By DAVE COLLINS

A Connecticut judge on Friday dismissed criminal charges against three current and former New Haven police officers who were accused of mistreating prisoner Richard “Randy” Cox after he was paralyzed in the back of a police van in 2022.

Judge David Zagaja dropped the cases against Oscar Diaz, Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera after granting them a probation program that allows charges to be erased from defendants’ records, saying their conduct was not malicious. Two other officers, Betsy Segui and Ronald Pressley, pleaded guilty last year to misdemeanor reckless endangerment and received no jail time.

Cox, 40, was left paralyzed from the chest down on June 19, 2022, when the police van, which had no seat belts, braked hard to avoid an accident, sending him head-first into a metal partition while his hands were cuffed behind his back. He had been arrested on charges of threatening a woman with a gun, which were later dismissed.

FILE – This combo of photos provided by the Connecticut State Police, shows, from left, New Haven, Conn., police officers Oscar Diaz, Betsy Segui, Jocelyn Lavandier, Luis Rivera and Ronald Pressley. (Connecticut State Police via AP, File)

“I can’t move. I’m going to die like this. Please, please, please help me,” Cox said in the van minutes after being injured, according to police video. He later was found to have broken his neck.

Diaz, who was driving the van, brought Cox to the police department, where officers mocked Cox and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries, according to surveillance and body-worn camera footage. Officers dragged Cox out of the van and around the police station before placing him in a holding cell before paramedics brought him to a hospital.

Before pulling him out of the van, Lavandier told Cox to move his leg and sit up, according to an internal affairs investigation report. Cox says “I can’t move” and Lavandier says “You’re not even trying.”

New Haven State’s Attorney John P. Doyle Jr.’s office said prosecutors and Cox did not object to the charges being dismissed.

Defense lawyers said that while the officers were sympathetic to what happened to Cox, they did not cause his injuries or make them worse. The three officers whose cases were dismissed were scheduled to go on trial next month.

“We don’t think that there was sufficient evidence to prove her guilt or any wrongdoing,” said Lavandier’s attorney, Dan Ford. “This is a negotiated settlement that avoids the risk of having go through the emotional toll of a trial.”

Rivera’s lawyer, Raymond Hassett, called the decision to charge the officers “unjust and misplaced.”

“The actions of the Police Chief and City Mayor in targeting the officers were a misguided effort to deflect attention from the police department shortcomings in managing the department and ensuring proper protocols were in place and followed,” Hassett said in a statement.

Attorneys for Cox and Diaz did not immediately return phone and email messages Friday. Cox’s lawyer, Louis Rubano, has said Cox and his family hoped the criminal cases would end quickly with plea bargains.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said city officials disagreed with the judge’s decision to dismiss the charges.

“What happened to Randy was tragic and awful,” he said in a statement.

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The case drew outrage from civil rights advocates including the NAACP, along with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. Cox is Black, while all five officers who were arrested are Black or Hispanic. Gray, who also was Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a Baltimore police van.

The case also led to reforms at the New Haven police department as well as a statewide seat belt requirement for prisoners.

In 2023, the city of New Haven agreed to settle a lawsuit by Cox for $45 million.

New Haven police fired Segui, Diaz, Lavandier and Rivera for violating police conduct policies, while Pressley retired and avoided an internal investigation. Diaz appealed his firing and got his job back. Segui lost the appeal of her firing, while appeals by Lavandier and Rivera remain pending.

By JOHN HANNA and KENDRIA LAFLEUR

MALAKOFF, Texas (AP) — Some school districts in the U.S. dropped plans for class pictures after widespread social media posts linked a billionaire with ties to Jeffrey Epstein to the photography giant Lifetouch, which on Friday called the claims “completely false.”

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The disruption to school picture plans in Texas and elsewhere began after online posts linked Lifetouch, which photographs millions of students each year, to the investment fund manager Apollo Global Management. Apollo’s former CEO is billionaire investor Leon Black, who met regularly with Epstein and was advised by Epstein on financial matters.

Black led the company in 2019, when funds managed by Apollo bought Lifetouch’s parent company, Shutterfly. The $2.7 billion deal closed in September 2019 — a month after Epstein’s death by suicide behind bars as he awaited trial over allegations from federal prosecutors that he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of girls.

