The Ramsey County board of commissioners accepted a $3 million legislative grant for a public safety and livability initiative in the area surrounding the state Capitol.

Funding will be used by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office for a public safety and livability plan in the area, which includes around 60 blocks surrounding the state Capitol. It’s focus is additional police presence, youth and family programming, community partnerships – such as with area residents, businesses, non-profits and service providers – addressing public transit and other concerns as well as beautification.

The funding is available to the county from July 1 this year until June 30, 2029 and comes from the Legislature’s Capitol Area Community Vitality Account. Expenses are to be higher during the project’s first year, which is expected to include the establishment of a store-front location.

The project must be developed in partnership with the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board — a state agency — and community partners. The board’s purpose is to “preserve and enhance the dignity, beauty, and architectural integrity of the capitol, the buildings adjacent to it, the capitol grounds, and the capitol area,” according to its website.

The partnership must focus on improving “the livability, economic health and safety of communities” within the area. The project also will include street and neighborhood cleanup and ambassadors.

Project objectives include reducing quality-of-life issues and criminal activity, such as illegal drug use and promoting violence prevention, enhancing safety and strengthening partnerships with public agencies and neighborhood organizations. There also is a focus on sustainability and beautification of the area and improving community access to social services.

As part of the initiative, funding is planned for two full-time deputy sheriffs dedicated to patrols and referrals, as well as four full-time community service officers.

The sheriff’s office also will provide extra patrols and visibility, including through its Carjacking and Auto Theft Unit, and there will be an increased presence in key locations, such as light rail stations and other areas of public transportation.

A mobile camera, monitored by personnel, also will be at Park Street and University Avenue.

The initiative also focuses on youth services such as outreach to families in the area in order to prevent crime and promote learning through academics, literacy, physical activities and leadership development.

Prior to any use of funds involving the Capitol complex, the county sheriff’s office is required to consult with the state commissioner of Public Safety and the three-year project is expected to have measurable outcomes and periodic evaluations.

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Michael Boxall’s desire to shirk the spotlight came out moments after the Minnesota United captain was made the center of attention Tuesday.

Loons teammates, coaches, club staff and members of the ACES non-profit he supports choreographed a reveal that Boxall has been voted into the MLS All-Star Game for the first time in his 10-year MLS career.

After basking in the celebratory scene as much as a stoic can stomach, Boxall saw the amount of reporter lens focused on him and said, “Too many cameras.”

Boxall and MNUFC goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair will participate in the MLS showcase match against Liga MX All-Stars on July 23 in Austin, Texas. St. Clair, who is away with the Canadian men’s national team, made his first appearance in 2022 when the exhibition was in St. Paul.

Boxall didn’t want any more attention cast on him with the club’s get-out-the-vote campaign over the previous month and passed the credit when singled out Tuesday.

“I’ve never been disappointed when I haven’t made (the All-Star Game), so I think making it doesn’t really bring the opposite of that,” Boxall said in an interview. “I think me being there … feels more like a team award. If there ever was a time when an individual took credit for what the whole team does, I think this is an example of that.”

Boxall did get emotional when his wife and two young kids were a part of the presentation at the National Sports Center in Blaine. His son Beau had an All-Star jersey for his dad.

“Yeah, that’s, I mean, just not expected,” Boxall said. “Obviously, everything I do, it’s for my kids. So just seeing them happy, happy for me, is pretty cool.”

Boxall and St. Clair are stalwarts on a Loons’ defense tied for the fourth-fewest goals allowed (20 in 18 games) this season. St. Clair is tied for MLS lead with eight clean sheets. Boxall is fifth in the league with 117 clearances.

For Boxall, an All-Star nod is also a bit of a career achievement award, given the 36-year-old’s 250-plus appearances nine seasons at MNUFC.

“On so many fronts, he is deserving of this,” head coach Eric Ramsay said Tuesday. “First and foremost for a player who has been here this long to have this opportunity at this stage in his career is huge. It’s a testament to how he’s looked after himself and the level of performance he’s been able to maintain and the way people look at him here.”

Ramsay previously said he might need to manage Boxall’s workload and, while he doesn’t do all training sessions, he has been a regular in the lineup, playing 1,350 out of a possible 1,620 minutes the season. He has been indispensable in what has become a more competitive position group.

“For him to not only maintain the level of performance but gone beyond is a real credit to him,” Ramsay said.

The Loons have had five other players named to All-Star games: Robin Lod (2024), Emmanuel Reynoso (2022, ’21), Romain Metanire (2019), Darwin Quintero (2018) and Francisco Calvo (2018).

