Hello, all. Ready for a quick news rundown? Let’s do it.
Cincinnati will get two medicinal marijuana dispensaries, including one partly owned by a well-known reverend. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy yesterday announced recipients of 56 provisional dispensary licenses across the state, including Green RX LLC, registered at 8420 Vine St. and partially owned by Rev. Damon Lynch III and Care Med Associates LLC, registered at 5149 Kennedy Ave. You can see the entire list of area dispensaries — Greater Cincinnati got seven total — in our story here.
• The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority yesterday presented its fiscal year 2019 spending plan for the Cincinnati streetcar. In that plan: revised projections for fewer riders and less income from a voluntary tax incentive program, but more money from advertising. The plan revealed a long-term trend: SORTA is drawing down a surplus in the project’s operating budget as revenues continue to miss projections. You can read our story on the streetcar’s budget here.
• Crime overall is down in Cincinnati, and the city is still on pace to have a more peaceful year than last year, but a recent spate of shootings is causing concern. The past week has seen the highest number of shooting deaths in Cincinnati since 2015, and four of those six shootings happened in Over-the-Rhine — contributing to the deadliest span that neighborhood has seen in a decade. In addition, the neighborhood has seen seven non-fatal shootings since the beginning of May. Police say the neighborhood is safe despite the uptick in shootings.
• At least 13 people sitting in Hamilton County’s justice center have paid bail but have not been released, according to this WCPO story. That’s happened in the past — see our 2014 story about inmates held after they paid bail here — but this time, one of the inmates in question is suing the county. Rozzell Martin sued Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Neil and the county itself late last week because he paid bond but wasn’t released. That’s because he was required by a judge to wear a monitoring device, but the county didn’t have enough of them. Martin was 13th on the waiting list for that device. Other inmates waiting for the devices have been in jail after paying their bail for more than two weeks.
• So this is a crazy one: Law enforcement officials have released the fraudulent 911 call that resulted in a SWAT team visit to the house of an innocent North College Hill resident. But it goes deeper: the former resident of that house, Casey Viner, is in legal trouble for his role in a “swatting” death in Wichita, Kansas. Swatting is a revenge prank in which a person calls law enforcement to report a fake emergency, usually involving a hostage situation, at another person’s house. After a spat with Shane Gaskill, a player of online shooting game Call of Duty, Viner paid another gamer, Tyler Barriss, to call in a fake murder/hostage scenario to the Gaskill’s former address in Wichita. But he wasn’t living there anymore. Wichita officers ended up shooting and killing Andrew Finch, the house’s resident at the time, when Finch came to the door to answer the SWAT team’s calls to leave the house. Finch was unarmed. Viner and Barriss now face federal charges for their roles in the incident. Police believe the calls to Viner’s former house in North College Hill may be retaliation for Viner’s role in the earlier swatting incident.
• Local consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble is pulling its presence in Iran in the face of fines or other legal consequences from the U.S. government. President Donald Trump last month announced that he would remove the U.S. from an international deal designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. That deal would have softened trade prohibitions with Iran. Trump’s decision to exit the deal means that companies have six months to end business in Iran or face penalties. P&G once did a lot of business in Iran — $115 million worth in 2009-2010 — but curtailed that significantly after tougher sanctions were levied against the country in 2011. It’s unclear how much business the company does in Iran now, but it does sell shampoo, feminine hygiene products and electric razors there, among other products.
• The human rights arm of the United Nations is telling the Trump administration it should cease separating immigrant families coming to the U.S. from countries south of its border. A decision to immediately prosecute adults coming into the country without documentation means that they are often separated from their children, who are taken to other detention centers or released to adults who are sometimes not family members. Previously, immigrants were most often sent to family detention centers while authorities worked out asylum claims or other issues of legal standing. Critics of the new policy say it places young immigrants in danger and needlessly divides up families. That’s something some local legal experts are trying to address, as we wrote about in a story last month. A number of people have come to Cincinnati after entering the U.S. fleeing violence and seeking asylum, including minors separated from their parents.
But U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who ordered the prosecutions, says it's not the United States' fault that families are coming into the country, and that it is his job to uphold the law.
"If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law," he said during a recent speech in Arizona. "If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”
The UN, however, disagrees.
“Children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status,” the UN Human Rights Office said in a statement. “Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation.”