Both Lifetouch and Apollo noted that timeline in statements Friday, two days after Lifetouch CEO Ken Murphy said in an Instagram post that neither Black nor any of Apollo’s directors or investors ever had any access to Lifetouch photos.

“No Lifetouch executives have ever had any relationship or contact with Epstein and we have never shared student images with any third party, including Apollo,” Lifetouch said in its statement Friday. “Apollo and its funds also have no role in Lifetouch’s daily operations and have no access to student images.”

The canceled school pictures are another ripple effect over the release of millions of files from the Epstein investigation, including documents showing Epstein’s regular contacts with CEOs, journalists, scientists and prominent politicians long after a 2008 conviction on sex crimes charges.

In the small Texas town of Malakoff, the local school district canceled a student picture day after several parents told the district they weren’t comfortable with Lifetouch photographing their children, spokesperson Katherine Smith said in a statement e-mailed Friday. Several other schools and districts in Texas also canceled or changed plans, as well as a charter school in Arizona, according to Facebook announcements posted by the schools.

“We decided our students and families would be best served by keeping all of our pictures in-house for the rest of this year, and we are looking at all of our options for the 2026-2027 school year,” Smith said.

Parents concerned about Lifetouch included MaKallie Gann, whose children attend schools in Howe, about 60 miles north of Dallas. She said she was worried about how much information Lifetouch collects on students.

“Whenever you order the pictures, it has their name. It has the age, of course. It has their grade, their teacher, the school that they’re in,” she said.

No evidence of Epstein or anyone in his orbit seeing Lifetouch photos has emerged from news organizations’ review of thousands of documents released this month by the U.S. Department of Justice, though there are at least 1.7 million records.

The review shows Black’s name appeared 8,200 times, though that figure likely includes some duplicate records. Black stepped down as Apollo’s CEO in March 2021, saying he wanted to focus on his family, health, and “many other interests.”

That was two months after a committee of the company’s board issued a report concluding that Epstein had advised Black personally on estate planning, tax issues, charitable giving and running his “family office,” but provided no services to Apollo or invested in no Apollo funds.

The report also said the review — which Black requested — found “no evidence” that he was involved with Epstein’s alleged criminal activities “in any way” or “at any time.” ___

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Also contributing was Associated Press writer Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota.

By CLAIRE RUSH

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Multiple residents of an affordable housing complex in Portland, Oregon, have bought gas masks to wear in their own homes, to protect themselves from tear gas fired by federal agents outside the immigration building across the street. Others have taped their windows or stuffed wet towels under their doors, while children have sought security by sleeping in closets.

Some are now telling their stories to a federal judge Friday, as they testify in a lawsuit seeking to limit federal officers’ use of tear gas during protests at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building following months of repeated exposure.

The property manager of the apartment building and several tenants filed the suit against the federal government in December, arguing that the use of chemical munitions has violated residents’ rights to life, liberty and property by sickening them, contaminating their apartments and confining them inside. They have asked the court to limit federal agents’ use of such munitions unless needed to respond to an imminent threat.

FILE – Law enforcement officers stand in the street to allow vehicles to leave a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during a protest in Portland, Ore., Oct. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

“They’re simply trying to live their lives in peace in their homes,” Daniel Jacobson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said during the hearing. “Yet our federal government is knowingly putting them through hell, and for no good reason at all.”

The defendants, which include ICE and the Department of Homeland Security and their respective heads, say officers have deployed crowd-control devices in response to violent protests at the building, which has been the site of demonstrations for months.

”The conduct at issue, law enforcement’s use of crowd control tactics to disperse unlawful crowds, does not even come close to shocking the conscience,” Samuel Holt, an attorney for the federal government, said during the hearing.

The case comes amid growing concern over federal officers using aggressive crowd-control tactics, as cities across the country have seen demonstrations against the immigration enforcement surge spearheaded by President Donald Trump’s administration.

FILE – A view of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, top left, in Portland, Ore., Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

In testimony, tenants of the Gray’s Landing apartment complex described experiencing difficulty breathing, coughing, dizziness and other symptoms following exposure to chemicals from tear gas, smoke grenades and pepper balls.