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“Ten years later, Harlem is still waiting for justice and for a recognition of the truth that community safety doesn’t come from raids, prisons, or gang lists.”

New York City Housing Authority’s Manhattanville Houses. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

On June 4, 2014, one of New York City’s most extensive gang raids took place at the Manhattanville and Grant public housing developments in West Harlem, sweeping up 103 young people, most of them Black and Latino.

A decade later, families impacted by the raid continue to struggle with the trauma and fallout. The resources and services the community asked for before and after the raid never came because anti-gang policing in Harlem—and across the U.S.—has not resulted in equitable justice for communities of color. It has always been about feeding more people into a prison system that disproportionately targets communities of color.

Recent deportations of Venezuelan immigrants (including green card holders and those with legal status) accused of gang affiliation—based on tattoos and without due process—repeat the same racist tactics behind anti-gang policing in New York. These tactics share a pattern: dehumanize Black and Latino people by framing them as inherently violent, thus justifying heightened policing, surveillance, and incarceration.

Harlem’s history with police brutality is long and well-documented. Before the 2014 raids, there was Stop and Frisk, a program rooted in racial profiling. Before that, Broken Windows policing criminalized poverty. And before that, infamous cases like the Central Park Five and the Harlem Six—Black and Latino youth wrongfully targeted and prosecuted under the guise of public safety. Each policy has had a new name for the same old system of racialized policing.

Walking through the Manhattanville and Grant developments today reveals the same systemic neglect that existed before the raid and has only intensified. Homelessness is accelerating, services remain scarce, and poverty persists. The youth who were paraded as violent criminals were the children of parents struggling against generational disinvestment, and those youth have grown into adults facing the same struggles.

This story is not unique to Harlem. Black and Latino neighborhoods across the country face the same dynamics—structural inequities masked by over-policing. These communities know well that the police are not there to uplift or protect them, but serve to protect property, wealth, and the status quo.

Under President Trump, immigration enforcement has adopted the same dehumanizing tactics long used in Black and brown communities. By branding immigrants as “animals” and gang members, and even invoking the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport them without due process to maximum-security prisons in foreign countries, the administration has justified extreme actions while masking them as neutral law enforcement. Meanwhile, primarily white insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were pardoned and rebranded as patriots, reinforcing that violence is not always criminalized unless people of color commit it.

This two-tiered justice system is mirrored in the language used by law enforcement. The term “gang” is used by law enforcement as a racially coded word to describe Black and Latino youth. Government officials then use that label to justify the suspension of rights, the erosion of due process, and the use of brutality. 

In Harlem, we worked directly with many of the 103 young people entrapped in the 2014 raids, alongside the Tayashana Chicken Murphy Foundation (TCMF). Our efforts included reentry support, restorative justice circles, job-readiness training, and licensing programs. But when our limited funding ran out, those crucial supports disappeared, leaving the community to deal with the lasting effects of the raids without the tools it needed to heal.

Anti-gang policing is not a broken system. It functions exactly as designed—to criminalize and control people of color. It’s a direct descendant of Jim Crow, the War on Drugs, and the policies that have built the modern prison-industrial complex. And even as crime in New York reaches historic lows, Black and Latino youth continue to be scapegoated as the main drivers of violence. New York City’s gang database, for example, is 99 percent Black and Latino, yet officials insist it is not discriminatory.

But our neighborhoods are not naturally violent. They are the product of decades of trauma, displacement, and systemic neglect. Rather than addressing these root causes, the state continues to rely on fear-based tactics—labeling people of color as gang members who are threatening safety—to distract from the real national crisis: the erosion of democratic values and the rise of authoritarianism.

Ten years later, Harlem is still waiting for justice and for a recognition of the truth that community safety doesn’t come from raids, prisons, or gang lists. Community safety comes from meaningful investments, services, and resources that support communities that have long suffered from systemic neglect and racist policies and policing tactics.

Anthony Posada is a supervising attorney in the Community Justice Unit and Criminal Law Reform at The Legal Aid Society. Matthew Brodwith is a community organizer in the Community Justice Unit at the Legal Aid Society. Taylonn Murphy Sr. is an anti-violence activist, consultant and the founder of the Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy foundation. He is the father of Tayshana Murphy and Taylonn Murphy Jr.

The post Opinion: The Reality of Anti-Gang Policing in Harlem and Beyond appeared first on City Limits.

By SETH BORENSTEIN

NEW YORK (AP) — A record-smashing heat wave broiled the U.S. East for another day Wednesday, even as thermometers were forecast to soon plunge by as many as 30 degrees in the same areas.

