Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

This afternoon will be mostly sunny with a high near 85 degrees. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 65. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny with a high near 84.

Top story

What could an elected school board mean for Chicago? Here’s what other large districts have seen

Talk of a potential elected Chicago school board has been dominated by its expected size — 21 members, the most of any major urban district in the nation — plus the decentralizing of accountability and the seemingly inevitable influence of big money elections.

As advocates’ longtime dream of a fully elected board for Chicago Public Schools looks closer than ever to reality, critics and supporters alike can look to other major cities’ boards for lessons — and warnings — on how to implement a new system.

While the state legislature might address many of those questions by the time the city’s first school board elections roll around in late 2024, experts who follow other districts say Chicago has an opportunity to launch its elected board on good footing if new processes and safeguards are created and norms are established.

“Elected boards are kind of a core of democracy” and fundamental to giving families a voice, said Duncan Klussmann, a former superintendent at a Houston-area district and now a clinical assistant professor at the University of Houston.

But getting a bill over the finish line — as long as it has taken — is only one hurdle, he said.

Read Nader Issa’s full elected school board breakdown here.

More news you need

1. Republicans filed a federal lawsuit today against Democrats arguing the state’s new legislative maps are unconstitutional because they’re not based on actual U.S. census population data. The two sides disagree over the Dems’ use of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey instead of official census counts when drawing the boundaries.
2. R. Kelly told a judge today that he wants to move forward with his federal racketeering trial in New York without his Chicago-based leading attorneys. The attorneys recently asked to withdraw from the case two month before trial while other members of the legal team say they were fired.
3. After a two-day strike, Urban Prep has agreed to salary increases for teachers among other demands, CTU said this morning. Teachers will also receive three years’ back pay when they didn’t receive raises and additional paid leave.
4. Nonprofit group Change Illinois and its civic partners hope their ward map can trigger a referendum by getting votes from at least 10 aldermen. But that’s not going to happen if veteran City Council members have their say.
5. Local entrepreneur Adam Wisniewski has been tasked with building an app for a city website connecting youth to various resources. For Wisniewski, who learned coding at a Chicago Public Library after-school program, it’s a chance to pay it forward.
6. Goodman Theatre will resume in-person performances this month with “School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play,” which was suspended by COVID-19. The theater’s 2021-22 season will also include the world premieres of four productions.

Leaders for New Chicago gives $50K grants to 10 who help city areas impacted by structural racism

A 30-year-old dancer who co-founded the Era Footwork Crew, a group that uses “footworking,” a uniquely Chicago-style dance, to bring communities together.

The 40-year-old co-founder of Black Lives Matter’s Chicago chapter, now working with survivors of police brutality at the Chicago Torture Justice Center.

A 26-year-old organizer who shepherded a four-year project by the Invisible Institute to document the torture of more than 100 Black men, making their stories publicly accessible.

These are among the 10 winners of $50,000 each from “Leaders for a New Chicago,” an initiative of the Field Foundation and MacArthur Foundation to support individuals and organizations addressing systemic racism in underserved South and West Side communities.

Provided

Launched in 2019, the award — a no-strings-attached $25,000 grant for each winner, plus another $25,000 for their organizations — is a more accessible spin on MacArthur’s lauded “genius grants” awarded annually to nationally known figures boasting lofty achievements.

This third cohort being acknowledged and celebrated are folks diligently working in their individual trenches, some lesser known, others more familiar — including Generation X members and Millennials. All have been dedicated to uplifting hurting communities of color.

“The Leaders for a New Chicago Award continues to find where power lives inside our communities, and provides the support and funding these folks need to dream bigger so they can continue to create change,” said Field Foundation Leadership Investment Program Officer Hilesh Patel.

Maudlyne Ihejirika has more on the recipients and their respective impacts on the city here.

From the press box

Your daily question ?

What is the best part about your neighborhood? Tell us why.

