Ferguson preps for anniversary of Michael Brown's death

FERGUSON, Mo. — Several new city leaders will beon the front lines in 10 days when the #BlackLivesMatter spotlight returns here Aug. 9, the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death.

Interim Police Chief Andre Anderson started work July 22, taking a six-month leave of absence from his job at the Glendale, Ariz., Police Department in suburban Phoenix. Interim City Manager Ed Beasley was hired June 9 after working in Glendale from 2002 to 2012.

Both are black, better reflecting the population of this St. Louis suburb of 21,000 residents, which is more than two-thirds African American. Two black City Council members were elected in April, joining one previously serving on the six-member council.

The Missouri Supreme Court also assigned Judge Roy Richter to Ferguson Municipal Court on March 9 after the U.S. Justice Department released a report describing a profit-driven municipal court system, expected to generate a quarter of the city budget through fines and fees, that heightened tensions between the city's primarily white police department and its mostly black residents.

And all of the city officials know that any missteps as protesters mark the anniversary of Brown's death will receive national attention.

"I've asked the police department to adopt four things as we start: We want to embrace professionalism, we want to embrace respect, we want to embrace community engagement and we want to make the community safer," Anderson said.

Just since the start of this year, at least 664 people have died at the hands of police, including at least 174 blacks, according to a Guardian database. The British newspaper has been gathering data through news reports to count deaths caused by law-enforcement officers across the USA.

Protesters say they plan to commemorate Brown's death all weekend.

“The racial disparities in police shootings have caused our community to take a stand for black lives,” Kayla Reed of Organization for Black Struggle said in a statement. “One year later we continue to grow and organize to transform a system that has for too long oppressed people of color.”

On Aug. 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, saw saw two black men — Brown, 18, and his friend Dorian Johnson, 22 at the time — walking in the middle of a Ferguson street after hearing dispatchers describe suspects who stole packages of cigarillos from a convenience store several blocks away. Wilson and Brown, who was unarmed, got into an altercation a little after noon that day, and the officer fired 12 shots at Brown, fatally injuring him.

CVS, IBM partner for technology-based health care

CVS Health and IBM announced Thursday they will join forces to improve health care management services to patients with chronic diseases with the help of advanced technology.

The partnership between the health care company and software company will provide the technology behind IBM’s Watson computing systems to CVS Health practitioners and pharmacists. The technology can analyze large amounts of data, interpret and evaluate information and build knowledge over time. The Watson computing system can access health records, pharmacy information and other resources to help CVS Health employees provide guidance to patients and work with primary care doctors.

Troyen Brennan, chief medical officer for CVS Health, told USA TODAY the new technology will be able to access more research and information than the organization can do now.

“This is going to be a new tool for disease prevention,” Brennan said.

The partnership focuses on improving services for patients with chronic diseases, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The collaboration uses IBM Watson Health, an IBM business unit, which aims to better allow doctors, researchers and practitioners to use the data and technology collected by the computing system to provide better health care.

“The ultimate goal is the improvement in the outcomes, reduction of costs and an overall better experience for patients at the end of the day,” said Shahram Ebadollahi, vice president, innovation and chief science officer at IBM Watson Health.

The collaboration also uses IBM Watson Health Cloud, which gathers information on nutrition, medical history and lifestyle, among other factors, to present a personalized look at health. IBM already partners with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to provide access to this data.

CVS Health encompasses the CVS brands, including its pharmacy, MinuteClinic, Caremark and specialty programs.

This isn’t the first partnership for the two companies. In July 2014, CVS Caremark and IBM announced a $1.5 million grant program called “Technology Solutions for Smarter Health,” which supports the use of technology in health centers.

The use of the technology will begin at CVS at the beginning of 2016.

“Manning these two companies together, and doing it at a scale only these companies can do, will greatly affect the long term —and short term — for patients and do many of them good,” Ebadollahi said.

Court blocks release of NYPD chokehold death testimony

NEW YORK (AP) — The public can't see the testimony a grand jury weighed before declining to indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man, an appeals court said Wednesday, citing longstanding reasons for grand jury confidentiality.

"The public interest in disclosure was outweighed by the dangers inherent in violating the secrecy of the grand jury proceeding," judges in the state Supreme Court Appellate Division's Second Department wrote.

Grand juries have operated for centuries behind closed doors, for reasons ranging from shielding witnesses to protecting the rights of targets who don't get charged. Transcripts are rarely disclosed — with some notable exceptions, as after an officer wasn't indicted last year in the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Wednesday's ruling echoed a lower-court decision in the case of Eric Garner, whose fatal encounter with police was recorded on video.

But city Public Advocate Letitia James, the New York Civil Liberties Union and theLegal Aid Society said they would appeal. They're seeking the transcripts, detailed descriptions of evidence and other documentation in the Garner case, which was fueled by the online video and led to widespread protests about police treatment of minorities.

"The public deserves to know what happened with that grand jury and why what we saw with our eyes did not match the failure to indict those responsible for Eric Garner's death," James said in a statement.

Garner's relatives were disappointed in the decision, as they feel releasing the information is the only way to address their doubts about the fairness of the grand jury process, said one of their lawyers, Josh Moskovitz.

A bystander's video showed the unarmed Garner repeatedly pleading, "I can't breathe!" as Officer Daniel Pantaleo took him to the ground with an arm around his neck. Pantaleo was attempting to arrest Garner on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island street.

The medical examiner ruled that Garner was killed by neck compressions from the chokehold and his positioning during police restraint. The New York Police Departmentbans chokeholds; Pantaleo said he instead used a permissible takedown maneuver.

Former Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who took the case to the grand jury before being elected to Congress this May, successfully asked a judge last winter to release such details as the number of witnesses. But his and other prosecutors' offices have argued against releasing the transcripts, noting that grand jurors and witnesses expect confidentiality to assure them they won't be subjected to public criticism for participation.

Acting Staten Island DA Daniel Master declined to comment.

The request came amid an ongoing debate over whether lawmakers should make grand juries more transparent, particularly in police killing cases. The NYCLU and others argued that releasing the Garner case transcripts would help lawmakers decide what to do.

But appeals judges said it wasn't clear how the information "would inform legislative debate beyond the facts that are already publicly known of the case."