National Roundup

Maine
In Portland, jail faces officer shortage, mask rule is nixed
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Maine jail is dealing with a corrections officer shortage that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Cumberland County jail in Portland was on lockdown Monday because of the shortage. The jail is budgeted for 128 corrections officers and has 67 vacancies, WMTW-TV reported.

The shortage has been made worse by 13 corrections officers recently testing positive for COVID-19, WMTW-TV reported. The jail has been restricting inmates to their cells for more than 23 hours a day because of the shortage, the station reported.

Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said the jail has increased starting pay to attract new hires. The jail is also attempting to attract applicants with a roadside advertising campaign.

Joyce said the vaccination rate for staff and inmates at the jail is about 50%. People arrested in the county are currently being diverted to jails in other counties to deal with the staffing shortage.

Washington
Facebook asks court to dismiss FTC antitrust complaint
Facebook is asking a federal court to dismiss a revised complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that the agency has not provided enough evidence to show that the company is a monopoly.

In a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Facebook said the FTC failed to prove that it has a monopoly in the “personal social networking space” because no reliable data exists to show the size of the market or of Facebook’s share of it.

“The FTC’s fictional market ignores the competitive reality: Facebook competes vigorously with TikTok, iMessage, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and countless others to help people share, connect, communicate or simply be entertained,” Facebook said in a statement. “The FTC cannot credibly claim Facebook has monopoly power because no such power exists.”

Facebook’s motion was filed on the day it and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms suffered a worldwide outage. It also came a day after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, went public on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program to discuss internal documents exposing the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions.

A federal judge in June dismissed earlier antitrust lawsuits brought against Facebook by the agency and a broad coalition of state attorneys general that were among multiplying efforts by federal and state regulators to rein in tech titans’ market power.

The FTC’s new, revised complaint filed in August alleges that the social network giant pursued a laser-focused strategy to “buy or bury” rivals to suppress competition.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had ruled in June that the FTC’s original lawsuit was “legally insufficient” and didn’t provide enough evidence to prove Facebook was a monopoly. He dismissed the states’ separate complaint outright.

But his ruling only dismissed the FTC’s complaint, not the case, giving the agency a chance to file a revised complaint. In the new filing, the FTC laid out a detailed analysis to substantiate its monopoly power claim.

“Direct evidence, including historical events and market realities” confirms the allegation, the complaint says. The harm to consumers from the lack of competition “is particularly severe,” it says.

The FTC did not have a comment on Facebook’s motion to dismiss.

Wisconsin
Rittenhouse due in court for likely final motions hearing
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judge was expected Tuesday to consider remaining motions in the case of an Illinois man accused of shooting three people during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin last year, setting the final ground rules before a trial begins next month.

Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz during the protest in Kenosha.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, maintains he acted in self-defense but he faces multiple charges, including homicide. His trial is set to begin Nov. 1.

Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder was expected to consider several outstanding motions Tuesday. Rittenhouse’s attorneys want the judge to dismiss a charge that he possessed his AR-style semiautomatic rifle illegally because he was a minor, and to allow testimony from an expert on police use-of-force decisions.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, were looking for permission to introduce a video showing Rittenhouse saying he’d like to shoot some men he thought were shoplifting from a pharmacy 15 days before the protest. Schroeder said last month he was leaning toward excluding it.

The judge also could rule on whether to allow both sides to send questionnaires to potential jurors. Such questionnaires can help attorneys screen for bias during jury selection.

Kenosha was in the throes of several nights of chaotic protests in August 2020 after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance, leaving Blake paralyzed from the waist down.
Rittenhouse, now 18, traveled to Kenosha in response to social media posts asking for help defending city businesses.

Many conservatives flocked to support Rittenhouse, calling him a patriot for seeking to stop violent protests, making him a symbol for gun rights and raising $2 million for his bail. Others, including some liberals and activists, portrayed him as a domestic terrorist and said he made a volatile situation worse  by bringing a rifle to the streets of Kenosha.

Illinois
Man charged with hate crime quits job as college professor
A suburban Chicago man charged last month with a hate crime after allegedly hurling racial slurs and spitting at a Black woman has quit his job as a college professor, according to the school.

Alberto Friedmann, 53, of Oak Park, resigned as a neurokinesiology teacher at the National University of Health Sciences in nearby Lombard before the school completed its investigation of incident, Ron Mensching, the school’s vice president for business services, said.

With Friedmann’s Sept. 22 resignation, Mensching said the school halted its investigation and removed any reference to Friedmann from its website, according to the Pioneer Press.

The resignation followed a court hearing in which prosecutors detailed the Sept. 7 incident that led them to charge Friedmann with felony counts of committing a hate crime and aggravated battery.

Prosecutors said Friedmann was driving in an Oak Park grocery store parking lot when he allegedly honked his horn at the car in which the woman and her 7-year-old daughter were sitting, climbed from his vehicle, yelled slurs at her, slammed her door shut and spit at her. They alleged that Friedmann then struck the woman’s vehicle twice with his car.

His attorney said that Friedmann didn’t use any racial language during the incident.