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At least 50 heat records were matched or broken Tuesday and 21 places hit triple-digit temperatures. About 127 million Americans remained under National Weather Service heat advisories, down from the previous day. Sizzling temperatures sent utilities scrambling to keep the air conditioning and lights on amid massive demand for power.

“It’s still going to be, I think, pretty bad across the East,” meteorologist Bob Oravec of the Weather Prediction Center said Wednesday morning. ”I think today is probably the last day of widespread record potential. It might not be quite as hot as yesterday by a few degrees. But still, high temperatures are expected in the upper 90s across a good section of the East.”

The weather service warned of “extreme heat” for a stretch of the country from North Carolina to New York and west to West Virginia. Highs could approach triple digits from New York to Richmond, Oravec said. Temperatures again broke 100 on Wednesday at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and in Newark and Baltimore.

Temperatures Wednesday morning were “a little bit warmer than expected” because of northwesterly winds bringing “warm leftovers from yesterday,” said former NOAA chief scientist Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist. Nantucket, Massachusetts, was above 90 degrees Fahrenheit when its forecast high was 82.

Weather whiplash

The high pressure heat dome that has baked the East was forecast to break. A cold front began moving south from New England, bringing with it clouds and cooler temperatures — not only cooler than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but cooler than normal.

A woman uses a portable fan to cool down Wednesday, June 25, 2025, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

That air mass drawing on cool ocean waters will send temperatures plummeting by the end of the week in Philadelphia, which hit a record high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, said Ray Martin, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Air temperatures will be in the low 70s Fahrenheit.

“It’s going to feel like a shock to the system, but it’s not anything particularly unusual,” said Martin.

Boston’s forecast high for Friday is 34 degrees lower than what it hit Tuesday.

“It’s going to feel like a different season,” Oravec said.

However, it won’t last. After one or two days, slightly hotter than normal temperatures are forecast, but not anywhere near the highs from earlier this week, Oravec said.

Weather whiplash from one extreme to another occurs more often as the world warms overall from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, scientists said.

Records smashed

Tuesday was likely the peak of the heat, with Baltimore the king of swelter. The city’s high of 105 degrees Fahrenheit smashed a previous record by four degrees. At night, when the human body needs cooling, temperatures only dropped to 87 Fahrenheit.

Baltimore was hardly alone. A dozen weather stations were 101 degrees or higher, including two New York airports. Boston hit 102, breaking its old record by seven degrees. Augusta, Maine’s 100-degrees also broke its old record by seven degrees.

Every coastal state from Maine to South Carolina hit 100 degrees somewhere, with Georgia and Florida clocking in at 99 on Tuesday.

A person uses an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun Wednesday, June 25, 2025, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

As temperatures rise “things become less reliable and more unstable,” said Climate Central Chief Meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky.

The heat meant more demand for power. The nation’s largest power grid operator, PJM Interconnection, on Monday recorded its highest demand since 2011, with only a slight drop off Tuesday and Wednesday, spokesman Dan Lockwood said.

“We have an aging grid infrastructure already in United States, so you can see the impacts of that heat on that infrastructure,” said Kate Guy, senior research fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. The aging system is less capable of transmitting power at the voltages needed, she said. “At the same time, you’re seeing a really big spike in demand. This is what they (utilities) are increasingly experiencing because of climate change,” Guy said. “Frankly, with each year is increased, historic temperatures and that intense heat arriving earlier than ever, just putting an immense pressure on the electrical grid.”

Mudassar Khan, right, talks with a customer while sitting outside his electronics store with air conditioners and fans for sale on display, Tuesday, June 24, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio)

Extreme heat caused the road to buckle in two locations on an interstate highway in northern New Jersey. State transportation officials say the impact on the concrete roadway in Morris County on Tuesday afternoon forced some lane closures as temporary repairs were made. Crews then began work to replace the damaged areas and repave those sections.

Some downtown Chicago streets will close Wednesday night to repair pavement that has buckled due to hot temperatures amid an ongoing heat wave in the city.

“Pavement failures or blowouts occur when prolonged high temperatures cause the road to expand and buckle up or blow out, resulting in uneven driving surfaces,” the Illinois Department of Transportation said in a statement.

In Chesapeake, Virginia, a heat-related malfunction prompted a bridge to remain stuck in the open position.

Isabella O’Malley in Philadelphia; Alexa St. John in Detroit; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, New Jersey; and Christine Fernando contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.