Coroner’s inquest into 2016 death of Ottawa man hears from ex-cop involved in arrest

NEW YORK (AP) — In 2022, New York City’s jails commissioner, Louis Molina, issued a dire warning to local lawmakers: fentanyl was pouring into Rikers Island through the mail, he said, spurring an overdose crisis among the jail’s detainees and putting guards at risk.

As evidence of the insidious threat, Molina passed around a child’s drawing of a reindeer, one of hundreds of seized items he said had been “literally soaked in the drug and mailed to people in custody.”

But that claim was based on faulty drug-testing kits with a stunning 85% false positive rate, according to a report released Wednesday by the city’s Department of Investigation. The report found the city vastly overstated the prevalence of fentanyl sent by mail to detainees.

When investigators retested 71 pieces of mail initially flagged by field tests as containing fentanyl, only 10 actually showed traces of the drug. The drawing of a reindeer highlighted by Molina was fentanyl-free.

Field tests indicating an influx of fentanyl-laced mail to Rikers Island fueled a yearslong campaign by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to bar people in city custody from receiving physical mail.

As a replacement, city officials proposed redirecting mail to an offsite vendor, who would then upload it digitally for the incarcerated person to read on a tablet — a practice used in other correctional systems, including New York’s state prisons. So far, the proposal has been blocked by a jail oversight board.

Jocelyn Strauber, the commissioner of the Department of Investigation, said the city should reassess its ongoing effort to bar detainees from receiving mail, given the report’s findings.

“The field tests don’t support a concern that a high rate of fentanyl-laced objects are coming in from the mail,” she told The Associated Press. “To the extent policy determinations are based on flawed data, they ought to be reconsidered.”

Detainee advocates have long contended that drugs primarily enter the jail system via employees, who can easily smuggle them inside and sell them to gang leaders. In recent years, dozens of correction officers have been charged in multiple investigations of smuggling rings on Rikers Island.

In its report, the Department of Investigation said corrections officials had failed to implement many of the department’s previous recommendations aimed at screening staff for contraband.

In an email statement, a Department of Correction spokesperson said the agency would review the report and continue refining its testing processes. “Field tests are a tool used to quickly assess potential threats, and while not perfect, they play an important role in our safety protocols,” the statement said.

Such field tests have gained popularity in recent years alongside a spike in opioid overdose deaths nationwide, allowing law enforcement officials to bypass the lengthy lab process to determine if a substance contains narcotics.

But experts have long raised questions about the strips’ effectiveness. Under federal regulations, manufacturers are required to include language on their packaging indicating that results are preliminary until confirmed by a lab — something that rarely happens in correctional settings.

Last November, New York’s state prison system was found to have wrongly punished more than 2,000 detainees due to false positives from drug tests manufactured by Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories.

For years, the test strips used on Rikers Island, the city-run jail system, were also provided by Sirchie. But after complaints about the reliability of the tests, the Department of Correction switched to kits made by DetectaChem last April.

The review by the Department of Investigation found DetectaChem’s test strips had a false positive rate of 79%, while Sirchie’s were wrong 91% of the time.

Inquiries to Sirchie were not returned.

Travis Kisner, the chief operating officer of DetectaChem, said the company was still reviewing the report, but added: “We stand behind our product.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

CALGARY – Officials at the Calgary zoo say a young gorilla was killed after a worker accidentally closed a wrong door and the animal was struck in the head. 

Eyare, a two-year-old female western lowland gorilla, was injured Nov. 13 at the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo while being moved to a different area in the facility. 

Colleen Baird, the zoo’s director of animal care, health and welfare, says an investigation determined a staffer intended to activate a door to separate the gorilla from other members of the troop.

“A member of her care team … mistakenly activated the wrong door, resulting in Eyare being struck by the door and sustaining traumatic head injuries,” Baird told reporters at a news conference Wednesday.

Despite life-saving efforts from zoo and veterinary staff, the gorilla died.

The troop of critically endangered gorillas also included a silverback male, a young male and four adult females. They can weigh between 68 and 181 kilograms. 

Eyare was born at the zoo in April 2022, the first offspring for dam Dossi and sire Jasiri.

She was injured in the back-of-house area, where staff train gorillas, feed them, and provide ultrasounds and veterinary services.

Baird declined to give any details that could identify the worker responsible for the death.

“The animal care member directly involved is devastated and mourning this loss alongside all of us. They were immediately removed from the workplace following the incident and we are providing support to them during this difficult time,” Baird said.

She said the staff member would be reassigned to another area of the zoo and undergo further training before working with animals again.

In addition to existing training, processes and policy requirements, she said the gorilla care team would also get specialized training for operating hydraulic doors.

“We are reassessing control levers, locations and designs … we’ll implement changes to improve staff ability to confirm, both visually and by touch, what animal doors they are moving,” she said.

Baird added there would also be new animal behaviour training to encourage gorillas to maintain a safe distance from doors during movement times.

She said the gorillas are very social and have been grieving the death.

“The first few days after the incident the gorillas were very quiet. We gave them lots of choices to move around as they saw fit. At times, the mother, Dossi, would spend time by herself,” Baird said.

“Since the days have progressed, we’ve seen the gorillas spend more time with Dossi, sleep with Dossi. They are supporting each other.”

In 2009, a giant capybara, a central American rodent, was crushed to death in a holding area at the zoo when a worker closed a hydraulic door.

There have also been other deaths at the zoo this year. 

