Chris Hedges's Blog, page 90

Tinder Welcomes Known Sex Offenders, and It’s Not Alone

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This article is co-published with Columbia Journalism Investigations and BuzzFeed.

Susan Deveau saw Mark Papamechail’s online dating profile on PlentyofFish in late 2016. Scrolling through his pictures, she saw a 54-year-old man, balding and broad, dressed in a T-shirt. Papamechail lived near her home in a suburb of Boston and, like Deveau, was divorced. His dating app profile said he wanted “to find someone to marry.”

Deveau had used dating websites for years, but she told her adult daughter the men she met were “dorky.” She joked about how she could get “catfished” if a date looked nothing like his picture. Still Deveau, 53, wanted to grow old with someone. The two were — in the popular dating platform’s jargon — “matched.”

A background check would have revealed that Papamechail was a three-time convicted rapist. It would have shown that Massachusetts designated him a dangerous registered sex offender. So how did PlentyofFish allow such a man to use its service?

PlentyofFish “does not conduct criminal background or identity verification checks on its users or otherwise inquire into the background of its users,” the dating app states in its terms of use. It puts responsibility for policing its users on users themselves. Customers who sign its service agreement promise they haven’t commited “a felony or indictable offense (or crime of similar severity), a sex crime, or any crime involving violence,” and aren’t “required to register as a sex offender with any state, federal or local sex offender registry.” PlentyofFish doesn’t attempt to verify whether its users tell the truth, according to the company.

Papamechail didn’t scare Deveau at first. They chatted online and eventually arranged a date. They went on a second date and a third. But months after their PlentyofFish match, Deveau became the second woman to report to police that Papamechail raped her after they had met through a dating app.

PlentyofFish is among 45 online dating brands now owned by Match Group, the Dallas-based corporation that has revenues of $1.7 billion and that dominates the industry in the U.S. Its top dating app, Tinder, has 5.2 million subscribers, surpassing such popular rivals as Bumble.

For nearly a decade, its flagship website, Match, has issued statements and signed agreements promising to protect users from sexual predators. The site has a policy of screening customers against government sex offender registries. But over this same period, as Match evolved into the publicly traded Match Group and bought its competitors, the company hasn’t extended this practice across its platforms — including PlentyofFish, its second most popular dating app. The lack of a uniform policy allows convicted and accused perpetrators to access Match Group apps and leaves users vulnerable to sexual assault, a 16-month investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations found.

Match first agreed to screen for registered sex offenders in 2011 after Carole Markin made it her mission to improve its safety practices. The site had connected her with a six-time convicted rapist who, she told police, had raped her on their second date. Markin sued the company to push for regular registry checks. The Harvard-educated entertainment executive held a high-profile press conference to unveil her lawsuit. Within months, Match’s lawyers told the judge that “a screening process has been initiated,” records show. After the settlement, the company’s attorneys declared the site was “checking subscribers against state and national sex offender registries.”

The next year, Match made similar assurances to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris. In a 2012 agreement on best industry practices between the attorney general’s office and the dating site, among others, the company again agreed to “identify sexual predators” and examine sex offender registries. It pledged to go further and respond to users’ rape complaints with an additional safety tool: “a rapid abuse reporting system.”

Today, Match Group checks the information of its paid subscribers on Match against state sex offender lists. But it doesn’t take that step on Tinder, OkCupid or PlentyofFish — or any of its free platforms. A Match Group spokesperson told CJI the company cannot implement a uniform screening protocol because it doesn’t collect enough information from its free users — and some paid subscribers — even when they pay for premium features. Acknowledging the limitations, the spokesperson said, “There are definitely registered sex offenders on our free products.”

CJI analyzed more than 150 incidents of sexual assault involving dating apps, culled from a decade of news reports, civil lawsuits and criminal records. Most incidents occurred in the past five years and during the app users’ first in-person meeting, in parking lots, apartments and dorm rooms. Most victims, almost all women, met their male attackers through Tinder, OkCupid, PlentyofFish or Match. Match Group owns them all.

In 10% of the incidents, dating platforms matched their users with someone who had been accused or convicted of sexual assault at least once, the analysis found. Only a fraction of these cases involved a registered sex offender. Yet the analysis suggests that Match’s screening policy has helped to prevent the problem: Almost all of these cases implicated Match Group’s free apps; the only service that scours sex offender registries, Match, had none.

In 2017, Tinder matched Massachusetts registered sex offender Michael Durgin with a woman, and she later told police he had raped her on their first date; Durgin’s two rape charges were dropped after the woman “indicated that she does not wish for the Commonwealth to proceed to trial,” records show. (Durgin didn’t respond to requests for comment.) OkCupid allowed another registered sex offender, Michael Miller, of Colorado, to create a new account after his 2015 conviction for raping a woman he met through the site. For months, Miller remained on the platform despite appearing on the registries Match screens. Even Pennsylvania registered sex offender Seth Mull, whose 17-year history of sex crimes convictions began as a teen, used Match Group’s dating sites; in 2017, PlentyofFish didn’t flag his eight-year registry status before matching him with a woman who later accused him of rape. Mull is now serving life in prison for her rape and two more rapes, among other sex crimes.

Asked about the CJI data, Match Group’s spokesperson said the 157 cases “need to be put in perspective with the tens of millions of people that have used our dating products.”

The company declined multiple requests to interview executives and other key employees familiar with its protocols for addressing online dating sexual assault. The spokesperson described the steps the company takes to ensure customer safety on its platforms — from blocking users accused of sexual assault to checking across its apps for accused users’ accounts and flagging them on a companywide distribution list. Other response protocols aren’t standardized across Match Group apps.

In a brief statement, the company said it “takes the safety, security and well-being of our users very seriously.” Match Group said “a relatively small amount of the tens of millions of people using one of our dating services have fallen victim to criminal activity by predators.” It added, “We believe any incident of misconduct or criminal behavior is one too many.”

Interviews with more than a dozen former Match Group employees — from customer service representatives and security managers at OkCupid to senior executives at Tinder — paint a different picture. Most left on good terms; indeed, many told CJI they’re proud of the successful relationships their platforms have facilitated. But they criticize the lack of companywide protocols. Some voice frustration over the scant training and support they received for handling users’ rape complaints. Others describe having to devise their own ad hoc procedures. Often, the company’s response fails to prevent further harm, according to CJI interviews with more than 100 dating app users, lawmakers, industry experts, former employees and police officers; reviews of hundreds of records; and a survey of app users.

Even the screening policy on the one site that checks registries, Match, is limited. The company’s spokesperson acknowledges that the website doesn’t screen all paid subscribers. The site has argued in court for years that it has no legal obligation to conduct background checks, and it fought state legislation that would require it to disclose whether it does so.

Markin, whose civil suit led to the registry policy, cannot help but feel the company has failed to deliver. Calling registry screenings “the easiest kind of cross-checking,” she said she had expected Match Group to embrace the practice.

“I did something to help other women,” she told CJI. “It’s disappointing to see Match did not.”

Susan Flaherty grew up in the 1960s outside Hoboken, New Jersey, where she developed a style that her daughter describes simply as “Jersey”: “big-haired, blonde, blue-eyed and loud.” With a head for numbers, she got a degree in finance and spent most of her adult life working as a mortgage broker.

In the mid-1990s, she walked into a bar near Naples, Maine, and came face to face with Denie Deveau, a bartender. They got married and had two children. Seven years later, they divorced. Susan kept her husband’s last name. She bounced from relationship to relationship after that. She always thought she “needed a man to come take care of her,” her 24-year-old daughter, Jackie, said.

Papamechail grew up in the 1960s in Peabody, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. He came from a prominent family that owns a construction company. Since the late 1980s, Papamechail has built a rap sheet consisting of eight criminal convictions, four of them sex crimes. He has pleaded guilty to three separate rapes.

His first rape conviction in 1987 involved a neighbor and resulted in an eight-year prison sentence and a 10-year probationary period “with special conditions to undergo sex offender treatment.” Court records show Papamechail served one year in prison and later violated his probation. Within four years, he was convicted of rape again for two more incidents. During that case, he told police he had a “problem” and needed “help,” court records show. He spent another four years behind bars. By 1994, he had spent yet another year in prison after his second conviction for indecent assault and battery, a sex crime in Massachusetts. Court records show Papamechail has served a total of at least eight years in prison. The state officially designated him a sex offender.

Papamechail declined to comment for this article. He told a CJI reporter over Facebook that “if you ever contact me or my family again I will reach out to the Massachusetts courts.”