“I have a gas mask in my bedroom. I have one in my living room. And I have one in my backpack,” said a plaintiff using a pseudonym due to being a domestic violence survivor. “I’ve slept with it on.”

She described how the chemical munitions triggered her post-traumatic stress and entered into her apartment. ”I could feel it, I could see it, I could taste it, I could smell it,” she said of the gas.

Gas canisters have hit apartments and been found in the building’s courtyard and parking garage, according to the complaint.

Another plaintiff, Susan Dooley, a 72-year-old Air Force veteran with diabetes and high blood pressure, was sent by a doctor to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with shortness of breath and mild heart failure, the complaint said. Whitfield Taylor, who has placed wet towels around his window air conditioning unit in a bid to block the gas from entering his home, had to take his two daughters, 7 and 9, to urgent care for respiratory symptoms. The girls sometimes sleep in his closet to feel safe, according to the complaint.

Of the affordable housing complex’s 237 residents, nearly a third are age 63 or older, according to court filings. Twenty percent of units are reserved for low-income veterans and 16% of tenants identify as disabled.

The plaintiffs filed an updated request for a preliminary injunction limiting federal officers’ use of tear gas late last month, after agents launched gas at a crowd of demonstrators including young children that local officials described as peaceful.

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“As this brief is being filed, tear gas is once again inside the homes of Plaintiffs and other residents of Gray’s Landing,” the filing says, adding that it was launched by officers “despite facing no violence or imminent threats at all.”

The government said in court filings that federal officers have at times used crowd control devices in response to crowds that are “violent, obstructive or trespassing” or do not comply with dispersal orders.

It has also pushed back against the claims of tenants’ constitutional rights being violated, saying that under such an argument, “federal and state law enforcement officers would violate the Constitution whenever they deploy airborne crowd-control devices that inadvertently drift into someone’s home or business, even if the use of such devices is otherwise entirely lawful.”

The hearing comes after a federal judge in a separate Oregon lawsuit temporarily restricted agents’ use of tear gas during protests at the building. The temporary restraining order in that case, filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists, is set to expire next week.

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

The White House mansion’s eastern facade appears to have been “excellently preserved” when demolition crews tore down the East Wing to make way for President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom, an administration official said in a memo made public Friday.

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Contractors took pains to protect the White House residence during demolition, keeping heavy equipment at a safe distance and removing some pieces by hand, Joshua Fisher, director of the White House Office of Administration, wrote to the commission charged with approving plans for Trump’s ballroom. Some sections of the building were stabilized ahead of time, and vibration and crack movement were monitored, he wrote.

The National Capital Planning Commission, which is led by a top Trump aide, had requested more details about the demolition that began with little advance notice last fall. The agency has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.

The East Wing demolition prompted a public outcry when it began without the independent reviews, congressional approval and public comment that are typical for even relatively minor modifications to historic buildings in Washington. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to halt construction of the ballroom.

The memo documents the history of the East Wing dating back to Thomas Jefferson’s presidency and lays out the White House’s justification for tearing it down, saying it was not feasible to preserve it while meeting Trump’s goals for the project. The completed ballroom will include an improved visitors center for security screening and will lessen the need for road closures during major events, Fisher wrote.

Curators documented and preserved artwork, furniture and other items of historical significance, including “the East Wing cornerstone and plaque, movie theater furniture, the East Colonnade columns, the Porte-cochere columns, interior wood paneling, chandeliers, historic windows and doors, and other hardware and fixtures,” he wrote.

“Our goal is to ensure that some of these items will be integrated into the new structure,” Fisher added.

Engineers are studying whether the West Colonnade, which connects the White House residence to the West Wing offices, can support a second story that would make it more visually symmetrical with plans for a larger East Colonnade connecting to the ballroom, the memo said. No decisions have been made.

The White House also submitted the most detailed renderings of the ballroom published to date. It shows a massive new building that dwarfs the size of the demolished East Wing and matches the height of the historic White House mansion.

The project is scheduled for discussion during a March 5 meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission.