OMAHA, Neb. — Jay Johnson loves his two dogs. He says to him, they are family.

This past weekend, he came close to losing them after they escaped from the backyard of his Omaha home. The dogs escaped while Johnson was in the shower.

"(I) get out of the shower, notice there's a message on my phone, ‘I got your dog’,” said Johnson.

That's when Johnson came out, he realized his fence was broken which was how the dogs escaped. He said someone ran into and destroyed his fence the night before.

Luckily, Johnson was able to recover his animals, but he also has an $800 expense to replace the fence, and he's not alone.

The so-called "Kool-Aid Man Challenge" on TikTok is leading to a rash of vandalism in Omaha and surrounding areas.

In the challenge, someone runs into and destroys random fences in an effort to mimic the mascot of the popular powdered drink. The damage is not an easy fix, especially these days.

Surveillance video that was recently captured shows a group of several people charging another fence at a different home in Omaha.

The footage went viral on social media which is getting the attention of law enforcement.

“They get into a group mentality where one of them thinks they have a good idea and the others ones go along with it," said Lt. James Wrigley, Sarpy County Sheriff's Office.
"Once we meet up with these kids individually they tend to say they're sorry and wouldn't do this by themselves,”

Wrigley said say his department has responded to eight calls of this happening across the county. In the case of the aforementioned video, around $3,500 worth of damage was done to the fence.

Lindsay Anderson, Operations Manager at S&W Fence said this kind of damage is normally tough to fix. Current supply shortages make the job even harder.

“Vinyl pricing more than doubled when the pandemic hit as with everything," said Anderson. "The cost to repair them for some people is more than the price they paid to get their entire fence.”

Johnson said he wants to see the people doing this face real consequences.

“They need to learn a lesson, big time," he said. "It can't just be a slap on the hand.”

The Sarpy County Sheriff's Office said they're still looking for the individuals in the video.

Those responsible for the damage could face criminal mischief charges, and the severity of those charges would depend upon the damage to property.

This story was first reported by Ron Johnson at KMTV in Omaha, Neb.

A Florida teen is being credited with putting a child predator behind bars.In January, Zachary Spiegel, 38, started talking to who he believed was a 14-year-old girl named "Shayla" online. But in reality, "Shayla" was a fictional persona created by a 16-year-old boy who was trying to find child predators in the area."Here you have a 16-year-old boy wanting to take the matter into his own hands and find these child predators in his area, and he found one," Callahan Walsh, a child advocate with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said.Court documents show Spiegel’s messages with Shayla, trying to persuade her to meet him for sex in his car, graphic conversations and images.Authorities said the two never met up due to Spiegel being pulled over by police during a traffic stop that day, but the boy went to police who then took over as Shayla. Then on Jan. 20, authorities arrested Spiegel at his home in Jensen Beach, Florida, after finding him in possession of the cellphone he had used to communicate with Shayla.Spiegel was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of trying to entice a teenage girl for sex online. While Walsh said he takes his hat off to that 16-year-old boy for wanting to catch Spiegel, he cautions other people from doing the same thing because the predators they encounter could be dangerous.He encourages people to report exploitation if they see it happening, but to leave the hunting and investigating up to law enforcement.

CINCINNATI —

Dozens of volunteers came together at Irving Playground in Avondale to help revitalize a blighted park and to help police with a new plan to fight crime.

“It's extremely exciting to see everybody dive in like they are now,” volunteer Michael Neade said.

About 50 volunteers planted hundreds of flowers and plants. The Cincinnati Zoo and Mad Tree Brewing accounted for the bulk of the volunteers.

“Today is not where it stops. So, it continues to grow and get better,” volunteer Catie Bechstamper said.

At the same time, there’s another plan weaved into the revitalization effort. It’s devised by police because of crime problems at the park.

“I was getting a lot of complaints about nuisance, drug dealing, crowds, violent behavior, in this exact park,” Cincinnati Police Sgt. Jeff Meister said. “We just kind of chose this, put all efforts into Irving Playground.”