In 2014, Papamechail became familiar to sex crimes detectives again. This time, a woman he met through PlentyofFish accused him of raping her on their first date. The claim put him in county jail without bail for two years; he was eventually acquitted after a weeklong jury trial. Still, law enforcement officials raised his sex offender status to the state’s most dangerous category, Level III, deeming him highly likely to offend again.

By the time PlentyofFish matched him with Deveau, Papamechail’s heightened status meant he would have already appeared on the state’s sex offender registry — something that PlentyofFish didn’t check, the company confirms. At the time, Deveau, a recovering alcoholic, was living in a sober house near Papamechail’s home. Over the ensuing months, the pair chatted online. They texted and spoke on the phone. They met in person; she went to his apartment twice.

Then, in October 2017, Papamechail picked up Deveau for what would be their final date, court records show. They went for dinner and returned to his home. She “expected to just hang out together,” court records note she told the grand jury, but he had “other plans.” They got into a fight. “He wanted her in the bedroom,” according to her testimony, “but she said no.” Around 7:40 p.m., court records show, she called the Peabody emergency dispatch service for help.

Deveau told the 911 dispatcher “a man was trying to rape her and had threatened her,” the court records state. “He’s coming,” she told the dispatcher, dropping the phone.

Susan Deveau is among the users in CJI’s data who reported being victimized by someone they met through a dating platform. The analysis suggests the problem has grown as the popularity of online dating has soared — in 2015, 12% of American adults were on a dating site, compared with 3% in 2008. Other studies reinforce this trend. In 2016, the U.K. National Crime Agency reviewed police reports over a five-year period and found online-dating sexual assault had increased as much as 450% — from 33 to 184 cases.

Because no one collects official statistics on online dating sexual assault in the U.S., CJI surveyed more than 1,200 women who said they had used a dating platform in the past 15 years. It is a non-scientific questionnaire about an underreported crime, and the results represent only CJI’s specific group. They are not generalizable and cannot be extrapolated to all online dating subscribers. (Read the survey’s methodology at the end of this story.) Among this small group, more than a third of the women said they were sexually assaulted by someone they had met through a dating app. Of these women, more than half said they were raped.

If such results are confirmed by further studies, the numbers would be alarming, said Bethany Backes, an assistant professor in the Violence Against Women Faculty Cluster Initiative at the University of Central Florida. Backes, who reviewed CJI’s questionnaire, noted that this one group of dating app users reported a higher rate of sexual assault than women in the general population do. Backes speculated that’s because the users sampled were actively dating. The results, she added, suggest a need for the platforms to protect their users not just online but offline as well.

“I think anyone has a moral responsibility to do something about it,” Backes said, “whether they think they have a legal or business responsibility.”

Match Group declined to comment on CJI’s survey. Its spokesperson noted that Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg has prioritized customer safety. “I’m a woman and a mom of a 20-year-old who uses dating apps,” the executive said in an interview in 2018 with The Wall Street Journal. “I think a lot about the safety and security, in particular, of our female users.”

In 2018, Ginsberg launched a safety council made up of leading victim advocates and other experts. Interviews with its members show that the council has focused on getting users to take action themselves rather than having the company act.

Match has long argued that such checks were too incomplete or costly for its users. Markham Erickson, a lawyer specializing in internet law who worked with Match to lobby against background checks, told CJI it was “incredibly hard” to screen online dating users. “It’s not like you’re getting the fingerprint of an individual,” he said. All a sex offender “had to do was give a false name.”

A Match Group spokesperson contends that background checks do little more than create what she calls “a false sense of security” among users. “Our checks of the sex offender registry can only be as good as the information we receive,” she said, explaining that the government databases can lack data, have old pictures or include partial information on sex offenders.

But some in the industry have argued that the onus should be on the dating app companies to check users’ backgrounds to protect their customers from predators. Herb Vest, a Texas entrepreneur who made a legislative crusade out of the issue in the 2000s, launched his own dating platform in 2003. Dubbed True.com, the company’s name reflected its policy of screening users for sex crimes and other felonies, Vest said. It paid approximately $1 million a year for third-party services like rapsheets.com and backgroundchecks.com, partly because public registries were scattershot at first, and partly because the vendors could do a more comprehensive check.

The contracts allowed the company to screen an unlimited number of subscribers each month, former True president Reuben Bell said, an expense it incorporated into membership fees totaling $50 a month. By contrast, Match charged a similar monthly rate — $60 at the time — without conducting any form of background check.

True even warned subscribers that the company would sue if they misrepresented their pasts. “If you are a felon, sex offender or married, DO NOT use our website,” it stated on its site. In 2005, the company took one registered sex offender to court after discovering he had lied about his status. The lawsuit settled. According to Vest, the man agreed to stop using dating platforms. True ultimately folded in 2013.

Another Match Group rival, a free dating app called Gatsby that operated from 2017 until this year, used government databases to screen its 20,000 users. Gatsby’s founder, Joseph Penora, told CJI in an email he was inspired to create what he calls “a creepy guy filter” after reading about a woman who was assaulted by a sex offender she had met through Match. “Our users are the backbone of our success,” Penora wrote. “Let’s do something proactive to keep them safe.”

Even former Match Group insiders agree the registries are more accessible and have fewer blind spots today. Several former security executives told CJI that such screenings would be a feasible way to help prevent online dating sexual assault — if the company invested the resources. For example, they and other experts say Match Group, which expects to make around $800 million in profits this year by one measure, could purchase an application program interface, or API, from a third-party vendor to allow it to check its users against the nearly 900,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S.

Vest still cannot understand why the industry has resisted such measures. He insists the cost of doing background checks didn’t play a role in his company’s closing. True’s bankruptcy records blame its subscription losses on banking reforms after the recession that left consumers with limited or no credit.

The company’s background-checking policy wasn’t mentioned in the thousands of pages of filings. Nor did True report owing money to its screening vendors.

“People can’t rely 100% on the sites,” Vest said. “But as an industry, we could have done much better.”

Peabody police officers responded to Deveau’s 911 call on Oct. 28, 2017, arriving at a multifamily complex with a purple door. The officers found her and Papamechail outside, court records show. There, she told the police that he had demanded sex. When she refused, she said, he pushed her against the wall and yelled, “I am going to have you one way or another.”

Peabody police had come there before. In March 2014, Janine Dunphy reported that Papamechail had raped her at his home after the two had met through PlentyofFish, which Match Group would buy within the year.

Dunphy’s allegations sounded strikingly similar to those of Deveau, court records show. Both said he invited them to his home after a date. When they refused his sexual advances, their victim testimonies state, Papamechail — he is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 260 pounds, according to the state sex offender registry — threw them on the floor or the bed, restrained them with his arms and raped them.

Papamechail pleaded not guilty to Dunphy’s rape charge; at the 2016 trial, his defense attorney claimed the incident was consensual and questioned the influence of her medical prescriptions and financial motivations. “Her story changes,” his lawyer said at the time. “And the truth never changes.”

Dunphy never knew Papamechail was a registered sex offender when PlentyofFish had matched them, she said. During the criminal case, she told a detective that Papamechail had confided that he was kicked off the Match dating site but didn’t say why, the police report shows. Match Group declined to confirm or deny whether its flagship platform has ever blocked Papamechail. Prosecutors tried to subpoena PlentyofFish for records of his correspondence with her. Dunphy remembers that the company, which is based in Canada, refused, saying it didn’t have to comply with U.S. subpoenas.

By 2016, the registry board had raised Papamechail’s sex offender status to the highest level, indicating what the board considers “a high degree of danger to the public.” Papamechail’s listing, including a photo, appeared on the registry’s public website, where it remains today. The Massachusetts board declined to comment on Papamechail’s sex offender history, citing state laws.

“He’s going to do it over and over again,” said Dunphy, who has a lifetime restraining order barring Papamechail from contacting or abusing her. In the winter of 2016, she remembers seeing him back on PlentyofFish, which by then was owned by Match Group.

Ten months later, the Peabody detective responded to the 911 call at Papamechail’s house. Deveau reported he had raped her in a follow-up interview. “She did not tell police on the date of the incident because she stated she was afraid and she wanted to leave,” court records note. By January 2018, a grand jury had found enough evidence to indict him for rape. Papamechail pleaded not guilty. He told police that he and Deveau had been in an off-and-on sexual relationship. He maintained that he didn’t try to have sex with Deveau, and that she “woke up abruptly and was screaming at him, calling him a sex offender and a rapist,” the police report states.

In a February 2018 decision ordering his temporary detention as a “habitual offender,” Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley ruled that Papamechail’s “propensity for sexual violence against women is uncontrollable.” The judge found that “even house arrest would not in this court’s view protect future potential victims of Papamechail’s sexual violence.” One of the reasons Feeley cited was Papamechail’s online activities.

