Florida Cop Shoots Unarmed, Handcuffed Victim After Acorn Drops on Car, Chinese App on Super Bowl Commercial "Steals All Data" Russian, Iranian Hackers Shut Down US Hospitals (The Five for 02/14/24)
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter.
To celebrate Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day…here’s some stories about murder, cops shooting at an unarmed, handcuffed man in a police car, and hospitals shutting down from computer hacking.
[one]
The shooting this weekend at a megachurch in Houston points to complicated motivations in both the perpetrator and the police response.
A sticker saying "Palestine" was on the AR-15 rifle a woman used to open fire at celebrity pastor Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, injuring two, including her son, according to police
Some antisemitic writings have been recovered, but a motive behind the Sunday afternoon shooting has not been determined, according to police.
"We do believe that there was a familial dispute that has taken place between her ex-husband and her ex-husband's family," some of whom are Jewish, police said.
The suspect, 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, entered the church with her 7-year-old son, and she may have pointed her weapon at a security officer to force her way into the church, police said.
Moreno opened fire with the AR-15 at 1:55 p.m., police said.
A man believed to be a parishioner was also shot and has since been released from the hospital, Finner said.
In a pretty weird move, the Houston Police took a deep dive into Moreno’s pronouns, and declaring the shooter was not trans. Interesting, as calling yourself “Jeffrey” as a woman isn’t associated with being Trans.
This is the fourth high profile mass murder attempt from a trans-identified killer, including the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs (a nonbinary person attacking an LGBTQ+ nightclub), the Denver high school shooter (who tried to kill all the students who mocked him for being trans), the Aberdeen, Maryland shooter (who killed her coworkers for unknown reasons).
Four people with the intent to cause mass death doesn’t prove much, as the motivations ranged from revenge for high school bullying to antisemitism, but it does bring to light whether the “Trans Day of Vengence” social media movement may have helped radicalize the most unstable .01% of the trans group.
The data may well point to vague correlation, not causation, with no more story here than four crazy people having something in common, at random. That being said, it’s hard not to call this a trend…and is baffling why the Houston Police seem to want to ignore Moreno’s trans identity.
[two]
“Squad” member Jamaal Bowman (who finds fire alarms to be irresistible) somehow forgot to mention that Israel rescued two hostages who were kidnapped on October 7th, Simon Marman (age 60) and Louis Hare (age 70). The moment when the pair are rescued (2:28 on the video below) is quite impressive and moving.
Bowman, who I disagree with on nearly everything, does bring up an important point about civilian casualties, according to Reuters.
A Reuters journalist at the scene in Rafah saw a vast area of rubble where buildings, including a mosque, had been destroyed.
"I've been collecting my family's body parts since the morning," said Ibrahim Hassouna, as a woman knelt over the body of a young child nearby. "I only recognised their toes or fingers."
These civilian deaths are horrific, and inexcusable, and also a tragic reality of war. Destroying a Mosque is also something the U.S. took great pains to avoid during the Global War on Terror.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that there’s some evidence workers from the U.N. were aiding Hamas in holding hostages, with tunnels directly under the UN Headquarters in Gaza.
[three]
Those Temu commercials that ran during the Super Bowl…turns out the Communist-owned corporation wants more than just your money.
Scripp News reports:
The Chinese-backed e-commerce platform aired three commercials during the big game and two that played after, likely costing upwards of $30 million in total for the coveted — yet wildly expensive — broadcast slots. Yet the investment appears to have reaped gains already, with the Temu app ranking second in Apple's chart of most downloaded free apps Monday.
But while Temu promises that its low prices on everything from clothing to technology allow customers to "shop like a billionaire," some of those customers say the promise is a ploy to allow the app itself to shop — for users' private data.
In the most recent bout of controversy, a group of plaintiffs from multiple states filed a class action lawsuit against Temu and its parent company PDD Holdings Inc., claiming the app violates users' privacy rights by secretly collecting their data and doesn't give them an option to effectively consent.
Remember, your face, voice and fingerprints are all on your phone (unless you’re very careful not to let that happen). So, all that cheap prices on consumer goods is costing you is…you.
[four]
A cop shot an unarmed suspect…after thinking an acorn hitting a car was a gun going off.
In November 2023, a police officer in Okaloosa County, Florida got in a heated shootout with an acorn, endangering the life of a detained man who was handcuffed in the car.
In a video that has gone viral on social media this week both for its absurdity and terrifying implications, Deputy Jesse Hernandez hears an acorn drop onto his car. In response, he dramatically rolls on the ground while repeatedly shouting “shots fired!” and unloading his sidearm into the vehicle, shattering its back window.
At the time, a handcuffed man named Marquis Jackson was inside the vehicle. Jackson is a Black Florida resident who had been detained by Hernandez and his partner, Sergeant Beth Roberts, after being accused of stealing a car and sending threatening messages to his girlfriend. One of the messages included what police said was an image of a pistol silencer.
After rolling on the ground, Hernandez shouted “I’m hit!”—he had not been hit—and told Roberts that shots were coming from inside the car. Roberts also unloaded her firearm at the vehicle as Jackson lay in the backseat.
The incident is a stunning example of police incompetence and law enforcement’s willingness to use deadly force against the public. Lest it simply become fodder for social media jokes, it’s worth looking at how the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office handled the issue and the effect it had on Jackson, who said he was severely psychologically impacted and “damaged for life.”
It’s understandable why the story is so viral, as the video is hilarious, but “severe psychological damage” seems appropriate for a man who was trapped while 40+ rounds were fired at him for no reason.
[five]
Finally, human error may cause upwards of 100,000 hospital deaths per year, but now there’s a new threat to hospital patients.
Cybersecurity experts are warning that hospitals around the country are at risk for attacks like the one that is crippling operations at a premier Midwestern children’s hospital, and that the U.S. government is doing too little prevent such breaches.
Hospitals in recent years have shifted their use of online technology to support everything from telehealth to medical devices to patient records. Today, they are a favorite target for internet thieves who hold systems’ data and networks hostage for hefty ransoms, said John Riggi, the American Hospital Association’s cybersecurity adviser.
“Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of the use of all this network and internet connected technology is it expanded our digital attack surface,” Riggi said. “So, many more opportunities for bad guys to penetrate our networks.”
The assailants often operate from American adversaries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran, where they enjoy big payouts from their victims and face little prospect of ever being punished.
In November, a ransomware attack on a health care chain that operates 30 hospitals and 200 health facilities in the United States forced doctors to divert patients from emergency rooms and postpone elective surgeries. Meanwhile, a rural Illinois hospital announced it was permanently closing last year because it couldn’t recover financially from a cyberattack. And hackers went as far as posting photos and patient information of breast cancer patients who were receiving treatment at a Pennsylvania health network after the system was hacked last year.
Until the next one,
-sth