Reply to this email (please include your first name and where you live) and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

Yesterday, we asked you: In light of National Best Friend Day, how did you meet yours? Here’s what some of you said…

“My best friend and I grew up on the same block on the South Side of Chicago. We became friends at 6 years old, and are in our late fifties, are still best friends.” — Tony Williams

“I met Osprey when I opened up my package from Amazon. My Osprey backpack traveled with me to Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, California and many national parks. So many memories.” — AJ Vee

“I met him in high school. We were waiting for a class to start and I noticed he was wearing Hush Puppies and I had always wanted a pair of those shoes. I told him, we laughed about it, and we’ve been best buddies for 42 years now.” — Chris Vaughn

“She moved next door to an adjoining house. We raised our kids together. Hers and mine are the same age.” — Genevieve Poeticlady Williams

“In Girl Scouts when I was like 11. We’re in our mid-40s now.” — Adrienne Taylor

“Heidi and I met playing softball for Niles Park District just before High School around 1989. We are Best Friends to this day.” — Jodi Lynn

“Well, one rainy day about four years ago, I found her just sitting next to my house by a small tree that’s next to the gate, trying to hide from the rain. I brought her some food and water, and the next day, she was there again and again and again. Until one day, I just decided to keep her. Now she’s the happiest dog around the neighborhood. My best friend: my dog ‘Chispas,’ which means ‘Sparks’ in Spanish. I named her that because she’s all black with a bunch of yellowish spots that look like sparks.” — Enockk Antonio Cobos

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Now that the Major League Baseball season is well underway, with fans like me relieved and happy to have our absorbing summer pastime back, spectators returning to the ballpark and interesting playoff races in all six divisions, it’s time for the annual spate of “baseball is doomed” articles presaging the game’s inevitable decline and fall.

“Baseball Is Broken,” reads a prototypical headline in The Atlantic, of all places, not normally known for sports writing. “Once a generation,” according to author Devin Gordon, “the game of baseball suffers through a fun crisis, and the story of this MLB season so far is how alarmingly not fun baseball has become.”

The big complaint is that pitchers — bigger, stronger and throwing harder than ever — have gotten the upper hand over batters, leading to an MLB-wide decline in batting averages and a whole lot of strikeouts. Also a decline in situational hitting, i.e. hit-and-run plays, hitting behind base runners to move them along, bunting, etc.

Many fans have been complaining, particularly in New York, where the Yankees have been whiffing at prodigious rates. I can’t say I was personally disappointed to see eight of the last nine Yankees batters fan during a taut contest against the Red Sox last week. Boston pitchers threw some unhittable stuff. When it’s 97 mph on the black edge of the plate at the knees …

Well, you try to hit it.

As a one-time pitcher during the Late Middle Ages — we played with rounded stones and cudgels — I found it thrilling. The Red Sox won zero games at Yankee Stadium during last year’s COVID-shortened season.

Besides, the two teams will square off another 18 times during the regular season. Part of the beauty of the game for serious fans is that they do it almost every day. You know how your grandma used to watch her daily TV soap opera? For me, that’s MLB baseball: an entertainment, an ongoing saga and a refuge from …

Well, what have you got? For me it’s mainly politics, a couple or three blessed hours without a word about Democrats, Republicans or even the happy peregrinations of “The Second Gentleman.”

It’s definitely a TV show. Due to a combination of circumstances, I watched four consecutive Red Sox broadcasts last week with four different announcing crews: Houston’s, Boston’s, Fox Sports and ESPN.

Regardless of which team you support, it makes a big difference. The Astros need a serious energy transfusion in the broadcast booth. For all his star power, ESPN’s Alex Rodriguez was droning on like a priest celebrating 6 a.m. mass until he hit upon the topic of the 2021 Yankee team’s deficiencies. That earned him a well-deserved headline in The New York Times.

Good pitching really plays on TV, especially with an expert commentator (and unabashed flake) like Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley calling them. “If he throws this guy another piece of high cheese,” Eck will say, “he’ll miss it by a foot.” And most often, that’s exactly what happens.

But back to The Atlantic and baseball’s “fun crisis.” What apparently set author Gordon off was a seeming misunderstanding. His piece appears with the following correction: “This article previously misstated that Tyler Duffey beaned Yermin Mercedes. In fact, he threw behind Mercedes.”