Papamechail stands out among the convicted and alleged perpetrators in CJI’s data. Most dating app users accused of assaulting another user weren’t registered sex offenders at the time. Some had past sex crime convictions. Others were subjects of prior police complaints. But most of the time checking users’ criminal backgrounds alone would not have prevented the problem, the analysis found.

Match Group presents its rapid abuse reporting system as crucial for protecting customers from sexual assault. “Our brands also depend on our users to report any profiles engaged in concerning behavior so that we can investigate and take appropriate action,” the company states on its website. Any user can log a complaint online or through its apps. Moderators and security agents try to identify the accused user and block his account, according to the company. They check across platforms for other associated accounts.

“If there’s bad behavior on one app,” Match Group CEO Ginsberg has said, describing the company’s response protocols, “we can identify that user, we’ll kick him off all the apps.”

But some users who reported their rape claims to the company describe a different outcome. Brittney Westphal, 31, who lives outside Aspen, Colorado, said she informed Tinder in 2015 that another user had raped her on their first date. She asked the dating app how she could get a record of her conversations with the accused when he “unmatched” her — which instantly deletes the history of communication between two users — leaving her unable to give his information or a record of their conversations to police.

Tinder never replied, she said, and local authorities declined to press charges. “I made it clear to them [Tinder] like how serious this was,” Westphal said, “and then I never heard anything.” Within months, she said she spotted her alleged attacker on the app again.

A Utah college student, Madeline MacDonald, told Tinder in a December 2014 email that she “was sexually assaulted (or something very similar),” records show. She provided the app with pertinent information, including the accused’s name, age and physical description. The next day, their email correspondence shows, a Tinder employee asked for screen shots of his app profile, adding that a link to the accused’s Facebook profile “could help as well.” MacDonald offered screenshots of his Facebook page, which included his employer, town, high school and phone number. An employee responded by asking for a link to the Facebook page. MacDonald said she gave up. Eventually, she said she saw her alleged assailant back on Tinder.

Three years later, according to Dixie State University Police Chief Blair Barfuss, a detective in his unit informed MacDonald that the man she had accused had allegedly assaulted three other women he met through dating apps. Two were Match Group platforms.

And then there’s Kerry Gaude, 31, of Golden, Colorado, whose experience after Michael Miller raped her on their first date illustrates the shortcomings of Match Group’s protocols. When OkCupid matched the two in May 2014, Miller, then 28 and using the handle mike22486, was not yet a registered sex offender. Two women who had met him online told police he sexually assaulted them, but their claims didn’t lead to criminal charges. Gaude reported her rape to police, and then she emailed OkCupid and PlentyofFish. She remembers warning the platforms that a rapist was using their services to meet women.

The following year, Miller pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation and assault charges stemming from Gaude’s claim. He got 10 years’ probation with sex offender stipulations prohibiting him from using “any applications to communicate with women in any way about sex,” court records state. He also appeared on the state’s public sex offender registry two days after his sentencing in May 2015, state officials confirm.

Yet Gaude said she frequently saw Miller on OkCupid after the sentencing. Within three months, in fact, he was charged with probation violations after admitting to using an unapproved cellphone to access the app, records show. The violations put him in a Cañon City, Colorado, prison for four years.

During the proceedings, Gaude went on local TV and warned people that Miller could victimize other OkCupid users.

Three women contacted police about their exchanges with Miller on the dating app throughout 2015. Police records show one 25-year-old got a message on OkCupid from a man with the handle lucky4me123. On his profile, the man presented himself as an “independent yet naturally caring” person who lived alone and hoped to “find that special someone.” He was, OKCupid said, a “67% match” in compatibility for the woman. She recognized Miller’s mugshot from a news article about Gaude’s warnings.

By then, Miller had been listed in the state’s online sex offender database for almost seven months. The Colorado bureau that administers the registry had no record of Match Group employees requesting information about individuals on its offender list during this time. A Match Group spokesperson confirms OkCupid never checked his registry status.

“It’s the after the fact that bothers me,” Gaude said of Miller’s ability to keep using OkCupid. “How is that not aiding and abetting?”

Match Group’s spokesperson said the company uses “industry-leading automated and manual moderation and review tools,” and spends millions every year to “prevent, monitor and remove people who engage in inappropriate behavior from our apps.”

Several former OkCupid employees familiar with the company’s complaint process say it is easy for banned individuals, like Miller, to get back on the app. The company’s moderators adopt a general “ban first” mentality for any accused user, the employees said, but once blocked, they have little ability to stop the accused from using different identifying information, or signing up for new accounts. Some say they complained about this issue to OkCupid supervisors, only to be ignored. Others say they found themselves searching public offender lists on their own.

Match Group, for its part, declined to comment.

Miller didn’t respond to repeated interview requests, and nobody answered the door when a CJI reporter visited his house. While on probation, Miller wrote to one woman on OkCupid, apologizing for his crime and pleading for “the opportunity to prove myself that im not a bad indiviual.”

Now on parole, he is subject to intensive supervision. One condition prohibits him from using online dating sites.

Some time after Deveau had reported her rape allegation to police, her daughter, Jackie, remembers being on a lunch break when she got a phone call from the assistant district attorney handling the Papamechail criminal case. Her mother had returned to drinking by then, Jackie said, and shut herself off from family.

Jackie knew her mother had experienced something bad with a date, but she didn’t know anything more until a prosecutor told her. She recalls hearing Papamechail’s litany of sex crime convictions. Still on the phone, Jackie looked him up on the internet and scrolled through news articles on Dunphy’s case. She learned about his registry status. “It was just horrifying,” Jackie said.

Jackie dialed her mother right away. Deveau sounded drunk and incoherent, so Jackie didn’t broach the criminal case. Her mother’s behavior seemed to be unraveling from the ordeal, Jackie said.

In April 2018, Jackie got another phone call about her mother. This time, she learned Deveau was in the hospital, admitted after a drinking binge, her vitals unstable. Jackie arrived at the hospital; within days, doctors were putting her mother on life support.

Deveau died on April 27, 2018, from “acute kidney failure,” her death certificate states.

By May, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office was forced to drop the criminal case it was building against Papamechail. It filed a formal notice ceasing prosecution on two counts of rape, citing Deveau’s death. “Without the testimony of the alleged victim in this sexual assault case,” it stated in its filing, “the Commonwealth is unable to meet its burden at trial to prove the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt.”

Papamechail was released from jail again but remained on the state’s registry. Once again, he would be spotted on a Match Group app.

When Jackie learned her mother had met Papamechail through PlentyofFish, she considered suing. The dating app could have prevented what happened, she said, especially considering “how severe he is as a sex offender.” Intimidated by the well-resourced company, she never did file a civil lawsuit.

Even if Jackie had gone to court, though, the Communications Decency Act would have rendered legal action practically futile. The act, passed in 1996, when internet companies were nascent and viewed as needing protection, contains a provision, known as CDA Section 230, that was originally intended to protect websites from being held liable for their users’ speech.

Companies, including Match Group, have successfully invoked CDA 230 to shield themselves from liability in incidents involving users harmed by other users, including victims of sexual assault. Internet regulation experts say the measure effectively allows online dating companies to avoid legal repercussions. In the few civil suits accusing Match Group platforms of negligence for online dating sexual assaults, its lawyers have cited CDA 230 to try to dismiss nearly every one, records show.

Olivier Sylvain, a Fordham University law professor who specializes in the ethics of media and technology, believes judges have been so overly generous in interpreting CDA 230 that they dismiss cases before an aggrieved party can even obtain information about the company’s response. “That speaks to how these companies are held unaccountable,” he said.

Only one civil suit, filed against Match in an Illinois county courthouse in 2011, has gotten around CDA 230. The case ended in an undisclosed settlement in April 2016. Over its five-year history, it pried open internal Match documents shedding light on how the site has handled online dating sexual assault.

The case dates back to December 2009, when Match connected Ryan Logan, then 33, a Chicago technology consultant, with a 31-year-old baker identified as Jane Doe. The woman, whose name has never been made public, asked to remain anonymous for this article. She told police Logan had raped her on their first date, spurring a chain of events that would lead him to be convicted of sexual assault in 2011. Around the time of his criminal trial, she learned another woman had previously accused Logan of rape and had alerted Match.

Logan “proceeded to date rape me,” the woman wrote the site in a 2007 complaint. She warned Match he could use its service to attack others.

Logan didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Currently an Illinois registered sex offender, he was ordered to pay more than $6 million in damages to Doe as a result of her civil suit. The judge in his criminal case barred Logan from using online dating services.