Meister said they’re working with a new concept that uses environmental design to help prevent crime.

The idea is that involving the community makes them more invested in keeping the area safe. It gives them a sense of ownership in the project.

“It's all about relationships, right? Like between the pollinators in the plants, between the neighborhood and all of the organizations around, between the city officials and everybody who is involved in making this project happen,” said Cincinnati Zoo director of community partnerships and conservation Mollie O’Neil. “Spaces like this in nature really do help people root and a sense of place and then care for this area and make great memories.”

DENVER — Oftentimes, hoax perpetrators are seeking attention and reaction from the community, and we don’t want to help them in that pursuit. We also don’t want to encourage copycat hoaxes.

However, as at least 14 Colorado schools received “swatting” calls Wednesday, specialists point to a growing trend we believe you should be aware of.

Swatting is the act of calling first responders with a fake emergency to coax them into sending a significant police presence to a specific address

Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, says he’s been tracking a “spate of school swatting threats that has gone on for months” across the United States. He says many previous mass swatting events have been traced to actors from foreign countries.

“Swatting threats typically cross multiple school districts, multiple communities, oftentimes multiple states and originate internationally,” Trump said. “They create anxiety, fear, uncertainty about school safety, drain local first responders from other needs out in the broader community, and can extend over a period of time while the investigation goes on — oftentimes for weeks or sometimes months.”

While it is, at this point, unclear if the multiple threats to Colorado schools were coordinated, Trump says these bad actors often have the specific goal of creating chaos, confusion and fear.

“These threats typically turn out to be unfounded, not credible, but every threat needs to be treated seriously [and] investigated thoroughly,” Trump said. “There’s not only a massive drain of law enforcement resources, but also swatting fatigue and fatigue by school districts: the risk of school communities not taking threats seriously, becoming complacent, and not treating each one seriously when there could be one possible threat that turns out to be credible.”

Sergeant Ryan Scheevel with the Boulder Police Department says he was impressed by the response of students and staff at Boulder High School Wednesday morning. The entire school’s lockdown procedure made law enforcement’s job of evacuating and sweeping the school for the potential threat much easier.

“It was very obvious that they had trained for that,” Scheevel said. “I would implore all schools, employers, anything like that to have a plan in place.”

Scheevel was just a couple hours into his shift Wednesday morning when he heard a weapons tone over his radio, and dispatchers relaying reports of a possible active shooter at Boulder High School. He and his fellow officers quickly realized the threat was likely a hoax, both through conversations with school administrators and messages from dispatch of other fake threats being called in across the state. Still, they had to push forward, per protocol, to ensure it was, in fact, a false alarm.

“We went and had them go into lockdown, and then started going [on] a systematic search of the school, hoping that we weren’t going to find anything, but planning that if we [did] find something — whether it’s a suspect or a victim or somebody’s injured — that we have the resources and a plan in place to deal with that,” Scheevel said.

Even after the all-clear, Scheevel and his fellow officers had to rely on their training and support from one another to process the other great cost of swatting threats: the emotional drain it puts on our law enforcement, teachers, and students.

“Two of my kids are school age, so anytime we get a call at a school, it definitely heightens your sense of what’s going on there,” he said. “When you’ve removed yourself from you that situation, you really think about like, 'That could have been my kids in there.’”

This article was written by Rob Harris for Scripps News Denver.

Five people are dead after a shooting inside a church in the Arden area of Sacramento County, officials said.

A father shot and killed his three children inside the Church in Sacramento before shooting and killing himself during what Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said was a supervised visit. The fifth victim was a person supervising the visit.

Jones said the mother has a restraining order against the father. Sacramento County Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Rodney Grassmann said the three children killed were all girls. They were 9, 10 and 13 years old.

Grassmann also said people with restraining orders against them are not legally allowed to have a firearm.

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A church worker who was upstairs heard the shots around 5:07 p.m. and went outside to call dispatchers, the sheriff's office said.

Roads along Wyda and Ethan ways are closed while deputies are investigating.

Watch the full interview with a Sacramento County spokesperson by clicking here.