That is, instead of assault with a deadly weapon, the Minnesota Twins pitcher made a symbolic gesture to Mercedes of the White Sox to convey the message: “We didn’t like you showing us up yesterday. You need to show more respect.”

Duffey was suspended for three days, and his manager for one.

What precipitated the whole kerfuffle was slugger Mercedes ignoring a take sign from his manager, the venerable Tony La Russa, and hitting a 3-0 meatball from a position player, catcher Willians “La Tortuga” Astudillo, 420 feet for a home run in the ninth inning of a 15-4 game.

See, by bringing in a position player, Minnesota was conceding the game, and by hitting what amounted to a batting practice home run, Mercedes was rubbing it in. Baseball’s unwritten rules can be subtle. Had the count been 3-1, it would presumably have been OK.

La Russa said his player had a lot to learn; several of his White Sox players said their manager himself was out of line, and then the Twins “retaliated.” In short, as Gordon comments, “pretty standard big-league macho posturing.”

Even if La Russa himself had made the ultimate rookie mistake of playing the “Do you know who I am?” card during a DWI bust last October and flashing his World Series ring. (He eventually pled guilty.)

The only serious baseball issue here is Mercedes ignoring a sign and White Sox players basically saying nobody needs to pay attention to Grandpa. If so, then the 76-year-old Hall of Famer (and baseball’s second-winningest manager ever) may have lost control of his team. And that wouldn’t be funny at all.

Gene Lyons is a columnist for the Arkansas Times.

Send letters to [email protected].

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SAN ANTONIO — An Air Force base in San Antonio was placed on lockdown for about an hour Wednesday after military officials said gunfire was reported near a base gate.

Two gunshots were reported heard coming from outside Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland onto the base about 11:50 a.m., said Lt. Col. Brian Loveless, 802nd Security Forces Squadron commander. Investigators were trying to determine whether the gunfire report was true or a false alarm, Loveless said.

It was unclear whether anyone saw a shooter or whether more than one shooter may have been involved, he said.

“We’re trying to investigate a couple of leads right now to confirm that gunshots actually did take place on the installation.

No injuries were reported, Loveless said.

Lackland is on San Antonio’s southeast side and is where the Air Force conducts all of its basic training.

“There’s a lot of facilities on this installation that are very important to the Air Force. I would rather overreact (to a gunfire report) than underreact,” Loveless said.

The base issued an alert midday, telling all Lackland Air Force Base personnel to go into lockdown. An alert on Twitter said: “Real World, LOCKDOWN, LOCKDOWN, LOCKDOWN.”

Officials said the shots were reportedly fired near the Valley Hi gate on the western side of the main base, just east of Interstate 410 and near a shopping center.

After an hour, the lockdown was lifted except for the Valley Hi gate.

San Antonio police said they were assisting in the investigation. In a statement, police spokeswoman Jennifer Rodriguez said officers were looking for the spot from which gunfire might have originated.

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Reichel, the Hawks’ 17th overall pick in last year’s draft, signed his NHL entry-level contract shortly after the World Championships.

Lukas Reichel will officially make the Atlantic leap and join the Blackhawks organization next season.

Reichel signed his three-year NHL entry-level contract with the Hawks on Wednesday, shortly after Germany’s run at the World Championships ended Sunday — as the Chicago Sun-Times reported last month he would.

His new contract carries a $925,000 cap hit through 2024.

“Lukas made tremendous strides in his second year as a professional,” Hawks general manager Stan Bowman said in a statement. “The game appeared to slow down for him this past season, which allowed his play-making skills to be on full display.

“Bringing him over to North America is the logical next step for his continued development and we’re excited to be able to add such a young, dynamic player to our forward group.”

The 19-year-old forward — the Hawks’ top prospect and 17th overall pick in last year’s draft — followed up an excellent season with Eisbaren Berlin with another strong performance in the World Championships.

Germany went 4-3 in the group stage and eliminated Switzerland in the quarterfinals before losing to Finland in the semifinals and to USA in the Bronze Medal game. Reichel recorded six points (two goals and four assists) in nine games, good for third on the team.