Company documents obtained during the discovery process show Match’s customer service team treated the sex assault complaint as it would any other at the time: It sent the complaint to a security agent, who created an incident case file. But Match’s response ended there. “The employee who was to handle the case did not follow internal procedure and closed the case without taking action,” the documents state. The site didn’t take down Logan’s profile at the time, nor did it acknowledge the woman’s complaint.

During the civil proceedings, Match attempted to dismiss the negligence claims, citing CDA 230. In December 2013 — a year after it promised to implement registry screenings and response protocols — the dating site used the law to argue against any obligation to remove users who become subjects of sex assault complaints.

“Whatever Match does, whether they leave the profile on or take it off, even if they had knowledge, is a protected act,” James Gardner, its lawyer, claimed in court. He maintained the site shouldn’t be responsible for taking action against accused users even if it failed to remove a user after being warned about him. “Why shouldn’t they be responsible for that?” Gardner asked rhetorically. “The law says they are not. And the reason the law says they are not is because we understand that the larger purpose of internet commerce is more important.”

Circuit Court Judge Moira Johnson rejected that argument, finding “the allegations do not support conduct that is immune” under CDA 230, which covers third-party content, a hearing transcript states.

Discovery documents offered a rare window into Match’s response system. As of November 2007, court filings show, the site was keeping track of users accused of sexual assault in a spreadsheet detailing their identification numbers, handles and full names. The site handed over nearly 1,300 complaints of physical and sexual violence filed by users against other users during the two years preceding Doe’s rape. The judge ruled the spreadsheet’s contents could be redacted and the complaints sealed, making it impossible to glean whether or not Match could identify repeat offenders among its subscribers and, if so, how it responded.

Match Group declined to comment on the redacted spreadsheet’s numbers, or to release its own numbers of sex assault complaints filed with its apps.

Doe thought Match executives would be outraged that an accused rapist had been allowed back on their site, she said, but she soon learned otherwise. The site discouraged her from speaking publicly about her case, and it has yet to implement her policy recommendation for a user assault hotline. The Match Group spokesperson notes the company’s safety pages list support services for sex assault victims. But the company doesn’t sponsor its own hotline for its users.

Its lawyers pointed out in court records that Match’s “common sense recommendations” for offline user conduct advise never meeting in a private location. “We’re not going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, it was her fault that he raped her,” Gardner said during a hearing, “but she has to take some responsibility.”

Doe still tears up when she remembers how Match treated her in court. “You are not a victim,” she told CJI. “You are enemy No. 1.”

Janine Dunphy had learned, through a local newspaper article in early 2018, that Papamechail had allegedly assaulted another woman whom he met through a dating app. Then, in May last year, Dunphy got a phone call from an assistant district attorney, the same one who had handled the case involving Papamechail and Dunphy. “I have some really bad news,” she recalls the prosecutor saying. The woman had died. The rape charges had been dropped.

The news sent Dunphy on a quest to find Papamechail on PlentyofFish. She had made fake profiles to try to track him down on the platform before. She created a male profile once and posted some of his photos alongside warnings of his sex-offender status to see if the website would react. Another time she used a fake female profile without pictures to see if the app would connect them. Sometimes, she searched for his dating profiles for hours.

“I lost so much of my life,” said Dunphy, whose health has deteriorated in the years since her rape claim. Doctors have diagnosed her with blood clots from stress, therapists have treated her for post-traumatic stress disorder. Of her Papamechail date, she said, “It’s in my head every day.”

Dunphy recalls finding his profile on PlentyofFish less than a month after she had heard about Deveau’s death. She recognized Papamechail’s pictures — a photo of himself in a car, another of an orange cat. His username was Deadbolt56. He described himself as a “coffee snob.” She took screenshots of his profile, she said, and notified PlentyofFish. She never heard back.

Match Group would not confirm or deny whether PlentyofFish ever received a complaint about Papamechail. Its spokesperson said the company’s team of security agents removed him from its platforms more than a year ago — around the time Dunphy would have filed her complaint — but didn’t answer questions about why he was barred, how many times he’s been barred or how often he’s gotten back on the apps. According to Match Group, there are no accounts associated with Papamechail on its platforms.

Dunphy said she continued to see him on PlentyofFish until she stopped searching last fall. She got tired of trying to keep Papamechail off the site, she says. She felt like she was doing the work the app should’ve been doing.

Over the past 15 years, as online dating has emerged as the most popular matchmaker among Americans, state legislators have tried to address its potential for real-world harm. The earliest proposals would have required platforms to conduct full background checks. But since online dating companies do business nationwide, and only the federal government can regulate interstate operations, they went nowhere.

State lawmakers then took a different tack and pushed to mandate that apps disclose whether or not they conduct background checks. These laws, typically enforced by state attorneys general or consumer affairs departments, fine companies if they don’t disclose. These measures explain why Match Group platforms adopted the no-check warnings buried in their Terms of Use in the first place.

In 2005, legislators — from Virginia to California, and Michigan to Florida — were debating disclosure bills championed by True.com. Vest, True’s founder, considered the company’s legislative campaign a form of marketing that would inspire brand loyalty. Generally opposed to government intervention, he saw an exception in this case. “We have a legislative branch intended to protect the citizenry,” Vest said.

Among the most vocal critics of the bills was Match. In Michigan, for example, Marshall Dye, then assistant general counsel for the website, testified at a hearing on that state’s bill. Match opposed the bill, Dye testified, on the grounds that it would give users a false sense of security. Consumers might assume that everyone on the platform had a spotless record, she argued. But no one convicted of a crime would give his real name. (Dye declined a request to comment on her testimony.)

“It’s just a buyer beware statement,” said Alan Cropsey, a Michigan state senator at the time who sponsored the failed bill because he figured industry support would be a no-brainer. Of the platforms, he said, “They don’t want the buyer to beware.”

New Jersey became the first state in 2008 to pass an online dating disclosure statute, which also required the platforms to publish safety tips — such as “Tell friends and family about your plans,” and “Meet in public and stay in public.” Legislatures in Illinois, New York and Texas soon followed suit. At times, Match lobbyists led the industry opposition in the debates.

Match Group didn’t soften its stance until 2017, when the company helped to push a measure that would lead to California’s first — albeit limited — online dating rules. State lawmakers say the #MeToo movement’s momentum drove passage of provisions that require dating platforms to offer California users the same safety tips and reporting processes already required elsewhere. The regulations don’t mandate any form of background check.

Today, just five states have regulations aimed at improving online dating customer safety. Records requests filed in those states have yielded hundreds of complaints about the industry involving contract disputes or romance scams. None involve online dating sexual assault. No state regulators have taken action against a platform for violating disclosure rules.

Former Texas State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who sponsored that state’s 2011 legislation, said states can only do so much to protect dating app users. “We really do need to have some sort of national framework,” she said.

Last May, Jackie sat in a conference room at her employer’s office in Portland, Maine, taking in a photograph of Deveau. It was three weeks after the first anniversary of her mother’s death, and her grief was palpable. “I need my Mom more than anything,” she wrote on her Facebook page weeks earlier. The photograph in her hand depicts Jackie as an infant, sitting in Deveau’s lap. Jackie, sucking on her mother’s finger, wears an oversized floppy pink hat. Deveau wears a wide grin.

Jackie remembers small moments growing up with her mother: a look the two would share when a snack craving overcame them. Deveau would drive Jackie to a local convenience store to order big salted pretzels. Or the pool parties her mother hosted at their home, where she always put out a good spread and welcomed everyone with open arms.

Deveau spoke constantly on the phone with Jackie as an adult — until she stopped.

Jackie wore a V-neck striped shirt, a tattoo peeking out from underneath. It depicts the jagged line of a heart monitor before Deveau’s last heartbeat. Jackie got it etched over her own heart to commemorate her mother.

Reflecting on her mother’s last months, Jackie portrayed Deveau like so many women who use online dating apps: vulnerable, at risk of assault. She doubted Deveau would have thought about registry screenings and response protocols. She finds it “disgusting” that online dating companies like Match Group would expect its female users to check sex offender lists themselves.

They may be looking for the man of their dreams on these dating apps, Jackie said, but they “can’t do that if these predators are on there.”

House Impeachment Report Coming Ahead of Landmark Hearing

WASHINGTON — The House impeachment report on President Donald Trump will be unveiled Monday behind closed doors for key lawmakers as Democrats push ahead with the inquiry despite the White House’s declaration it will not participate in the first Judiciary Committee hearing.

The Democratic majority on the House Intelligence Committee says the report, compiled after weeks of testimony, will speak for itself in laying out what Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the evidence of “wrongdoing and misconduct” by the Republican president over his actions toward Ukraine. It was being made available for committee members to review ahead of a vote Tuesday to send it to the Judiciary Committee for Wednesday’s landmark hearing.

