clears her head at the end of each day by writing down everything on her mind into the platform. Ariel says, “Bless my brain, but I’m always thinking about the next thing. I had trouble sleeping because of it. Now, I do a ‘brain dump’ every night as a task in Asana.” The next day, she can follow up on her ideas, and because it’s a collaborative platform, Ariel’s assistant can also see the list and get started.
Destiny Taylor takes it a step further and cultivates her inspiration by making what she calls a “brain sprinkle” board in Asana. She visually arranges her ideas and adds photos to inspire how content could look. “Any idea in my mind, I pull it out onto this board,” she says. “I love that I can just lay everything out beautifully and keep things organized.”
Destiny can stay in her creative flow and her ideas will be waiting for her in the right place when she needs them.
Keep your team aligned and focused on their craft
When a team seems to work together effortlessly on the surface, they probably have a great system behind the scenes that keeps everyone moving in the same direction. A work management platform helps teams stay aligned and minimize “work about work,” such as chasing for status updates, looking for information, and trying to figure out what to work on next. This creates more time for high-impact creative projects.
Ariel Harris started as a “solopreneur,” but as Gym Hooky grew, she needed to reevaluate her project management structure. “Gym Hooky is no longer just me,” she says. “I have an assistant, brand manager, bookkeeper, all these things. How can I make sure I’m set up in a way that makes sense for everyone?” Ariel reorganized Asana and made it the central platform holding her team together across her business.
When everyone’s workflows and task status are visible to teammates in this way, there is more accountability and no micromanaging. “It establishes trust in my team,” Ariel says, “and there’s no worry about things getting done. I prefer to be hands-off, and having a process really helps.”
Ariel says this accountability has even improved her relationship with her husband Quinnton, co-founder of creative studio Retrospect. The Harrises use Asana to plan big projects in their personal life, such as their destination wedding in the Bahamas or furnishing their home. When Ariel says organization is her love language, Quinnton jokes that he wasn’t exactly fluent when they met. But in 2015, he was introduced to Asana while working as Creative Lead at Walker & Company brands. Despite his initial resistance, he saw Asana’s value and brought the platform into his passion projects and his partnership.
If work management platforms keep things running well for a couple, they are just as helpful for large teams. Destiny Taylor previously used Asana at ViacomCBS, where 50 cross-functional teammates were often creating content for just one reality TV show. “You can really build out a conversation with multiple hands on deck,” Destiny says. “It’s just fluid, versus trying to keep up with a super-long email chain.”
A central hub for the team is also helpful for holding workflows, which are the standard operating procedures or “recipes” that make a business tick. When Shawnee Leonard hires subcontractors to collaborate on a client project, she can hand them a workflow template to follow. She also advises freelancers to create processes and recurring tasks for repetitive back-office work, like invoicing and expense management.
With process, it’s easier to keep on top of tasks, and it frees up more energy to focus on the good stuff: creative work.
Let creatives work how they work best
An ideal work management platform is flexible enough to adapt to individual personalities and work styles. You can look at the same project plans in different ways to fit team members’ preferences, suit various project types, and even follow your own changing energy levels throughout the day. Four views can illustrate this: boards, lists, timelines, and calendars.
Board view is highly visual—think of Destiny’s inspirational “brain sprinkle” board. They can also be used as a digital Kanban board, where a card moves into columns from left to right as each work unit is completed—taking a midnight-inspired blog post idea, for example, from “to do,” to “doing,” to “done.”
Meanwhile, List view shows tasks in checklist form. It’s easy to drill down into details and plug through tasks by checking them off when they’re complete.
Ariel Harris’s background in project management means that lists suit her systematic way of thinking, while her husband Quinnton can look at the same project differently. “I’m a visual person, so I use boards. They show progress over time and help with projects that are holistic experiences, like websites, that are harder to dissect into fine steps. We have a space for the backlog, anything that’s in progress, anything that needs to be reviewed, and anything in the ‘done’ category.”
Timeline view shows when deadlines depend on one another and what tasks overlap. It’s like a modern adaptation of a Gantt chart that shows how a project’s pieces fit together over time—perfect for planning an event, for example.
Calendar view is what you might think: a monthly calendar showing what’s due each day and any holes in the schedule. For example, after her day job, Destiny Taylor can go to her calendar to see the most urgent tasks she needs to do for her blog that night. It maps out all her posts, color-coded by social channel.
“Calendar view is where I live if I just want to be told what to do and see things at the top level,” Destiny says. “List view is my ideal interface when I want to see pertinent details, and if I feel like there’s too much going on, I can collapse sections that I’m not focusing on. Then there is Board view, which is my favorite. This is where I can see my work mapped out interactively. There are texture, color, and visuals, which keep my passion up even after a long day at work.”
Your diverse team and diverse projects will do best with a platform that can accommodate different styles of thinking. Your tools should work for you, not the other way around.