Reichel will arrive in North America next season having bulked up to 176 pounds and counting and showed potential to transition to a center. His Berlin coach, Serge Aubin, moved him to center for much of this past season and saw him thrive there, scoring 27 points in 38 regular-season games and five points in nine postseason games en route to the German league title.

“I used him as a [first]-line player,” Aubin said last month. “His skating this year was even better than last year. He’s really an elite skater. And his decision-making was also better. We could see a lot of growth.”

Reichel’s agent, Allain Roy, described Reichel’s development as like “a boy playing in a men’s league” in 2019-20 versus “a man against men” in 2020-21.

Roy also said in May he and Bowman expected to settle Reichel’s first contract after the World Championships concluded, and he clearly wasted no time.

Whether Reichel will start the 2021-21 season in the fall immediately playing in the NHL remains to be determined, though. He’ll be given every opportunity to prove he should stick with the Hawks, but his acclimation could be aided by at least a couple months in the AHL.

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The company’s 2021-2022 season includes the highly anticipated musical adaptation of “The Outsiders.”

Goodman Theatre on Wednesday announced it will return to live, in-person performances beginning July 30 with the Chicago premiere of Jocelyn Bioh’s “School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play,” a production that was suspended in 2020 due to the pandemic shutdown of theaters. The production runs July 30-Aug. 29 in the Albert Theatre.

“This, truly, is the moment we’ve been waiting for — at once a ‘homecoming’ and a new beginning — after one of the most challenging periods of our collective experience. We are enormously grateful to our audiences, with special thanks to all who’ve joined us virtually as a sponsor or spectator … and thrilled to welcome you back now,” said artistic director Robert Falls in a statement.

COVID-19 safety protocols beginning July 30 include a recently overhauled air ventilation system to facilitate fresh air exchange; enhanced cleaning and hand sanitizer stations; at least one empty seat on either side of each seated party as well as mandatory face masks for the 80-minute duration of “School Girls; Or The African Mean Girls Play.”

The theater’s 2021-2022 “Homecoming” season includes the world premieres of:

— “Fannie, The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer” (Oct.1 5 – Nov. 14, 2021 ), the full-on production by Cheryl L. West, directed by Henry Godinez and starring E. Faye Butler, who reprises the title role from the abridged version presented in 2020 as part of theater-in-the-parks programming.

—”the ripple, the wave that carried me home” (Feb. 11 – March 13, 2022), by Christina Anderson, and directed by Miranda Haymon, a world-premiere co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

— “Good Night, Oscar,” (March 12 – April 17, 2022) starring Sean Hayes (“Will & Grace”), directed by Lisa Peterson. The show details the life of the legendary concert pianist/humorist/actor/composer Oscar Levant.

— “The Outsiders,” (May 27 – July 10, 2022), a musical based on the S.E. Hinton novel and Francis Ford Coppola film, with a book by Adam Rapp and directed by Liesl Tommy.

The season also includes a revival of “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” in a new production adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman.

“A Christmas Carol,” a Goodman holiday season tradition for more than 40 years, returns (Nov. 20-Dec. 31). The production, adapted by Tom Creamer and directed by Jessica Thebus, stars Larry Yando reprising his critically acclaimed role as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Also this season is the previously announced “Zulema,” (Aug. 5-Sept. 2), a Goodman Theatre in-the-parks partnership with the Chicago Park District, DCASE Chicago Latino Theater Alliance and the National Museum of Mexican Art; “American Mariachi” (Sept. 18-Oct. 24); the continuation of the “Goodman Live” online series (June 17-July 18); and August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” (Jan. 22 – Feb. 27, 2022);

For the complete season schedule and information, visit goodmantheatre.org

Tickets to “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play” ($15-$45) are now on sale at GoodmanTheatre.org/SchoolGirls. Tickets for “A Christmas Carol” go on sale Aug. 20.

Membership packages for the 2021/2022 Season, starting at $75, are available at GoodmanTheatre.org/Homecoming.

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A gunman in another car, possibly a silver SUV, opened fire in the 7900 block of South Ashland Avenue.

A man was shot and killed Wednesday afternoon while driving in Gresham, the fourth person to be shot in the South Side neighborhood over 10 hours.