Late Sunday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone denounced the “baseless and highly partisan inquiry.” In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., he also declined the invitation for the president’s counsel to appear before his panel Wednesday.

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Cipollone, in continuing the West Wing’s attack on the House process, said the proceeding “violates all past historical precedent, basic due process rights, and fundamental fairness.” Trump himself was scheduled to attend a summit with NATO allies outside London on Wednesday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday it’s “very unfortunate” the Judiciary Committee is holding its hearing at the same time that Trump is representing the U.S. at the NATO summit.

“I regret that they’ve chosen to hold these hearings at the same time that the president and our entire national security team will be traveling to Europe, to London, to work on these important matters,” Pompeo said.

As the impeachment inquiry intensifies, Wednesday’s hearing will be a milestone. It is expected to convene legal experts whose testimony, alongside the report from the Intelligence Committee, could lay the groundwork for possible articles of impeachment, which the panel is expected to soon draw up.

Democrats are focused on whether Trump abused his office by withholding military aid approved by Congress and a White House meeting as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations into Trump’s political rivals. The report also is expected to include evidence of possible obstruction of Congress by Trump’s instructions that officials in his administration defy subpoenas for documents or testimony.

Trump maintains he did nothing wrong, and as the House presses forward on an ambitious schedule toward an impeachment vote, the president and his Republican allies are aligned against the process.

Cipollone’s letter applied only to the Wednesday hearing, and he demanded more information from Democrats on how they intended to conduct further hearings before Trump would decide whether to participate in them. House rules provide the president and his attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.

Republicans, meanwhile, wanted Schiff, the chairman who led the inquiry report, to testify before the Judiciary Committee, though they have no power to compel him to do so, as they joined the White House effort to try to cast the Democratic-led inquiry as skewed against the Republican president.

“It’s easy to hide behind a report,” said Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “But it’s going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.”

Schiff has said “there’s nothing for me to testify about,” that he isn’t a “fact” witness and that Republicans are only trying to “mollify the president, and that’s not a good reason to try to call a member of Congress as a witness.”

Democrats were aiming for a final House vote by Christmas, which would set the stage for a likely Senate trial in January.

“I do believe that all evidence certainly will be included in that report so the Judiciary Committee can make the necessary decisions that they need to,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

Trump has previously suggested that he might be willing to offer written testimony under certain conditions, though aides suggested they did not anticipate Democrats would ever agree to them.

Democrats had pressed Trump to decide by Friday whether he would take advantage of due process protections afforded to him under House rules adopted in October for follow-up hearings, including the right to request witness testimony and to cross-examine the witnesses called by the House.

“If you are serious about conducting a fair process going forward, and in order to protect the rights and privileges of the President, we may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the Administration the ability to do so meaningfully,” Cipollone said in the Sunday letter.

Collins called the hearing Wednesday “a complete American waste of time of here.” He wanted the witness list expanded to include those suggested by Republicans. “This is why this is a problematic exercise and simply a made-for-TV event coming on Wednesday.”

Still, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a Judiciary Committee member, said he believes Trump would benefit if he presents his own defense. McClintock said he doesn’t believe Trump did anything wrong in the July 25 call with Zelenskiy that is at the heart of the investigation.

“He didn’t use the delicate language of diplomacy in that conversation, that’s true. He also doesn’t use the smarmy talk of politicians,” McClintock said.

To McClintock, Trump was using “the blunt talk of a Manhattan businessman” and “was entirely within his constitutional authority” in his dealings with Ukraine’s leader.

Collins appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and Demings and McClintock were on ABC’s “This Week.”

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

American Exceptionalism Is Making Earth Uninhabitable

Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America’s wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?

“Sadly, there isn’t just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.”

“In waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

So why do America’s disastrous wars persist? I can think of many reasons, some obvious and easy to understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here’s another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise a self-professed hawk on the subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end “endless wars” but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive F-35 fighter jet. The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking of peace. And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his inauguration he’s sent more troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other air strikes, something about which he openly boasts.

War, in other words, is our new normal, America’s default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, “terror” more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China, is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases, when you configure your armed forces for what’s called power projection, when you divide the globe — the total planet — into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn’t an “exceptional” belief system, what is?

If we’re ever to put an end to our country’s endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war’s many uses in American life and culture.

War, Its Uses (and Abuses)

A partial list of war’s many uses might go something like this: war is profitable, most notably for America’s vast military-industrial complex; war is sold as being necessary for America’s safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that “freedom isn’t free.” In our politics today, it’s far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.

As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is a force that gives us meaning. And let’s face it, a significant part of America’s meaning in this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being the world’s sole superpower.

And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In an age of gaping inequality, using up the country’s resources in such profligate and destructive ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the many.

In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn’t. In a nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as “great captains.”

What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment — not against communist expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What’s stopping us from containing war? You might say that, in some sense, we’ve grown addicted to it, which is true enough, but here are five additional reasons for war’s enduring presence in American life:

The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a “loser.” Meanwhile, such dubious conflicts — see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with several more years, or even generations, to go — continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though they visibly aren’t. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully resisted the Pentagon’s siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off.
American society’s almost complete  isolation  from war’s deadly effects: We’re not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though they’re certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure, thanks in part to the cost of those overseas wars). It’s nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the media or elsewhere, this country’s never-ending war-making gets here.
Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don’t know about? Learning its lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn’t because the enemy could exploit such details — the enemy already knows! — but because the American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden, pursued and indicted for sharing honest details about the calamitous Iraq War and America’s invasive and intrusive surveillance state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be truth-tellers.
An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress ceded to the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite recent attempts to end America’s arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden by Donald Trump’s veto power), America’s duly elected representatives generally don’t represent the people when it comes to this country’s disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly, largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech (thank you, Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will.
America’s persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we’re actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as “Little Americas,” complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang of a “peace train” that was “soundin’ louder” in America. Today, that peace train’s been derailed and replaced by an armed and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war — and that train is indeed soundin’ louder to the great peril of us all.

War on Spaceship Earth

Here’s the rub, though: even the Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is climate change, not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his administration of arsonists its officials can’t express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might. Assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our real enemy is the endless war we’re waging against Planet Earth.

“Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.”

The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only wants to grow more so, but what’s welfare for the military brass isn’t wellness for the planet.

There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since we’re all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we’re its crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely to survive, no less thrive.

In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the existence of significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures to rise even as food and other resources dwindle. Under the circumstances, what’s the best strategy for survival: killing each other while ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?

Unfortunately, for America’s leaders, the real “fixes” remain global military and resource domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as we’ve seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President Trump’s recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria to steal that country’s oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule percentage of the world’s petroleum.

If America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it’s that every war scars our planet — and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.

Despite all of war’s uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it’s time that we Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few enough of us experience “our” wars firsthand and that’s precisely why some idealize their purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes everyone involved into a murderer.

We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship Earth.

Toll at Least 21 After Mexico Cartel Attack Near U.S. Border

MEXICO CITY — Mexican security forces on Sunday killed seven more members of a presumed cartel assault force that rolled into a town near the Texas border and staged an hour-long attack, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least 21.

The Coahuila state government said in a statement that lawmen aided by helicopters were still chasing remnants of the force that arrived in a convoy of pickup trucks and attacked the city hall of Villa Union on Saturday.

Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme said at least 14 people had died by that afternoon, four of them police officers. He also said then that several municipal workers were missing. It wasn’t clear if they had since been located.

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The reason for the military-style attack remained unclear Sunday. Cartels have been contending for control of smuggling routes in northern Mexico, but there was no immediate evidence that a rival cartel had been targeted in Villa Union.

The new statement did not give a new death total, but said seven more attackers were killed on Sunday in addition to at least seven who reportedly died the day before. Three other bodies had not been identified.

The governor said the armed group — at least some in military style garb — stormed the town of 3,000 residents in a convoy of trucks, attacking local government offices and prompting state and federal forces to intervene. Bullet-riddled trucks left abandoned in the streets were marked C.D.N. — Spanish initials of the Cartel of the Northeast gang.

Several of the gunmen stole vehicles as they fled and kidnapped locals to help guide them on dirt tracks out of town, the governor said. At least one of the stolen vehicles was a hearse headed for a funeral, according to the newspaper Zocalo of Saltillo.

The town is about 35 miles (60 kilometers) south-southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas, and 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the town of Allende — site of a 2011 massacre involving the Zetas cartel in which officials say 70 died.