Nearby residents were originally asked by deputies to stay indoors.

Video from LiveCopter 3 showed first responders carrying a person through the church parking lot. They tried to resuscitate that person. After repeated attempts, they were not successful.

Jones said several agencies are involved in the investigation, including the FBI, which responded after initial reports were that it was an active shooter situation.

"When something big like this happens, everyone comes to help us out," Grassmann said. "Everybody has come out of their own jurisdiction to come to do what they can to help out not knowing how big this scene would be or how long it would go on."

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KCRA 3's Brittany Hope and Melanie Wingo contributed to this reporting.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

Five people are dead after a shooting inside a church in the Arden area of Sacramento County, officials said.

A father shot and killed his three children inside the Church in Sacramento before shooting and killing himself during what Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said was a supervised visit. The fifth victim was a person supervising the visit.

Jones said the mother has a restraining order against the father. Sacramento County Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Rodney Grassmann said the three children killed were all girls. They were 9, 10 and 13 years old.

Grassmann also said people with restraining orders against them are not legally allowed to have a firearm.

A church worker who was upstairs heard the shots around 5:07 p.m. and went outside to call dispatchers, the sheriff's office said.

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Nearby residents are being asked by deputies to stay indoors.

Video from sister station KCRA's LiveCopter 3 showed first responders carrying a person through the church parking lot. They tried to resuscitate that person. After repeated attempts, they were not successful.

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Jones said several agencies are involved in the investigation, including the FBI, which responded after initial reports were that it was an active shooter situation.

"When something big like this happens, everyone comes to help us out," Sacramento County Sheriff Spokesperson Rodney Grassmann said. "Everybody has come out of their own jurisdiction to come to do what they can to help out not knowing how big this scene would be or how long it would go on."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

If Sheriff Aaron Appelhans has one message, it’s that change can happen anywhere.

Born in a big city, Appelhans never thought he’d go into law enforcement, but life has a way of changing directions when a local chief approached him about an officer job.

"Truth be told, I told him, I was like, 'I'm not a big fan of law enforcement. That's not something I think I really want to do,'" he laughed.

He ended up becoming something he loved. Ten years later, a new opportunity knocked—to become the Albany County Sheriff, and in turn, become Wyoming’s first-ever Black sheriff.

"I was like, well, there's an opportunity, you know, it's and I knew that the agency had a whole host of issues, some of which that I figured I could definitely deal with that," he said.

Although he’s had the position for about a year, he’s already made changes to the department.

"When you work within the system, you can see the things that it does well, you can see its flaws. You can see its loopholes, you can see all of its cracks," he said.

His main goal is to fix the culture. In a rural town in the middle of the country, he made the department more transparent in dealing with the public. He started making the path to drug and alcohol rehab for repeat offenders clearer and he focused on recruitment, specifically who he was recruiting.

"Law enforcement traditionally has a really terrible job in terms of recruitment. They recruit the same type of people over and over and over again. And it creates these situations you see across the country where maybe your police force doesn't necessarily represent the community that you serve," said Appelhans.

In less than a year, he’s filled 19 deputy positions with people of different backgrounds and ethnicities. Some of the people on the force haven’t liked the changes and left. Appelhans has even fired someone for past racist behavior, but he says all these are necessary steps toward cultural change.

"We're in the people business and we're not into excluding people, so we're going to be as inclusive as we possibly can."

He’s looking to hire three more people in the coming months, continuing to build his vision of a more inclusive, community-focused force.

As his story spreads of what he’s able to do in a small town, he wants to make it clear: change can happen in the most unlikely places, and anyone interesting in making that change shouldn’t be afraid to take that initial step.

"Sometimes you gotta be the first so that second, third and fourth can thrive as well," he said. "So, take that chance. Got to take that opportunity when it comes in and then go create that opportunity for yourself."

NASHVILLE — Lawmakers in Tennessee have proposed two controversial bills that would essentially allow some gun owners to act as law enforcement.

HB 254 and SB2523 designate "a person who has been issued an enhanced handgun carry permit" as a member of law enforcement, under certain circumstances.

The bills allow permit holders to carry a gun where police can carry one.

State senator Joey Hensley, who introduced SB 2523, told ABC News the legislation does not make gun holders police officers.

Currently in Tennessee, any adult can apply for an enhanced gun permit, which allows open and concealed carry.

The applicant must pay a $100 fee and go through an eight-hour handgun safety course.

However, several groups can get exemption from the training, including registered armed guard, military members and veterans.

The Tennessee State Lodge for the Fraternal Order of Police has told it is opposed to this bill, essentially saying that civilians are not versed in “criminal law, defense tactics” the way police officers are.

A hearing has not yet been set for the bills.

DENVER, Colorado — Adversity has a way of knocking us off our intended path. For many doctors, nurses, and first responders, the uncertainty of the pandemic has made them feel as if they're lost in the woods — far away from the calling that first brought them to their career.

"When we get burned out, there's this sort of surreptitious trick with burnout that causes us to forget why we do what we do every day and what we love about our job," said Rev. Mike Guthrie, the director of spiritual care at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s & Rocky Mountain Children Hospital in Denver.

"I just had to try to help connect people back to calling back to purpose, why they're here," he said.

"I think there's been a rise in people asking the big questions, you know, 'Where do I go when I die? What's going to happen?'" said Mike Neil, the president of the Washington State Chaplain Foundation.

Guthrie is a hospital chaplain and Neil, recently retired, has been a law enforcement chaplain. Both men have been doing this work for nearly 20 years.

"It's called a ministry of presence," said Neil.

Their job is to be present for patients, victims, and their colleagues when their jobs get too heavy, whether that's through a conversation about faith or just being there to listen.

However, being "present" has been tough these last two years.

"We all feel like we're a prizefighter with our hands tied behind her back. Everybody's wearing a mask, try to relate to someone that you can't see their face. You can't see their facial expressions," said Neil.

"We walk this tension between wanting to support our patients, but also having these restrictions in place to protect everybody else from accidental exposure," said Guthrie.

A tight line to walk, but the emotional and spiritual support they have been offering through these tough times has never been more important.

"We will never go back to being the same person we were before COVID hit. I think the lifelong lessons in the impact and experiences that we've been through over the last two years, and continue to go through, will change us in a lasting way," said Guthrie, "and the goal is to make sure that that change is done in a healing way."

For these chaplains, and chaplains across the country, these last two years, though hard, have made them more sure than ever in their own vocation to their jobs, being the heroes to our heroes.

"It's been my calling. That's why I did it in the beginning, it's not for me, it's not for me in my soul, but it's for them," said Neil.

Last year saw the highest number of law enforcement officers who were intentionally killed in the line of duty since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an increase that comes as a rise in gun violence and homicides continues across the country.

According to preliminary year-end data provided to CNN by the FBI, 73 officers died in felonious killings in the line of duty in 2021. The year marks the highest total recorded by the agency since 1995, excluding the 9/11 attacks.

Gunfire has consistently been the leading cause of felonious officer deaths each year — and 2021 was no different. The FBI has not released its full end-of-year breakdown but reported that 55 officers were killed by gunfire in 2021 through the end of November, up from 39 in the same time frame in both 2020 and 2019.

Homicides rose in 2020, a year marked by a global pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and subsequent unrest. In its 2020 UCR report, the FBI noted that an increasing number of homicides were committed with a gun. For many cities, the elevated rates of homicide continued into 2021.

More than two-thirds of the country's 40 most populous cities saw more homicides last year than in 2020, according to a CNN analysis of police department data, and 10 of those cities recorded more homicides in 2021 than any other year on record.

"When homicides go up, more shootings go up, and it contributes to an overall increase in violence and police officers find themselves in the middle of that environment," said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).

COVID-19 still the leading cause of officer deaths

Maria Haberfeld, chair of the Department of Law, Police Sciences, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College, who has analyzed data on police deaths in the line of duty, says that a rise in violence against police officers is a phenomenon that happens "every few years" because of an event that serves as a catalyst.

Typically, she said, the uptick is tied to a high-profile case in which an officer or department is accused of misconduct and then that "spills over to all the other police officers around the country."

The 73 felonious deaths reported by the FBI are a 59% increase from 2020's total of 46, breaking the previous high of 72 felonious killings in 2011. According to the FBI, at least eight police officers also lost their lives in premeditated, ambush-style attacks last year.

The FBI classifies a death as a "felonious killing" when an officer is "fatally injured as a direct result of a willful and intentional act by an offender." Separately, 56 officers were killed accidentally while in the line of duty last year, up from 46 in 2020.

Felonious killings were not the No. 1 cause of death for law enforcement officers in 2021: For the second year in a row, that was COVID-19. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit dedicated to memorializing fallen officers, the total number of officers who died in the line of duty in 2021 was the highest on record, driven by COVID-19. The group reported 336 COVID-19 deaths among line-of-duty officers in 2021, a 32% increase from the 254 officers who died from COVID-19 in 2020.

"As tragic as this is to see this increase in felonious assaults against police officers, more officers will die of COVID than will be stabbed, shot, or die in traffic accidents and many of those deaths are preventable," said Wexler of PERF, a national police research and policy organization that advises police leaders on best practices.

There was an increase in 'unprovoked' attacks

In late 2021, two Bradley, Illinois, police officers were shot while responding to a call about dogs barking in a hotel parking lot — Sgt. Marlene R. Rittmanic died from her injuries and Officer Tyler J. Bailey was hospitalized in critical condition.

In Baltimore, Officer Keona Holley died last month after being shot while sitting in her patrol car. Two suspects were charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Holley after they confessed to the crime, but their motive remains unclear, said Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.

Among felonious deaths of officers last year, 25 were killed in "unprovoked" attacks through Dec. 27 of last year, according to the FBI. It's a marked increase from previous years, which usually see the number of officers killed in unprovoked attacks in the low single-digits. In 2020, just two officers were killed in this manner.

The FBI told CNN that they are currently conducting an analysis on this sharp rise in reports of unprovoked attacks, which they say are not concentrated in any one region of the country.

The FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data collection program refers to an ambush as an "entrapment and premeditated" attack, while unprovoked is classified as an attack "not prompted by official contact at the time of the incident," according to the agency.

According to Christopher Herrmann, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, while the significant increase in unprovoked and ambush attacks last year may indicate that police officers are at a higher risk than previous years, there is also disagreement among law enforcement about when such terms should be used. A lack of a universally accepted definition can lead to difficulties in studying ambushes and developing training and operational practices based on "lessons learned from past ambush responses," he added.

It's not yet clear if the Bradley, Illinois, shooting, or Holley's death would be classified as an unprovoked attack or an ambush by the FBI.

Herrmann said the lack of a clear definition for both terms has significant consequences, as law enforcement "may have difficulty articulating the nature of the threat, making it hard for agencies to train officers to recognize and respond appropriately to ambush situations."

Low confidence and a climate of animosity

In the wake of protest movements following the killings of Black Americans by police, confidence in U.S. police dropped to record lows, according to a report released by Gallup in August 2020. The polling group reported in 2021 that some of these perceptions have slightly rebounded, but stark racial and partisan divides remain in how Americans view the police. Confidence among both Black and White adults in police remains lower than they were before the killing of Floyd.

Whether there's a connection between low police confidence and heightened animosity to officer killings is not clear, but Haberfeld says that coverage of anti-police sentiment has been more sustained than in previous years.

"There is an overall climate now that is very anti-police, which adds a different angle to what used to happen periodically to police in the past years," she told CNN. "The anti-police climate would surge after a high-profile case, and usually after a month or so it would subside. But right now, we're talking about over a year of high-profile, anti-police coverage."

Herrmann of John Jay said there isn't an easy fix to the animosity toward police officers.

"Police officers are tasked with rebuilding these relationships with their communities that have been fractured as a result of the Floyd protests and as a result of the over-policing, racial profiling, and high-profile killings of Black people," Herrmann said.