Bring your visions into the world
With the right tools, you might find it easier to get organized than you originally thought, and it also helps to connect new coordination skills to your original purpose and drive. For Quinnton Harris, the motivation to learn better management habits grew when he got honest with himself. “When I think about my creative journey,” he says, “and I’m not yet seeing the vision in my head out in the world, I have to ask myself really tough questions about why that’s the case. How am I building habits to translate what’s ‘up here’ in my mind into this physical realm?”
His drive to bring his ideas to life helped him level up and embrace new structures and ways of working. “It’s that feeling of needing a change, and of committing to myself to build new habits, think about new processes, or get some assistance,” he notes, “so the things I want to do will come to fruition.”
Missouri Man Who Served 42 Years for Triple Murder is Actually Innocent According to Prosecutor
The justice system has never been perceived as fair according to people of color whether from personal experiences or based on news reports over the years. A Black man, who has been in prison for over 43 years, is actually innocent according to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office in Missouri.
The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, along with the Midwest Innocence Project and international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, have all agreed on one conclusion when it comes to the fate of a Black man who was wrongly convicted 43 years ago in a triple murder in Kansas City. Collectively, they have come together to call for the release of Kevin Strickland.
“All those who have reviewed the evidence in recent months agree—Kevin Strickland deserves to be exonerated,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker in a written statement. “This is a profound error we must correct now.”
Earlier this week, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project and Robert J. Hoffman of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner filed a petition asking the Missouri Supreme Court to order his immediate release.
Strickland has been incarcerated for over 42 years in prison for a 1978 triple homicide that claimed the lives of Sherrie Black, John Walker, and Larry Ingram, and had also injured Cynthia Douglas. Strickland has maintained his innocence during this long incarceration. Since his conviction, there has been evidence of Strickland’s innocence including sworn statements from the perpetrators who have declared that Strickland is innocent and naming the previously unidentified fourth perpetrator.
The prosecutor has announced that an Amicus Brief was filed with the Missouri Supreme Court in support of Hoffman’s petition, as well as a letter to Hoffman detailing the results of a review by the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office. The court case against Strickland had initially relied on the testimony of a woman who had allegedly witnessed the murders Strickland was accused of committing. The Prosecutor’s Office concluded that the witness, now deceased, sincerely wished (and attempted) to recant her identification of Strickland at trial.
“We are grateful to Jean Peters Baker and the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office for their support of Mr. Strickland’s innocence and their work reviewing his case,” stated Midwest Innocence Project’s Executive Director Tricia Rojo Bushnell. “The evidence of Mr. Strickland’s innocence is clear, and we applaud the prosecutor’s office for fulfilling their duty as ministers of justice to ensure that justice is done—in this case, doing everything possible to help exonerate an innocent man.”
“Once she became aware of her mistake, Ms. Douglas did everything she could to free Mr. Strickland and she bears no responsibility for the years Mr. Strickland has lost,” stated Rojo Bushnell. “Mr. Strickland’s conviction was the failure of a system and the injustice of his continued incarceration harms not only him, but the families of the victims, who must continue to relive this horrible crime as we fight to correct this injustice.”
Black Man Wore Mask Depicting A White Man; Accused of Robbing 30 Homes In Cali
A Black man allegedly burglarized California homes using a mask that resembles a white person’s face.
Before the Beverly Hills Police Department nabbed 30-year-old Rockim Prowell for allegedly robbing a series of homes, they noticed their suspect was not the brown-haired, white man they originally thought he would be—he was a dark-skinned Black man instead, Fox 11, reported.
The suspect was photographed by security footage while wearing the mask. Several images of Prowell sporting the realistic mask show the mask to have a slightly opened mouth and a hoodie and gloves that conveniently hide his arms and hands.
“It was odd this burglar’s mouth was always open when seen on video surveillance,” LAPD Pacific wrote on Twitter. “When he was caught breaking into another home we discovered why.”
The police said Prowell is associated in two burglaries in Beverly Hills in which he allegedly stole flat-screen TVs.
“We believe that the suspect is responsible for numerous residential burglaries within the Southern California area,” Beverly Hills Police said.
Prowell has been accused of robbing more than 30 Los Angeles area homes, and he was previously arrested for traffic stop in Beverly Hills.
Police also conducted a search of Prowell’s home in Inglewood, where the police claim they found items that match the description of what victims said were stolen,The New York Post reported.
Beverly Hills detectives are working with the LAPD and authorities in Newport Beach in San Diego to determine if Prowell had any potential connection with home burglaries in those areas. Prowell has been connected to seven burglaries in the area, the LAPD Pacific Division told the press.
He has been released from police custody and is due in court on May 25.
Ariel Harris started as a “solopreneur,” but as Gym Hooky grew, she needed to reevaluate her project management structure. “Gym Hooky is no longer just me,” she says. “I have an assistant, brand manager, bookkeeper, all these things. How can I make sure I’m set up in a way that makes sense for everyone?” Ariel reorganized Asana and made it the central platform holding her team together across her business.