A gunman in another car, possibly a silver SUV, opened fire around 12:20 p.m. in the 7900 block of South Ashland Avenue, Chicago police said.

The man, 31, was shot in the chest and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released.

No arrest was made, police said.

Earlier Wednesday, police opened fire on a man who shot two people in a garage in the 8300 block of South Kerfoot Avenue. The man barricaded himself in a home but was gone when police entered it hours later.

And at 2 a.m., a 60-year-old man was shot and killed after answering his doorbell in the 2000 block of West 83rd Street. He died at the scene.

Gresham is located in the 6th police district, which has experienced a rise in shootings and murders this year. With 30 murders through June 6, the district is 7% above its murder count during the same period last year, according to police statistics.

Shootings are up 58% percent over the same time in 2020. The district has counted 122 shootings through June 6, compared with 77 shootings over the same time last year.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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The longtime editor and journalism teacher also worked for magazines including DownBeat, Travel + Leisure, Chicago, the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal.

Don Gold loved words and music.

He worked as an editor for some of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, wrote books, organized a jazz festival that drew nearly 20,000 to the old Chicago Stadium and taught journalism at Columbia College Chicago.

“Don always said, ‘Don’t panic if the job that you want is not being offered at the place you want to write because, if they want you bad enough, they will make a place for you’ — and he was right,” said Muriel L. Sims, a former student who went on to work for the Chicago Reporter, Ebony, Essence and the Dallas Observer.

A longtime Evanston resident, Mr. Gold died last month of kidney failure, according to his daughter Tracy Pytlar. He was 90.

He grew up on the Near North Side, where he attended Nettelhorst grade school and Lake View High School.

“When I was a kid, Lincoln Park Zoo was one of the great places to go,” he once told the Chicago Sun-Times. “And I’ve been going back ever since.”

In 1988, he wrote a book about it, “Zoo,” featuring the caretakers and the animals — everything from spitting cobras to baby gorillas. A cat lover, he dedicated it to Alexander and Lola, two of his many feline companions over the years. He kept the ashes of Oliver, his favorite cat, on his bookcase.

After getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism at Northwestern University, Mr. Gold served in the Army in Germany during the Korean war.

The jazz magazine DownBeat “was practically my first job,” he told the Sun-Times. “I applied while still in Germany.”

He became managing editor there.

In 1959, he was named an associate editor at Playboy magazine.

The same year, he helped organize the two-day Playboy Jazz Festival, which drew 19,000 people to the old Chicago Stadium to hear Joe Williams, the Count Basie Big Band, the Miles Davis Sextet, the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Mr. Gold spent much of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City in top editing posts with the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal and Holiday magazines before moving on to the William Morris agency.

“My father was the head of the literary department,” his daughter said. “He had a roster of well-known authors, acquired others and was responsible for getting their books published.”

In the mid-1970s, he was named managing editor of Travel + Leisure.

In 1975, his book “Bellevue: A Documentary of a Large Metropolitan Hospital,” based on seven months of access to the New York City institution, was published.

“He made rounds,” his daughter said. “He witnessed the daily and nightly life.”

“There is no fiction here, no adornment,” Mr. Gold wrote. “My method, I suppose is that of the old journalism.”

His daughter said he was asked to return to Playboy to become managing editor after editor Sheldon Wax was killed with 272 others in the nation’s deadliest aviation accident — the 1979 crash of American Airlines Flight 191, which lost an engine just after takeoff from O’Hare Airport.

After four years at Playboy, Mr. Gold worked as editor in chief of Chicago magazine.

From 1989 to 1996, he worked at Columbia College Chicago, where he taught magazine journalism and was a faculty adviser to The Columbia Chronicle, Inside Journalism and Chicago Arts and Communication.

“He led us to self-guided discovery, connecting one-on-one with a wide range of students from different backgrounds and at different points in their lives,” said former student Arlene Furlong, now a Chicago writer.

Mr. Gold also wrote the 1990 book “Hard Learnin’ ” with New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry.

