Crime

Family of latest DR victim fears ‘wrongful death’

DEFENDER NEWS NETWORK — Loved ones of the latest American tourist to be found dead in the Dominican Republic were demanding answers for what could be a “wrongful death.” A recent string of suspicious incidents have left dozens of people violently ill and caused nearly 10 lives to be lost on the Caribbean island nation in recent months.

Published

6 years ago

June 29, 2019

Oakland Post

By Defender News Service

Loved ones of the latest American tourist to be found dead in the Dominican Republic were demanding answers for what could be a “wrongful death.” A recent string of suspicious incidents have left dozens of people violently ill and caused nearly 10 lives to be lost on the Caribbean island nation in recent months.

Joseph (Joe) Allen III’s death last week came after he had recently gotten a clean bill of health from his doctor, Allen’s brother wrote in a letter on Monday. That fact only added to the mystery that caused the 55-year-old New Jersey man to die, a close friend told NewsOne.

“There’s something strange going on that needs to be investigated,” Tabari Sturdivant said in a phone conversation Tuesday morning.

Sturdivant, a 45-year-old filmmaker who lives in Atlanta and was not on the trip, said he was notified of Allen’s death from friends. He said he was sad for his friend’s family and was now unsure about his own pending travel plans to the Dominican Republic, where Allen reportedly regularly visited.

“I don’t believe in any conspiracy theories but there have got to be some answers,” he said. “We just need answers.”

Sturdivant’s concerns mirrored those of Allen’s brother, who told NewsOne in an email that he and his family “are afraid that my brother was a victim of a wrongful death.”

Allen arrived on June 9 to celebrate a friend’s birthday while staying at a hotel in Sosúa, a coastal town known for its beaches. He told friends he wasn’t feeling well Wednesday night and ended up staying in his room Wednesday night, His brother, Joe Allen, said. After his friends couldn’t reach him the following morning, the hotel opened his room door to find Allen dead.

“The maid opened the door, screamed, slammed the door,” Jason told NBC New York. “My brother is on the floor dead between his room and the bathroom.”

Jason went on to express his frustration with not being able to get many answers from Dominican and American authorities. Aside from not being able “to get anyone in the US Embassy to help us out,” Jason also said that Dominican laws were complicating Joe’s timely return to the United States.

“I was informed on Thursday that DR law mandates that all person from another country who die on Dominican soil must be autopsied immediately after his/her death,” Jason wrote in an email.

Joe’s son, Amir, traveled to the Dominican Republic on the day his father was found dead, Jason said. The two were supposed to be celebrating Father’s Day together. Instead, Amir was “pressured to sign a document authorizing my brother’s body to be embalmed in the Dominican Republic,” Jason wrote, adding that “Joe’s body would not be allowed to travel back to the States without undergoing the embalming process.”

Sturdivant said the cost to transport the remains from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. could be tens of thousands of dollars.

Allen’s family has “concerns about the Dominican government agencies involved and their willingness and/or capacity to investigate this situation properly,” Jason said in his email.

He was the ninth American tourist to die in the Dominican Republic in the past year and the eighth in recent months. Of those nine deaths, his was at least the fifth one for a Black person. Dozens of other tourists on vacation have reported becoming violently ill on their own trips. Coupled with separate reports of violence, including the attempted murder of Major League baseball legend David Ortiz, there seemed to be a bona fide crisis in the Dominican Republic — it just was unclear what to attribute it to.

Nearly all of the people who have suffered illnesses or died — many have called them victims — reportedly drank from the minibars where they stayed, which at first were mostly at hotels and resorts along the country’s east coast. In many of the cases, the common denominator seemed to be the Grand Bahia Principe resort in La Romana. But Allen’s death seemed to be the first that was reported to have happened in the northern part of the country.

Jason said he was at peace with that fact that his brother died, no matter how suddenly it was. However, it was the absence of answers that he couldn’t ignore, he told NBC New York.

“We want some closure to figure out what’s going on and why this is happening. And we don’t want anyone to feel how we’re feeling right now,” he said. “I don’t know who to blame. I’d rather not guess because you will drive yourself crazy with that but I do think something is off and I think it needs to be investigated no matter how much money or how much time it is.”

This article originally appeared in the Defender News Network.

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Bo Tefu

California Assembly Passes Bill to Strengthen Penalties for Soliciting Minors

The revised version of Assembly Bill 379, authored by Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), now allows prosecutors to file felony charges against adults who solicit sex from a 16 or 17-year-old, provided the accused is three or more years older than the minor. If the offender is within three years of the minor, the charge would remain a misdemeanor.

Published

3 days ago

May 19, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

The California State Assembly has agreed to amend a controversial bill that would increase penalties for adults who solicit sex from minors ages 16 or 17, following a wave of criticism from Republicans and concerns raised by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“From a prosecutor’s standpoint, this bill strengthens California law and gives us the felony hammer to prosecute the creeps that are preying on teenagers,” Krell said in a statement supporting the amended bill.

The new amendments also include provisions for a state grant program aimed at improving the prosecution of human trafficking and sex trafficking cases, as well as a support fund for survivors partially funded by increased fines on businesses that enable or fail to address human trafficking.

The bill faced significant opposition last week after the Assembly removed a provision that would have treated solicitation of 16 and 17-year-olds as a felony for all offenders.

