From E. Messily: West Virginia state police face damning claims: 'The more we dug, the worse it stunk'. It's really brutal and gross.

It reminds me of the recent Minneapolis report, and surely most police departments need a thorough investigation to uncover whatever's there.

On the topic of the Minneapolis report, there's this Radley Balko column in the NYT (gifted link) which mostly says, "There's some anecdotal evidence to push back on the idea that cops quitting is automatically going to mean that crime goes up."

I just want to excerpt this one bit:

Golden Valley is a suburb of about 22,000 that in many ways is as idyllic as its name suggests. The median annual household income tops $100,000, there's very little crime, and 15 percent of the town is devoted to parks and green spaces, including Theodore Wirth Park on its eastern border, a lush space that hosts a bike path and a parkway.

But the town's Elysian charm comes with a dark past. Just on the other side of the park lies the neighborhood of Willard-Hay. There, the median household income drops to about $55,000 per year, and there's quite a bit more crime. Willard-Hay is 26 percent white and 40 percent Black. Golden Valley is 85 percent white and 5 percent Black -- the result of pervasive racial covenants.

"We enjoy prosperity and security in this community," said Shep Harris, the mayor since 2012. "But that has come at a cost. I think it took incidents like the murder of George Floyd to help us see that more clearly." The residents of the strongly left-leaning town decided change was necessary. One step was eliminating those racial covenants. Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.

WAIT. There are still racial covenants?!? This century?

Mossy Character writes: Wiki:

The San Rafael Falls (Spanish: La Cascada San Rafael) were, until 2 February 2020, the tallest falls in Ecuador. The 130-metre (430 ft) falls were located on the Coca River in Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve until a collapse of the river bed upstream of the falls diverted the river underneath the band of hard rock that had originally formed the lip of the waterfall,[2] connecting to a cave below and creating a new natural bridge, possibly surpassing Xianren Bridge as the longest in the world.[3] The natural bridge subsequently collapsed in February 2021.[4] The falls were a significant tourist attraction with a recorded 30,000 visitors during 2019.[5] There has been discussion as to whether the riverbed collapse and subsequent disappearance of the falls is connected with the operation of the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam some 20 km upstream.

The waterfall collapsed in February 2020, initiating a process of regressive erosion that has increased along the path of the river constantly. The resultant slope failures, due to the adjustment of the valley to river deepening has caused the collapse of one of the main pipelines that carries oil from the main oil fields (Amazon basin) to the coast, and of highway E35, one of the main north-south roads. Additionally, the largest hydroelectric plant in Ecuador, the Coca-Codo Sinclair dam, is located upstream of the waterfall collapse in the path of the regressive erosion. These impacts have directly affected around 25000 people. The estimated economic losses are 4 million dollars/day, and if the Coca-Codo Sinclair dam is affected, this would represent a loss of 1.6 billion dollars (1.62% of Ecuador's GDP).

Heebie's take: wow.

Sorry for the untimeliness!

I'm in upstate NY for the first time. It's very pretty!