He wrote many book reviews for the Sun-Times. In 1990, reviewing “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life,” he described a brush he’d had with antisemitism:

“Years later, sitting in my New York office, I was confronted by a man who lamented his lack of success as an author. ‘It’s because of all those damned Jews in publishing,’ he said. I did not help him find a publisher for his book; the thought occurred to me that I ought to keep a yarmulke in my desk drawer for such occasions.”

His three marriages all ended in divorce. Mary Brown, his companion for close to 20 years, described Mr. Gold as a generous friend, recounting how a neighbor once confided to him that she was pining to marry a man in Scotland.

“He helped pay for her flight,” Brown said.

When he was dying, his daughter said, Brown played him a favorite song, holding her phone to his ear so he could hear The Manhattan Transfer version of ”A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

Brown said a memorial service will be held at a later date.

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The panel, whose existence was confirmed to The AP by four people familiar with it, was set up in response to Ronald Greene’s death as well as three other violent stops of Black men.

BATON ROUGE, La. — The same Louisiana State Police unit whose troopers stunned, punched and dragged Ronald Greene on video during a deadly 2019 arrest is now under internal investigation by a secret panel over whether its officers are systematically targeting Black motorists for abuse.

The panel, whose existence was confirmed to The Associated Press by four people familiar with it, was set up in response to Greene’s death as well as three other violent stops of Black men: one who was punched, stunned and hoisted to his feet by his hair braids in a body-camera video obtained by the AP, another who was beaten after he was handcuffed, and yet another who was slammed 18 times with a flashlight.

“Every time I told him to stop he’d hit me again,” said Aaron Bowman, whose flashlight pummeling left him with three broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken wrist and a gash to his head that required six staples to close. “I don’t want to see this happen to nobody — not to my worst enemy.”

The panel began working a few weeks ago to review thousands of body-camera videos over the past two years involving as many as a dozen white troopers, at least four of whom were involved in Greene’s arrest.

The review is focused on Louisiana State Police Troop F, a 66-officer unit that patrols a sprawling territory in the northeastern part of the state and has become notorious in recent years for alleged acts of brutality that have resulted in felony charges against some of its troopers.

“You’d be naïve to think it’s limited to two or three instances. That’s why you’re seeing this audit, which is a substantial undertaking by any agency,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a New Orleans-based watchdog group. “They’ve got to identify these people and remove them from the organization.”

Other than the federal civil rights investigation into Greene’s death, the state police panel is the only known inquiry into possible systemic abuse and racism by its troopers.

Its seven members, drawn from officials from across the State Police, are not only scouring the videos for signs of excessive force, the people told the AP, but also examining whether troopers showed racist tendencies in their traffic stops and pursuits, and whether they mislabeled body-camera videos, turned off their cameras or used other means to hide evidence from internal investigators.

It’s not clear if the panel has a deadline or if it plans to expand the inquiry to the eight other troops in the 1,200-officer state police.

The State Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Secrecy has permeated the Greene case from the beginning.

Soon after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death, troopers told his relatives he died in a crash following a chase on a rural road near Monroe. Later, State Police issued a one-page statement saying that troopers struggled with Greene during his arrest and that he died on the way to the hospital.

For more than two years, Louisiana officials from Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards down rebuffed repeated requests to release the body-camera video of Greene’s arrest.

But that changed last month after the AP released footage it obtained showing troopers converging on Greene’s car, repeatedly jolting the 49-year-old unarmed man with stun guns, putting him in a chokehold, striking him in the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. Greene can be heard apologizing to the officers, telling them he is scared and moaning and gasping for air.

One 30-minute clip, which a supervisor denied having for two years, shows troopers ordering the heavyset Greene to remain facedown with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing.

An autopsy report obtained by AP lists Greene’s cause of death as “cocaine induced agitated delirium complicated by motor vehicle collision, physical struggle, inflicted head injury and restraint.”

No troopers have been charged in Greene’s arrest. Trooper Kory York, who was seen dragging Greene, was suspended without pay for 50 hours. Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who was recorded on his body camera bragging that he “beat the ever-living f—” out of Greene, was told he would be fired last year just hours before he died in single-vehicle car crash.