Rapid gunfire could be heard in videos posted to social media along with frantic people telling friends to stay indoors. Images of the aftermath of the shootout showed burned out vehicles, while the facade of Villa Union’s city hall was riddled with bullets.

The governor said security forces would remain in the town for several days to restore a sense of calm.

Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the non-profit Crisis Group, which seeks to promote peace, said there are few incentives for armed groups in the country to refrain from violence.

“Solving this issue — which underpins impunity — would have to be the centerpiece of an integrated security strategy. But such a thing is yet to be presented by (President) López Obrador and his team,” said Ernst.

“The price of that absence is not least the flaring up of regional conflict scenarios.”

Mexico’s murder rate has increased to historically high levels, inching up by 2% in the first 10 months of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Federal officials said recently that there have been 29,414 homicides so far in 2019, compared to 28,869 in the same period of 2018.

The November slaughter by Mexican drug cartel gunmen of three women who held U.S. citizenship and six of their children focused world attention on the rising violence.

Saturday’s attack also showed cartels again resorting to quasi-military operations in a brazen challenge to state authority.

In October, a massive operation by the Sinaloa cartel prompted the federal government to release the captured son of a drug lord and pull back the army, which found itself outmaneuvered on the streets of Culiacan.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a radio interview last week that he plans to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, though he declined to say what actions might follow that designation.

Mexican officials have opposed such a designation, worried it could lead to unilaterial U.S. interventions in its territory.

Coahuila state itself has been far from the worst-hit part of Mexico amid violence in recent years. The government census bureau’s survey of public perceptions of security found that Coahuila ranked well this year, with only three other states having a higher public perception of safety.

Justices Take Up Gun Case, Though Disputed Law Has Changed

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court is turning to  for the first time in nearly a decade, even though those who brought the case, New York City gun owners, already have won changes to the regulation they challenged.

The justices’ persistence in hearing arguments Monday despite the city’s action has made gun control advocates fearful that the court’s conservative majority could use the case to call into question gun restrictions across the country.

Gun rights groups are hoping the high court is on the verge of extending its landmark rulings from 2008 and 2010 that enshrined the right to have a gun for self-defense at home.

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For years, the National Rifle Association and its allies had tried to get the court to say more about gun rights, even as mass shootings may have caused the justices to shy away from taking on new disputes over gun limits. Justice Clarence Thomas has been among members of the court who have complained that lower courts are treating the Second Amendment’s right to “keep and bear arms” as a second-class right.

The lawsuit in New York began as a challenge to the city’s prohibition on carrying a licensed, locked and unloaded handgun outside the city limits, either to a shooting range or a second home.

Lower courts upheld the regulation, but the Supreme Court’s decision in January to step into the case signaled a revived interest in gun rights from a court with two new justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both appointees of President Donald Trump.

Officials at both the city and state level scrambled to find a way to remove the case from the justices’ grasp. Not only did the city change its regulation to allow licensed gun owners to transport their weapons to locations outside New York’s five boroughs, but the state enacted a law barring cities from imposing the challenged restrictions.

“There is no case or controversy because New York City has repealed the ordinance and the New York state Legislature has acted to make sure it remains repealed,” said Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel and vice president of the gun control group Brady’s legal action project.

But those moves failed to get the court to dismiss the case, although the justices are likely to ask at arguments about whether there’s anything left for them to decide.

Paul Clement, who represents three New York residents and New York’s National Rifle Association affiliate challenging the transportation ban, said in an email that among the reasons the case remains alive legally is that the court frowns on tactical moves of the sort employed by the city and state that are meant to frustrate the justices’ review of an issue.

In addition, he wrote, that “the City still views firearm ownership as a privilege and not a fundamental right and is still in the business of limiting transport and denying licenses for a host of discretionary reasons.”

In the event the court reaches the substance of the law, the city does contend that what it calls its “former rule” did not violate the Constitution. But that would seem to be a tough sell given the court’s makeup, with Gorsuch and, in particular, Kavanaugh on the court.

Kavanaugh voted in dissent when his federal appeals court upheld the District of Columbia’s ban on semi-automatic rifles.

“Gun bans and gun regulations that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right,” Kavanaugh wrote in 2011.

Gun control advocates worry that the court could adopt Kavanaugh’s legal rationale, potentially putting at risk regulations about who can carry guns in public, limits on large-capacity ammunition magazines and perhaps even restrictions on gun ownership by convicted criminals, including people convicted of domestic violence.

“This approach to the Second Amendment would treat gun rights as an absolute right, frozen in history, and not subject to any restrictions as public safety demands,” said Hannah Shearer, litigation director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Reflecting the possible high stakes, more than three dozen supporting legal briefs have been filed. The Trump administration, 25 mainly Republican states and 120 members of the House of Representatives are on the side of the gun owners.

A dozen Democratic-led states and 139 House lawmakers back the city. In addition, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a vocal court critic, filed a brief joined by four Senate Democratic colleagues that asked the justices to dismiss the case and resist being drawn into what he called a political project.

Whitehouse also included a warning to the justices. “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics,’ ” he wrote, quoting a public opinion poll showing support for such changes.

All 53 Republican senators responded with a letter urging the court not to be cowed by the Democrats’ threats.

A decision is expected by late June.

House Panel to Vote on Ukraine Report as Trump Mulls Defense

WASHINGTON—The House impeachment inquiry enters a pivotal stage this week, with investigators planning a vote Tuesday to approve their report making the case for President Donald Trump’s removal from office as he decides whether to mount a defense before a likely Senate trial.

A draft report will be available for members of the House Intelligence Committee to view in a secure location before their planned vote on Tuesday, which would send their findings to the House Judiciary Committee to consider actual charges.

Majority Democrats say the report will speak for itself in laying out possible charges of bribery or “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment. Republicans want Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, to testify, though they have no power to compel him to do so, as they try to cast the Democratic-led inquiry as skewed against the Republican president.

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“If he chooses not to (testify), then I really question his veracity in what he’s putting in his report,” said Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“It’s easy to hide behind a report,” Collins added. “But it’s going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.”

Coming after two weeks of public testimony, the findings of the House Intelligence Committee report are not yet publicly known. But the report is expected to mostly focus on whether Trump abused his office by withholding military aid approved by Congress as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations into Trump’s political rivals.

Democrats also are expected to include an article on obstruction of Congress that outlines Trump’s instructions to officials in his administration to defy subpoenas for documents or testimony.

Democrats are aiming for a final House vote by Christmas, which would set the stage for a likely Senate trial in January.

“I do believe that all evidence certainly will be included in that report so the Judiciary Committee can make the necessary decisions that they need to,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

She said Democrats had not yet finalized witnesses for the upcoming Judiciary hearings and were waiting to hear back from Trump on his plans to present a defense.

“If he has not done anything wrong, we’re certainly anxious to hear his explanation of that,” Demings said.

The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing is Wednesday. It’s expected to feature four legal experts who will examine questions of constitutional grounds as the committee decides whether to write articles of impeachment against Trump, and if so, what those articles will be.

After weeks of deriding the process as a sham, Trump has yet to say whether he or his attorneys will participate in the Judiciary hearings.

“The Democrats are holding the most ridiculous Impeachment hearings in history. Read the Transcripts, NOTHING was done or said wrong!” Trump tweeted Saturday, before falling silent on Twitter for much of Sunday.

It’s unlikely that the president himself would attend on Wednesday, as Trump is scheduled to be at a summit with NATO allies outside London. The Judiciary Committee gave the White House until Sunday evening to decide whether Trump or his attorneys would attend.

Trump must then decide by Friday whether he would take advantage of due process protections afforded to him under House rules adopted in October for follow-up hearings, including the right to request witness testimony and to cross-examine the witnesses called by the House.

“Why would they want to participate in just another rerun?” asked Collins, noting that the Judiciary Committee previously heard from constitutional scholars on impeachable offenses during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“This is a complete American waste of time of here,” Collins said, who is calling on the committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to expand the witness list to include those sought by Republicans. “This is why this is a problematic exercise and simply a major TV event coming on Wednesday.”

Still, Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California, a Judiciary Committee member, said he believes Trump would benefit if he presents his own defense.

“I think it would be to the president’s advantage to have his attorneys there. That’s his right,” he said.

McClintock said he doesn’t believe Trump did anything wrong in the July 25 call with Zelenskiy that is at the heart of the investigation.

“He didn’t use the delicate language of diplomacy in that conversation, that’s true. He also doesn’t use the smarmy talk of politicians,” McClintock said.

To McClintock, Trump was using “the blunt talk of a Manhattan businessman’’ and “was entirely within his constitutional authority’’ in his dealings with Ukraine’s leader.