Officer ambushes have 'ripple effect' in departments

Officer Holley was removed from life support late last month after she was shot while sitting in her patrol car. Commissioner Harrison said in a statement announcing her death that Holley's "strength, courage and resilience are an inspiration to us all." In an interview with CNN, Harrison said the officer's death had an "extremely negative ripple effect" throughout the police department and the community she served.

Harrison said the assailant "apparently walked up somewhere from the rear of the (police) vehicle or alongside the vehicle and began firing into the vehicle, striking our officer." Holley then accelerated the patrol vehicle and crashed, officials said.

"It's one negative ripple effect for having been killed in the line of duty, but to have been ambushed while sitting in your car is something totally different," Harrison said.

Holley's funeral took place on Tuesday in Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun reported that hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects, including many law enforcement members from out of state.

Harrison said many of his officers had to take time off after Holley's killing, which added an additional challenge to a department that was grieving but also short staffed. According to the commissioner, his leadership role is to ensure the department can be resilient while in the grieving and mourning process.

"We have to provide resources for our officer wellness program, through our chaplaincy program, to make sure our members are mentally and emotionally and spiritually sound to go back to work and to continue working," he said.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —

Nan Zhang came to America 15 years ago, became a citizen and decided she wanted to serve her new country.

“So my ultimate goal (was to) become APD police officer,” said Zhang who was originally from China. “It's (to) protect my community."

But her plans to become an Albuquerque police officer were cut short, she says, when she was forced to resign. She claims in a lawsuit that she underwent abuse, discrimination and was has given the nickname “Cadet COVID.”

"People kept telling me that you don't belong here,” Zhang said. “They tell me these things every day. This is harassment. I mean, it's just because of my age, my language and my race."

Now, Target 7 is being told that the Department of Justice has reached out to Zhang’s attorney.

Target 7 reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s office and they will not confirm or deny an investigation. APD says they don’t believe the DOJ is looking into Zhang's claims and in legal documents city attorneys denied that Zhang was pushed out of the academy and instead she voluntarily quit. City attorneys also denied any that any academy personnel discriminated against Zhang.

"I'm an American citizen, I'm American,” Zhang said. “And, my rights is equal like everybody else, but they treat me so different."

KOAT legal expert John Day said there is plenty of accusations for the DOJ to look at.

“The Department of Justice, that's one of their jobs,” Day said. “One of their missions is to investigate allegations of civil rights violations. The Department of Justice has an obligation to investigate. If they are in fact investigating, It means that they there is some information that they have that has led them to decide that we have got to look into this further.”

Zhang moved to the U.S. about 15 years ago. She eventually ended up in Albuquerque and decided to become a police officer after her home was broken into twice in the same week.

"I work out every day to try to meet the requirement for APD,” Zhang said.

Zhang tested and passed APD's physical agility tests and written tests with flying colors
She then interviewed with three high-ranking police officers — two deputy chiefs and a lieutenant- they all approved her to become a cadet.

In order to become a police officer cadets have to complete 26 weeks of training at the APD Law Enforcement Academy. Zhang had and finished six weeks before she says she was asked to resign.

In her lawsuit, she says academy personnel made her sign a resignation letter in which she says, “I was made to believe that she was quote — unfit for the role.”

Before Zhang signed that letter she says she went through weeks of what she calls "abuse."
She claims everyone kept telling her they couldn't understand her English.

Zhang hired retired Albuquerque police officer-turned attorney, Tom Grover to represent her. Grover himself graduated from the same academy

"What stood out to me when I looked at the records that Nan had when she provided her narrative of what occurred was how they were such a dwelling upon her while others were getting passes,” Grover said. “This was completely inappropriate and not consistent with the typical stress that a police academy is.”

Earlier this year the state's department of workforce solutions investigated her complaint and found no probable cause that the city discriminated against her.

Despite what she claims she went through Zhang says she still wants to be a police officer and serve her community.

"I really want to become a police officer, honestly,” Zhang said. “But I don't think they will accept the people who look like me. Look different. Talk different."