While none of the other beatings that prompted the broader review of Troop F resulted in deaths, all led to felony charges against some of the troopers involved. And like Greene, all the suspects were driving alone, were unarmed and didn’t appear to resist after troopers closed in.

State police have not released body-camera video of any those cases, but AP obtained footage from the May 2020 arrest of Antonio Harris, who sped away from a traffic stop and led troopers through rural Richland Parish at speeds topping 150 mph before his car was finally stopped with a spike strip.

He can clearly be seen on the video surrendering next to a cornfield by lying on the ground with his arms and legs outstretched before at least seven officers converged.

Dakota DeMoss, a trooper involved in the Greene arrest, can be seen striking Harris in the face and later, after he was handcuffed, yanking him onto his feet by his dreadlocks. Another trooper, George Harper, uses a fist reinforced by his flashlight to punch Harris in the head and threatens to “punish” him while Trooper Jacob Brown pulls the man’s hair.

An unidentified officer also can be seen in the footage shocking Harris with a stun gun.

“I hope you act up when we get to the f——— jail,” Harper can be heard saying. “What the f—— is wrong with you, stupid motherf——-.”

Internal investigators found that troopers produced “wholly untrue” reports saying Harris resisted and that they sought to conceal the existence of body-camera video. Troopers also exchanged 14 text messages peppered with “lol” and “haha” in which they boasted about the beating.

“He gonna be sore tomorrow for sure,” Brown texted. “Warms my heart knowing we could educate that young man.”

State Police arrested Brown, Harper and DeMoss on charges of simple battery and malfeasance in Harris’ case.

Another beating happened in late May 2019 — 20 days after Greene’s death — when a Ouachita Parish deputy sheriff tried to pull over Bowman for a traffic violation a block from his Monroe home. The deputy reported that Bowman failed to pull over and continued into his driveway, where he was ordered out of his vehicle.

Brown, the trooper charged in the Harris incident, quickly responded to the arrest and, according to court documents, can be seen on his own body-camera video pummeling Bowman with a flashlight designed for shattering car glass, striking him 18 times as he was being handcuffed and not resisting.

“I thought I was going to die that night — I bled so much,” Bowman told the AP. “It’s hard to deal with. I can’t function half of the time. It’s just hard for me to think now.”

For months, State police were not aware footage of Bowman’s arrest existed because Brown misclassified it and failed to document any use of force, according to court records. Brown was charged with aggravated battery and malfeasance.

Brown also faces charges in yet another beating of a Black motorist — the July 2019 arrest of Morgan Blake, who was pulled over for a traffic violation on Interstate 20 in Ouachita Parish.

Troopers said Blake had 13 pounds of marijuana concealed in a locked compartment of the vehicle and was taken into custody. At some point, he complained that his handcuffs were too tight, and Brown took him to the ground.

Body-worn camera captured Trooper Randall Dickerson punching Blake five times and kneeing him. State Police determined that Blake “was not resisting, attempting to escape or being aggressive,” and that the troopers failed to document their use of force in any reports.

Dickerson and Brown were charged with simple battery and malfeasance.

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The new book details how Pippen cringed at being labeled Jordan’s sidekick and claims he was the “real” leader in the Bulls locker room.

Bulls legend Scottie Pippen is apparently ready to dance again.

Pippen announced on Twitter that his new autobiography“Unguarded” will be released on Nov. 16.

“Ready to hear my side of the story?” Pippen wrote in the tweet announcing the book. “You’ll read my takes on playing with MJ and Rodman and being coached by Phil Jackson. From a small town in Arkansas to the big time in the NBA.”

Simon & Shuster

Publisher Simon & Shuster had more details:

“In Unguarded, the soft-spoken, six-time champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist finally opens up to offer pointed and transparent takes on Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, and Isiah Thomas, among others. Pippen details how he cringed at being labeled Jordan’s sidekick, and discusses how he could have (and should have) received more respect from the Bulls’ management and the media.”

According to the description on the publisher’s website, Pippen claims to have been the “real” leader in the Bulls locker room and discusses the 1994 playoff game vs. the New York Knicks when he took himself out with 1.8 seconds left.

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