Collins appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and Demings and McClintock were on ABC’s “This Week.”

Earth Nears Irreversible Tipping Points

On the eve of a global climate summit in Madrid, seven distinguished climate scientists have issued an urgent warning of approaching planetary tipping points: within a few years, they say, humankind could enter a state of potentially catastrophic climate change on a new “hothouse” Earth.

They warn that dramatic changes to planetary stability may already be happening in nine vulnerable ecosystems. As these changes happen, they could reinforce each other and at the same time amplify planetary temperature rise, commit the oceans to inexorable sea level rise of around 10 metres, and threaten the existence of human civilisations.

Their warning is issued in a commentary in the journal Nature. Their conclusions are not – and perhaps cannot be – confirmed by direct evidence or the consensus of other scientists. They present an opinion, not a set of facts that can be scrutinised and challenged or endorsed by their peers.

And the seven researchers recognise that although such changes are happening at speed, some of the consequences of those changes will follow more slowly. Their point is that the risks of irreversible change are too great not to act – and to act now.

Happening now

But the fact that they have chosen to issue such an alarm at all is a measure of the concern raised by the rapid retreat of the Arctic ice, the steady loss of the Greenland ice cap, the damage to the boreal forests, the thaw of the polar permafrost, the slowing of a great ocean current, the loss of tropical corals and the collapse of ice sheets in East and West Antarctica.

Each of these happenings – and many more – was identified more than a decade ago as a potential “tipping point”: an irreversible change that would amplify global heating and trigger a cascade of other climate changes.

“Now we see evidence that over half of them have been activated,” said Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. “The growing threat of rapid, irreversible changes means it is no longer responsible to wait and see.”

The idea of a climate tipping point – a threshold beyond which dramatic climate change would be irreversible – is an old one. Two decades ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change examined the idea and proposed that, were the planet to warm by 5°C above the long-term average for most of human history, then it could tip into a new climate regime.

But in the last few decades, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have gone from around 280 parts per million to more than 400 ppm, and global average temperatures have risen by more than 1°C. And the rate of change, driven by profligate use of fossil fuels that deposit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, has been alarming.

“It is not only human pressures on Earth that continue rising to unprecedented levels. It is also that, as science advances, we must admit that we have underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the planet self-amplifies global warming. This is what we are seeing already at 1°C global warming,” said Johan Rockström, who directs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and who is another signatory.

“Scientifically, this provides strong evidence for declaring a state of planetary emergency, to unleash world action that accelerates the path towards a world that can continue evolving on a stable planet.”

Inadequate pledges

In 2015, at a climate summit in Paris, 195 nations promised to contain planetary heating to “well below” 2°C, and ideally to 1.5°C, by 2100. But the Nature signatories point at that even if the pledges those nations made are implemented – a “big if”, they warn – then they will ensure only that the world is committed to at least 3°C warming.

The scientists believe there is still time to act – but their dangerous tipping points are now dangerously close.

The arguments go like this. In West Antarctica, ice may already be retreating beyond the “grounding line” where ice, ocean and bedrock meet. If so, then the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse, and sea levels could rise by three metres.

New evidence suggests the East Antarctic ice sheet could be similarly unstable, and precipitate further sea level rise of up to four metres. Hundreds of millions are already at risk from coastal flooding.

Timescale controlled

The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate, and once past a critical threshold could lose enough water to raise sea levels by seven metres. Even a 1.5°C warming might condemn Greenland to irreversible melting – and on present form the world could warm by 1.5°C by 2030.

“Thus we might have already committed future generations to living with sea level rises of around 10m over thousands of years. But the timescale is still under our control,” the authors warn.

They also warn that a “staggering 99% of tropical corals” could be lost if the planet heats by even 2°C – at a profound cost to both marine sea life and human economies.

They say 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost since 1970: a loss of somewhere between 20% and 40% could tip the entire rainforest into a destabilised state, increasingly at risk from drought and fire.

Risks multiply

In the boreal forests of northern Asia, Europe and Canada, insect outbreaks, fire and dieback could turn some regions into sources of more carbon, rather than sinks that soak up the extra carbon dioxide.

Permafrost thaw could release ever-greater volumes of stored methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent, over a century, than carbon dioxide, and so on. The dangers multiply, and each one amplifies planetary heating.

“If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilisation,” the authors warn.

“The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action – not just words – must reflect this.”

European Protesters Demand Amazon Stop Treating Workers Like Robots

Labor rights activists and climate campaigners across Europe used the occasion of Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to call attention to and protest Amazon’s “appalling” working conditions, paltry benefits, and destructive environmental practices.

“Workers are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious, and being taken away in ambulances,” said Mick Rix, national officer with the GMB Union, which organized demonstrations at Amazon warehouses across the United Kingdom on Friday.

“Amazon has spent a fortune on fluffy adverts saying what a great place it is to work,” Rix added. “Why not spend the money making their warehouses less dangerous places to work? Amazon workers want Jeff Bezos to know they are people—not robots.”

GMB said Amazon employees at locations throughout the U.K. have reported being denied restroom breaks, penalized for taking sick days, and forced to work at a dangerous pace to meet the retail behemoth’s productivity goals.

“GMB members report targets being so horrific they have to use plastic bottles to urinate in instead of going to the toilet, and pregnant women have been forced to stand for hours on end,” the union said in a statement.

Time for Amazon to listen and start treating workers like humans – not robots.#BlackFriday #BlackFriday2019https://t.co/91xX30zA2u

— GMB UNION (@GMB_union) November 29, 2019

GMB organising at Amazon in Sheffield this morning. Hundreds of drivers taking leaflets and joining the union ⁦@GMB_union⁩ ⁦@GMBCampaigns⁩ ⁦@RixyieOrganiser⁩ ⁦@leeparkinson14⁩ pic.twitter.com/sEGyvMFfmk

— Sue Wood (@SueWood09373512) November 29, 2019

To mark #BlackFriday, we’ve been protesting outside Amazon sites across the country to highlight the appalling conditions workers face.

Time for Amazon to listen. And start treating workers like humans – not robots.#BlackFriday2019 pic.twitter.com/Fe65XMQ76s

— GMB UNION (@GMB_union) November 29, 2019

In France, demonstrators held sit-ins at Amazon’s Clichy headquarters to condemn the retail giant’s contributions to the climate crisis.

“We criticize Amazon for having a destructive policy for the planet, for social conditions, and Black Friday allows this company to achieve exponential revenue,” said activist Sandy Olivar Calvo.

While shoppers in the U.S. line up to take advantage of Black Friday discounts, activists in France have staged sit-ins outside Amazon’s French headquarters to denounce the occasion imported from America https://t.co/bllNZmHRbj

— Bloomberg (@business) November 29, 2019

At an Amazon distribution center near Lyon, France, police assaulted and forcibly removed demonstrators who staged a sit-in to condemn the corporation’s climate practices

WATCH: French police forcibly remove “Block Friday” protesters at a sit-in against consumerism near an Amazon distribution center in Lyon #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/irKO1i8Y0b

— Bloomberg TicToc (@TicToc) November 29, 2019

Impeachment’s Influence Hazy as Issue in Congressional Races

WASHINGTON—Republicans aim to use the House drive toward impeaching President Donald Trump to whittle down Democrats’ majority by dislodging vulnerable incumbents from swing districts loaded with moderate voters.

It could work, especially in Democratic-held districts Trump carried in 2016 with throngs of independent voters who polls shows are closely divided over his removal. Or it could flop, in an era when news zooms by so swiftly that today’s concerns may be eclipsed in 11 months and many people are more focused on pocketbook issues such as health care costs.

“It will be part of the mosaic, but hardly the overriding issue,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres predicted about impeachment’s impact next November. “It will have faded by then and it will also have simply reinforced the preexisting attitudes and made them more intense.”

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Now Is Not the Time for Democrats to Waver



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What’s clear is that for now, Republicans are wielding impeachment mostly as an offensive weapon and Democrats are generally playing defense or changing the subject as 2020 congressional races rev up. House Democrats will be defending their 233-197 majority, with four vacancies. Republicans will try preserving their 53-47 Senate control.

Since late September, Republicans and their allies have spent $8 million on impeachment-related TV ads aimed at House members, according to Advertising Analytics, a nonpartisan firm that examines political spending. That’s triple the sum spent by Democrats and their supporters.

The American Action Network, closely aligned with House GOP leaders, has produced TV and digital ads attacking 30 Democrats, mostly freshmen. Spots also “thank” seven Republicans for opposing impeachment, a tactic often used to pressure lawmakers to stand firm.