CHICAGO, Ill. — On the west side of Chicago, Damon Lamar Reed shows off a portion of his "Still Searching" portrait project.

"I was kind of oblivious to this stuff, and when I started doing research and finding out things, it was really shocking," he said. "I just wanted to do something."

He’s using his talent to draw more eyes to the dozens and dozens of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Black women that have plagued the south and west sides of Chicago for decades. It's an issue many may not have heard of outside of those neighborhoods.

"We're one of the biggest cities in the United States. Not only should this be a priority for our police department, but this should be national, international news," said Nikki Patin.

Patin is the community director for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, one of the local organizations that have been sounding the alarm about what’s happening in the city.

Since 2001, at least 75 women, ages 15 to 58, mostly Black, who were missing were eventually found murdered in similar ways: most died of strangulation. Their bodies were found in alleys, dumpsters and abandoned buildings around the south and west sides of Chicago. Fifty- one of those murders are unsolved.

"The problem is that in most places, I think that would trigger somebody saying, 'Hmm, there's a pattern,'" said Patin, "but as far as I know, on like a major media level, there's not been a lot of discussion."

Advocates like Patin say the reason so many of these women and their families haven’t received justice is because of the color of their skin and the neighborhoods they come from. She says instead of seeing someone who needs to be found, many assume that Black women and girls who go missing led dangerous lives and put themselves in harm's way.

"That's why you choose to live in a civil society, right? Because you are paying into a system that hopefully has your best interests at heart, and I think that, especially in the cases of missing and murdered Black women, it's heartbreakingly clear that, that is not applied to all of us," she said.

Last year, 250,000 women went missing and 100,000 were women of color. On average, African Americans remain missing four times longer than white Americans. The highly-publicized Gabby Petito case threw into the spotlight the disparities in media coverage that missing women of color receive compared to missing white women. It's a statistic that Gabby’s father even brought up to the media himself.

"There's something wrong. and it's an American tragedy, " said Rev. Robin Hood.

Rev. Hood is a pastor in Chicago’s west side. As an ambassador for his own community, he’s been working with the families of many missing and murdered women. Recently, he’s been helping the family of Shawteiya Smith, who was murdered four years ago. It was recently found that DNA evidence from her case vanished in the hands of detectives.

"We have to protect all our women, all our girls, all our children, we have to protect and we have to demand this from a public official and law enforcement."

Natalie Wilson is the founder of Black and Missing Foundation. With her public relations background, she works with families whose loved ones don't get media coverage. She hopes that both reporters and folks from white communities help in the search for missing women everywhere.

"Media coverage is so vital because it alerts the community that someone is missing and it can greater the chance of the recovery, but it also puts pressure on law enforcement to add resources to the case," said Wilson.

Advocates in Chicago are doing what they can, but to find as many women as possible they say they need everyone – media, law enforcement and the public – to join their efforts.

"This is not a problem that Black women and girls are going to solve by themselves, nor should they," said Nikki Patin. "This should be, you know, of all efforts, this should be a group effort."

ALBANY, N.Y. -- In April, the governor of New York passed the state's 2020 budget, and in it, an

amendment was made




to a law that was passed last year allowing undocumented immigrants to get a state driver’s license.

The Green Light Law also prohibited the sharing of DMV information to any federal agency in charge of immigration.

Last month, the original law was amended as part of the 2020 budget, now making it an E Felony for any law enforcement officer to share DMV records with another law enforcement agency in charge of immigration like ICE or DHS.

“Border Patrol for example, working the highway in the middle of the night and pulls over a vehicle, they can’t run the plates to determine who owns that vehicle,” said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York J.P. Kennedy. “I think it’s legislating obstruction and it’s very concerning to me.”

Kennedy says this was done silently, amidst a global pandemic, and has concerns for the safety and security of New York residents because of this.

“We’ve seen how important communication and coordination in coming up with a response to the pandemic and sort of causing people to work in isolation, it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said of not being able to share information. “I’m very concerned about this and I think it’s very unfortunate and makes me really question the motives of the individuals that enacted this law, if their professed interest in public safety and public health is really as important as they say they are.”