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Activism

BOOK REVIEW: The Afterlife of Malcolm X

Betty Shabazz didn’t like to go to her husband’s speeches, but on that February night in 1965, he asked her to come with their daughters to the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Did Malcolm X sense that something bad would happen on that night? Surely. He was fully aware of the possibility, knowing that he’d been “a marked man” for months because of his very public break with the Nation of Islam.

Published

4 days ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Book Cover of the Afterlife of Malcolm X. Courtesy of Simon & Schuster.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: by Mark Whitaker, c.2025, Simon & Schuster, $30.99, 448 pages

Who will remember you in fifty years’ time?

A handful of friends – at least those who are still around – might recall you. Your offspring, grandkids, and greats, maybe people who stumble upon your tombstone. Think about it: who will remember you in 2075? And then read “The Afterlife of Malcolm X” by Mark Whitaker and learn about a legacy that still resonates a half-century later.

As the news of his murder spread around New York and around the world, his followers and admirers reacted in many ways. His friend, journalist Peter Goldman, was “hardly shocked” because he also knew that Malcolm’s life was in danger, but the arrest of three men accused of the crime didn’t add up. It ultimately became Goldman’s “obsession.”

Malcolm’s co-writer for The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley, quietly finished the book he started with Malcolm, and a small upstart publishing house snatched it up. A diverse group of magazines got in line to run articles about Malcolm X’s life, finally sensing that White America “’needed his voice even more than Blacks did.’”

But though Malcolm X was gone, he continued to leave an impact.

He didn’t live long enough to see the official founding of the Black Panther Party, but he was influential on its beginning. He never knew of the first Kwanzaa, or the triumphs of a convert named Muhammad Ali.

Malcolm left his mark on music. He influenced at least three major athletes.

He was a “touchstone” for a president …

While it’s true that “The Afterlife of Malcolm X” is an eye-opening book, one that works as a great companion to the autobiography, it’s also a fact that it’s somewhat scattered. Is it a look at Malcolm’s life, his legacy, or is it a “murder mystery”?

Turns out, it’s all three, but the storylines are not smooth. There are twists and tangents and that may take some getting used-to. Just when you’re immersed, even absorbed in this book, to the point where you forget about your surroundings, author Mark Whitaker abruptly moves to a different part of the story. It may be jarring.

And yet, it’s a big part of this book, and it’s essential for readers to know the investigation’s outcome and what we know today. It doesn’t change Malcolm X’s legacy, but it adds another frame around it.

If you’ve read the autobiography, if you haven’t thought about Malcolm X in a while, or if you think you know all there is to know, then you owe it to yourself to find “The Afterlife of Malcolm X.”

For you, this is a book you won’t easily forget.

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Bay Area

Grand Jury: Richmond Police Short-staffed Amid Budget Cuts, Council Inaction

In recent years, RPD was described as severely understaffed in two independent reports, one by Raftelis Financial Consulting (2024) and another by Matrix Consulting Group (2023). Raftelis recommended the hiring of 27 more officers and Matrix recommended hiring 30. Despite these findings, “neither report has been fully discussed by the City Council in a public meeting,” the Grand Jury report notes.

Published

4 days ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

RPD headquarters. Courtesy image.

The Richmond Standard

A newly released Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report raised concerns about public safety in Richmond caused by an understaffed police department.

The Grand Jury ultimately recommended that the Richmond City Council reverse its actions to defund the Richmond Police Department, which remains below the approved level of 146 sworn officers with a current vacancy of 23 officers, according to the report.

In 2014, when the RPD under Chief Chris Magnus gained national recognition for implementing a community policing model that drove down crime, the department boasted 196 sworn officers.

Meanwhile, crime is on the rise. While homicides were down from 18 in 2021 to 11 in 2024, violent crimes overall jumped 22.6% in that time. Robbery and aggravated assault both increased by nearly 20%, with sexual assaults up 21%, according to the grand jury report’s findings.

Those numbers are likely higher since RPD’s limited staffing means police are unable to respond to all calls for service, according to RPD authorities.

The Grand Jury report noted a pivotal moment for the police department occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

Jumping aboard a national trend to defund police, the City Council, led by the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), reallocated $3 million away from the RPD budget, leading to downsizing or elimination of RPD’s specialized investigative units.

The funds were redirected to support the YouthWORKS Program, unhoused services, the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS), and a new alternative non-police community response team.

The latter strategy, known as the Community Crisis Response Program (CCRP), aims to reduce the number of calls to dispatch that require a law enforcement response. But the program has yet to be fully implemented and is being challenged by the RPD’s union, which takes issue with CCRP employees becoming members of SEIU Local 1021, a separate city union that routinely helps to elect RPA members to the City Council.

The Grand Jury recommends that the city use a portion of the $550 million Chevron settlement funds to hire and retain more officers. The City Council recently expressed interest in using those funds to address the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. To read the full, 10-page Grand Jury report, go to https://www.cc-courts.org/civil/docs/grandjury/2024-2025/2503/2503-DiminishingFundsandFewerOfficers.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawKR1AVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFxeW1vUTFXNWNWazZCZmxIAR6FJYmFEfK098FXFhC4lvSCMSbHr5aEVno_sZqukzhZKI9iEvsu8kr_KoKX6g_aem_Xp15VG4_irpJqDWBcAI7-g