In one, the announcer accuses Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., of abandoning health care and other issues to back impeachment and says, “Tell Congressman Cunningham, ‘Let the voters decide elections.’ ” The announcer speaks amid images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who’s led the impeachment inquiry.

GOP groups regularly blast impeachment-themed fundraising emails. Relatively obscure Republicans such as Rep. Elise Stefanik of upstate New York have reaped campaign contribution bonanzas by taking high-profile roles defending Trump.

“This process they’re embarking on is going to cost them their majority next fall,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who heads his party’s House campaign committee. He said Democrats have “an obsession” with impeachment, adding, “It’s just getting worse for them.”

While Democrats are favored to retain House control, the early blitz of GOP attacks has prompted them to protect their targeted members.

House Majority Forward, an outside group tied to top House Democrats, has spent nearly $2 million defending 14 Democratic incumbents. All but three are freshmen from Trump-won districts.

“Forget the noise. Haley Stevens is focused on Michigan,” said an ad citing the first-term Michigan Democrat.

Pro-impeachment groups have run ads attacking GOP lawmakers for supporting Trump. That included liberal groups MoveOn and Need to Impeach, which put billboard trucks in eight House Republicans’ districts from Nevada to New York that carried signs saying, “Defend democracy. Impeach Trump.”

Stefanik’s step into the spotlight has had decidedly mixed results. Her little-known Democratic opponent, Tedra Cobb, announced she had raised more than $1 million soon after Stefanik stepped into the impeachment spotlight. Cobb has been bolstered by celebrities such as “Star Wars’’ actor Mark Hamill, who urged his 3.4 million Twitter followers to back Cobb and help Stefanik “spend more time being a #TrumpToady on Fox ‘News.’”

Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who leads House Democrats’ campaign committee, said Emmer is “precisely wrong” about her party.

“When we are not out in Washington, we are home, in our districts and we are listening to people every day, and we are hyper-focused on local issues,” she said.

After an initial uptick in support for ousting Trump over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to seek dirt on his Democratic political rivals, voters’ views have jelled.

About 9 in 10 Democrats support removing Trump and similar shares of Republicans back him, while independents are roughly evenly divided. Trump seems certain to be impeached, or found worthy of removal, by the Democratic-led House but likely acquitted by the GOP-majority Senate and kept in office.

Last fall’s elections left Democrats in control of 31 seats in districts Trump carried in 2016. GOP lawmakers hold just three seats in districts Democrat Hillary Clinton won. Democrats also outnumber Republicans 62-30 among freshmen, who are often more vulnerable targets.

Many competitive Democratic seats are in suburbs, where centrist voters have abandoned the GOP in recent elections over Trump’s coarse behavior and conservative policies. Republicans will have to guard against impeachment accelerating those defections, while Democrats must watch for signs suburban voters think they’re overreacting.

For moderate Democrats, “the smart response is to keep doing their job, be in the district, meet with constituents, listen to what they’re saying,” said centrist Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., a leader of Democrats’ efforts to defend endangered incumbents.

Democratic pollster John Anzalone said his party’s candidates should focus on issues that helped clinch their 2018 House takeover.

“I will take any day being able talk about health care and education and the environment and wages if they’re talking about impeachment,” Anzalone said.

The reverse dynamic is true in the Senate, where perhaps two Democrats and five Republicans face competitive reelections. Those in the trickiest spots on impeachment include Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of staunchly pro-Trump Alabama and GOP Sen. Cory Gardner in Democratic-leaning Colorado.

GOP pollster Glen Bolger said while it was unpredictable how powerful a factor impeachment will be in 2020, swing state Republican senators have little choice from a purely political standpoint.

“You can’t vote for removal,” Bolger said. “You’ll have just totally collapsed your base, your ability to raise money, to get volunteers.”

Focus on Early Release of Terror Convict in London Stabbings

LONDON—Usman Khan was convicted on terrorism charges but let out of prison early. He attended a “Learning Together” conference for ex-offenders, and used the event to launch a bloody attack, stabbing two people to death and wounding three others.

Police shot him dead after he flashed what seemed to be a suicide vest. Khan is gone, but the questions remain: Why was he let out early? Did authorities believe he no longer believed in radical Islam? Why didn’t the conditions imposed on his release prevent the carnage?

Britons looked for answers Saturday as national politicians sought to pin the blame elsewhere for what was obviously a breakdown in the security system, which had kept London largely free of terror for more than two years.

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Police said Khan was convicted in 2012 of terrorism offenses and released in December 2018 “on license,” which means he had to meet certain conditions or face recall to prison. Several British media outlets reported that he was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that allowed police to track his movements at the time of the attack.

Authorities seemed quick to blame “the system” rather than any one component.

The Parole Board said it had played no role in Khan’s early release. It said the convict “appears to have been released automatically on license (as required by law), without ever being referred to the board.”

Neil Basu, the Metropolitan Police counterterrorism police, said Saturday afternoon that the conditions of Khan’s release had been complied with. He didn’t spell out what those conditions were or why they failed to prevent him from killing two people.

The automatic release program apparently means no agency was given the task of determining if Khan still believed in radical views he had embraced when he was first imprisoned for plotting to attack a number of sites and individuals in London.

It is not yet known whether he took part in any of the “de-radicalization” programs used by British authorities to try and reform known jihadis.

The former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, Chris Phillips, said it is unreasonable to ask police and security services to keep the country safe while at the same time letting people out of prison when they are still a threat.

“We’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalized jihadi criminals walk about our streets,” he said.

Khan had been convicted as part of an al-Qaida linked group that was accused of plotting to target major sites including Parliament, the U.S. Embassy and individuals including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and two rabbis.

Khan admitted to a lesser charge of engaging in conduct for the preparation of acts of terrorism. He had been secretly taped plotting attacks and talking about martyrdom as a possibility.

Khan and his accomplices had links to radical preacher Anjem Choudar, one of the highest-profile faces of radical Islam in Britain. A mobile phone seized at the time contained material related to a banned group that Choudary founded. The preacher was released from prison in 2018 but is under heavy surveillance and a curfew.

Several people who attended Choudary’s rallies when he was under no controls have been convicted of attacks, including the two al-Qaida-inspired killers who ran over British soldier Lee Rigby and stabbed him to death in 2013.

The two chief contenders in the Dec. 12 election — Johnson and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn — condemned the system Saturday.

Johnson, who visited the scene Saturday, said he had “long argued” that it was a “mistake to allow serious and violent criminals to come out of prison early.” He said the criminal justice system “simply isn’t working.”

Corbyn said it is not clear if the Probation Office was involved at all and questioned whether the Parole Board should have been given a role.

“We have to ensure that the public are safe,” he said. “That means supervision of prisoners in prison but it also means supervision of ex-prisoners when they are released ahead of the completion of their sentence, to have tough supervision of them to make sure this kind of danger is not played out on the public in the future.”

He stopped short of blaming Johnson, who was not in office when Khan was set free.

Police said 28-year-old Khan was attending a program that works to educate prisoners when he launched Friday’s attack just yards from the site of a deadly 2017 van and knife rampage.

Basu, the top counterterrorism police office, said the suspect appeared to be wearing a bomb vest but it turned out to be “a hoax explosive device.” He said police believe Khan was acting alone.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Khan was one of its fighters. The group’s statement, however, didn’t provide any evidence.

One of the victims was named in British media reports as Jack Merritt, a graduate of Cambridge University who was helping organize the conference where the attack began. His father David Merritt tweeted that his son had been killed and had a “beautiful spirit.”

Basu said he could not name the victims until they had been formally identified by the coroner. He asked the public for help with video, photos and information about the attack.

Health officials said two of the wounded were stable and the third had less serious injuries. A victim who had been in critical condition has improved and is now listed as stable, officials said.

Police on Saturday were searching an apartment block in Stafford, 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of London, for clues. Khan was believed to have lived in the area after his release from prison. Police also conducted searches in Stoke-on-Trent.

Learning Together, a Cambridge University-backed prison education program, was holding a conference at the hall when the attack started.

Footage from the attack showed several passers-by — including one armed with a narwhal tusk apparently taken from the hall and another with a fire extinguisher — fighting with the suspect before police arrived.

Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement that she and her husband, Prince Philip, were sending their thoughts to everyone affected by the “terrible violence.” She thanked police and emergency services “as well as the brave individuals who put their own lives at risk to selflessly help and protect others.”

Security officials earlier this month had downgraded Britain’s terrorism threat level from “severe” to “substantial,” which means an attack is seen as “likely” rather than “highly likely.” The assessment was made by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, an independent expert body that evaluates intelligence, terrorist capability and intentions.

It was based in part on a judgment that the threat of extremists returning from Syria to launch attacks in Britain had been slightly reduced.

___

Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.