Kennedy says the law amendment also has a national impact.

“If any law enforcement officer in Texas ran across a New York State-registered vehicle, they could not run that plate if it was any officer who was involved in the enforcement of immigration law.”

“This is shocking. This is unheard of and especially during a pandemic that someone, the Governor, who is under so much pressure thought about that to put that in there,” said Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns. “We just had I think it was 29 people, law enforcement people, in the State of New York that just died from COVID, and they’re criminals now?”

“They basically criminalize police work in this budget,” he said.

“I just think it’s wrong to put the lives and rights of illegal immigrants over law enforcement,” said Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw.

WKBW reached out to the Governor’s office for a statement and have not heard back.

This story was originally published by Hannah Buehler at WKBW.

Cameras captured the riots at one of America's most cherished buildings.

Windows were smashed, documents spewed across offices and crowds, charging right past Capitol police.

The chaos prompted questions: What went wrong?

"They weren't prepared to deal with this mindset which is obvious, you can see the videos of it when the police were fighting with them trying to maintain the line at the building," Former Kenton County Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director William Dorsey said.

Dorsey worked in law enforcement for decades.

He thinks a lack of planning contributed to the mass break-in, but wonders why the building itself wasn't better protected.

"Is there no physical barriers? Steel doors? It just amazes me," Dorsey said.

Political leaders called for a thorough review of the security failures.

Derek Bauman said last year's protests for racial justice brought a very different security response.

"Where was the rubber bullets? Where was the mass tear gassing? Where were the helicopters? Why was it there for that and not these folks and this is the most important location, the house of congress," Bauman said.

Bauman spent 26 years in law enforcement, planning and training for many types of crowd control.

Never before has he heard of something like this.

"What's going on with all the computers and stuff? Have they swepped the office for bugs? Do we know if there were bugs planted under...you don't need to be James Bond to walk in and stick something under a desk somewhere, we don't know because there's no answers and nobody's taken questions," Bauman said.

Bauman said the American people deserve answers about what happened and the actions being taken to investigate what went wrong.

Firefighter Richard Jett happened to be working at a different fire station and ended up meeting two girls on a welfare check at a storage unit.Jett, a man of faith, knew God was trying to tell him something.At the time in October 2017, the girls were just 2 years and 4 days old.He ended up adopting them, joining his family of two other adopted children.His colleagues recently honored him in a surprise ceremony and given a surf trip by a charity in the area, S.W.E.L. (Surf Waves Enjoy Life), that takes veterans and first responders surfing.For more information on S.W.E.L, click here.

HAMILTON, Ohio — Employees at the Butler County Sheriff's Office were able to receive COVID-19 vaccinations Friday, Sheriff Richard Jones announced.

Last week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced there would be a distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines to several different organizations, including law enforcement.

BCSO employees will be vaccinated "without delay" at the Sheriff’s Office on Hanover Street. Primary Health Solutions came to the sheriff’s office Friday afternoon to begin distributing vaccinations.

“COVID-19 was the number one killer of law enforcement in the United States in 2020. I will not receive the vaccine until I know my deputies and corrections officers are taken care of,” Jones said in a release.

Jones, 67, recently recovered from a bout of coronavirus after testing positive on Feb. 19.

A suspect was shot and wounded by law enforcement just outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, Monday evening, according to the FBI's Washington Field Office."The FBI is reviewing an agent-involved shooting that occurred at approximately 6 p.m. on Monday, May 3, 2021. An individual involved in a security incident outside Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in McLean, VA, emerged from his vehicle with a weapon and was engaged by law enforcement officers," a statement from the field office said."The subject was wounded and has been transported to a hospital for medical attention. The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously. The review process is thorough and objective, and is conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances," the statement continued.The suspect initially drove up to the CIA's gates late Monday morning and made statements suggesting there was a bomb in their vehicle, according to a law enforcement official and another source familiar with the incident.This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.