A seven-year-old polar bear named Baffin drowned in July in the plunge pool in his enclosure. A necropsy found his trachea was crushed by another bear while the two were engaged in rough play.

In April, the zoo announced the death of one of its mandrills — a large and colourful monkey. It said 20-year-old Yusufu died after undergoing emergency abdominal surgery. 

Animal Justice, an advocacy group for the humane treatment of animals, said it’s time for a broader look at safety at the zoo.

“The Alberta government should investigate whether the zoo is complying with its license conditions, which require all equipment be installed in a way that does not present a hazard to animals,” Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk said in a statement.

“The use of hydraulic doors without safety mechanisms is clearly dangerous and appears to run contrary to license conditions.”

Labchuk added, “The Calgary zoo appears to have a higher rate of animal deaths compared (with) other zoos, and in light of Eyare’s death there should be a systematic review of the zoo’s operations and practices.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 20, 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Comcast is spinning off into a new company many of the cable television networks that were once at the entertainment giant’s heart as consumers increasingly swap out their cable TV subscriptions for streaming platforms.

Those one-time stars for Comcast’s NBCUniversal cable television networks include USA, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel, as well as CNBC and MSNBC. Movie ticketing platform Fandango and the Rotten Tomatoes movie rating site will also become part of the new company.

Streaming service Peacock will remain with Comcast, as will Bravo, which provides significant content for the Peacock streaming service, and other assets like the NBCUniversal’s studios and theme parks.

Comcast telegraphed the shift last month, before confirming Wednesday that it will spin off assets that generated about $7 billion in revenue over the past 12 months ending Sept. 30. That’s about 5.5% of Comcast’s total revenue during that period, according to the company.

How exactly this split will impact customers is not yet clear. Experts maintain it’s too early to tell, given that Comcast aims to complete the transition over the next year.

Some analysts speculate that the spun-off networks may have more freedom to bring their content elsewhere. That could mean you’ll have more options to find and curate what you want to watch and where — or headaches from juggling several different subscriptions in an already-fractured media landscape.

Wednesday’s announcement arrives as more and more people “cut the cord” on cable, with millions canceling service subscriptions every year — and instead signing up for streaming platforms.

Paul Verna, principal analyst and vice president of content for market research company eMarketer, said Comcast’s decision to divest itself from most of its cable TV channels is a reflection of that trend.

“The writing is on the wall that the cable TV business is a dwindling business,” Verna said. “That’s why Comcast did what it did today.”

Mike Proulx, a vice president and research director of Forrester, added that the spin-off marks “simply a reconciliation of assets that detract from the company’s inevitable all streaming future.”

Comcast expects the new company, which it referred to as “SpinCo” Wednesday, to have the financial flexibility to be “a potential partner and acquirer of other complementary media businesses.” And Mark Lazarus, the current chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group who will serve as the new entity’s CEO, said Wednesday that the standalone company “will be better positioned to serve our audiences and drive shareholder returns.”

Like other cable companies, Comcast in recent years has shifted its business emphasis away from traditional cable toward streaming and other sources of revenue, such as its movie studio, theme parks and home wireless and internet services.

Despite a slightly confusing, glitchy start, Peacock has been one of the company’s biggest success stories, with recent boosts gained in part by the streaming platform’s popularity during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In its most recent quarter, Comcast reported that paid Peacock subscribers jumped by 3 million, or 29%, to 36 million subscribers. Peacock’s revenue soared 82% to $1.5 billion in the period.

Dropping “money-losing assets” to instead focus on these kinds of lucrative business is clearly beneficial to Comcast, Verna said — but the future of a new company housing primarily cable networks is less promising. He said he finds it hard “to envision that this company will stay independent for a long time,” predicting future consolidation of the networks or acquisitions through private equity.

Howard Gutman, private equity strategy and coverage lead for MorganFranklin Consulting, also expects consolidation to be in the cards. He noted the spin-off might entice bigger streaming services that are in search of more content, for example, to buy up these kinds of assets.

That could mean watchers of the Golf Channel, for example, finding its content on what were once rival platforms. But the spun-off assets might also find more power to focus on priorities specific to them under a smaller company umbrella, Gutman added. That would potentially open the door for networks like CNBC to further monetize its own content or expand its brand.

“I think it will open up opportunities,” he said, adding that customers will also have more options to curate subscriptions based on what interests them the most.

Verna is less optimistic. He pointed to a history of changes in the media landscape that has repeatedly been tough for consumers.

People already have a hard time figuring out where to watch or stream something they’re looking for, Verna said, and deals to license or spread that out further could worsen that. And paying for more and more services adds up, particularly as platforms have hiked prices over time.

“It’s too early to know what impact (the Comcast spin-offs) will have …. But I wouldn’t hold my breath (on there being) a net benefit to consumers,” Verna said. “Consumers are the ones who are supposed to be driving these trends, and to some extent they are. But they also tend to get the short end of the stick every time.”

The spin-off is targeted for completion in about a year, the entertainment giant said Wednesday, pending financing and approval from its board and government regulators.

Beyond Lazarus’ appointment to CEO of the new company, Anand Kini, the current chief financial officer of NBCUniversal, will take on the same title with the new company as well as the chief operating officer role.

Shares of Comcast, based in Philadelphia, ended up 1.6% Wednesday.

Comcast reported revenue of more than $32 billion and profit of $1.12 per share in its most recent quarter, boosted by the summer box-office success of “Despicable Me 4,” which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

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Grantham-Philips reported from New York.