Georgia
Family of man crushed by a bulldozer in his tent at homeless encampment sues nonprofits
The family of a homeless man who died after a bulldozer crushed his tent last year during an encampment sweep filed a lawsuit Friday against the nonprofits involved in clearing the encampment, the second lawsuit they filed over his death.
The lawsuit says Partners for HOME and SafeHouse Outreach are partly responsible for Taylor’s death because employees did not check whether Taylor, 46, was in his tent before a bulldozer was deployed to clear it, flattening his tent while he was in it and leaving blood on the street.
Taylor lived in an encampment on Old Wheat Street in Atlanta, which city officials asked to clear ahead of celebrations for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday last January. The encampment was near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had preached and now the site of annual events to honor him.
Partners for HOME is the city’s lead agency on homelessness. SafeHouse Outreach is another Atlanta nonprofit that serves unhoused people. The lawsuit says the organizations should have known to check Taylor’s tent after they did outreach at the site in advance.
Cathryn Vassell, CEO of Partners for HOME, said the nonprofit cannot comment on the lawsuit because they have not seen it but “is committed to its mission making homelessness in Atlanta rare, brief and nonrecurring.” SafeHouse Outreach did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Taylor’s family sued the city of Atlanta in July, alleging city employees also should have checked whether Taylor was in his tent.
Taylor’s death sparked outrage among local advocates and neighbors at the encampment who at the time called the city’s policies on clearing encampments inhumane. They said the city faces a dire affordable housing shortage that makes it inevitable that people will end up living on the streets.
Right after Taylor’s death, the city put a temporary moratorium on encampment sweeps. With the FIFA World Cup coming to Atlanta this Summer, the city has since resumed clearing encampments with the goal of eliminating all homelessness in the downtown area before then. Partners for HOME is close to its goal of housing 400 people ahead of the World Cup, said Vassell.
The lawsuit filed Friday seeks unspecified damages as well as compensation for medical and hospital bills, burial costs, attorney’s fees and litigation costs.
Harold Spence, one of the lawyers representing the family, said at a news conference Friday that city officials and the nonprofit employees didn’t want the “dignitaries” attending the Martin Luther King Jr. event to see the encampment.
“They were in a rush to remove it,” Spence said. “Unfortunately, it turned out they were willing to remove it at any cost.”
Spence added that Taylor had recently secured a job and was ready to “turn his life around.”
Florida
Former Miami Heat security officer gets 3 years in prison for selling stolen memorabilia
MIAMI (AP) — A former Miami Heat security officer has been sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $1.9 million in restitution for stealing hundreds of game-worn jerseys and other valuable sports memorabilia while working for the team.
Marcos Thomas Perez, 62, was sentenced earlier this month, according to court records. He pleaded guilty last August to transporting and transferring stolen goods in interstate commerce.
The 25-year retired veteran of the Miami Police Department worked for the Heat from 2016 to 2021 and as an NBA security employee from 2022 to 2025.
“This defendant was a former police officer who betrayed the public trust and exploited his access to our beloved hometown team for personal gain,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said in a statement. “The Miami Heat represent excellence built through hard work and discipline in South Florida — and this conduct was the opposite.”
According to federal prosecutors and the FBI, Perez stole more than 400 jerseys and other items from a secured equipment room and sold items through various online marketplaces. He had access because he worked on the game-day security detail at the Kaseya Center. He was one of a few employees with access to a secured equipment room that stored memorabilia the Heat organization planned to display in a future team museum.
Over a three-year period, authorities say Perez sold more than 100 stolen items for approximately $1.9 million and shipped them across state lines, often at bargain prices. They say he sold a Miami Heat jersey LeBron James wore during the NBA Finals for approximately $100,000. That same jersey later sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $3.7 million.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant at Perez’s home last April and recovered nearly 300 additional stolen game-worn jerseys and memorabilia, officials said. The Miami Heat confirmed the items had been stolen from their facility.
California
State sues Trump administration over plans to restart pipelines along the coast
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California sued the federal government Friday for approving a Texas-based company’s plans to restart two oil pipelines along the state’s coast, escalating a fight over the Trump administration’s removal of regulatory barriers to offshore oil drilling for the first time in decades.
The administration has hailed the project by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill as the kind of project President Donald Trump wants to increase U.S. energy production.
The state oversees the pipelines that run through Santa Barbara and Kern counties, said Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“The federal administration has no right to usurp California’s regulatory authority,” he said at a news conference. “We’re taking them to court to draw a line in the sand and to protect our coast, beaches and communities from potentially hazardous pipelines.”
But the U.S. Transportation Department agency that approved Sable’s plan pushed back on the lawsuit.
“Restarting the Las Flores Pipeline will bring much needed American energy to a state with the highest gas prices in the country,” said a spokesperson with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Sable did not respond for comment on the lawsuit.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term to reverse former President Joe Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts. A federal court later struck down Biden’s order to withdraw 625 million acres of federal waters from oil development.
The federal administration in November announced plans for new offshore oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts, which the oil industry has backed for years.
But critics say the plans could harm coastal communities and ecosystems.
Bonta said one of the pipelines Sable wants to restart burst in 2015, spilling oil along the Southern California coast. The event was the state’s worst oil spill in decades. More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. It polluted a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.
The drilling platforms were subsequently shuttered.
Sable has faced a slew of legal challenges but has said it is determined to restart production, even if that means confining it to federal waters, where state regulators have virtually no say. California controls the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore. The platforms are 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) offshore.
“It’s crazy that we are even talking about restarting this pipeline,” said Alex Katz, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, a Santa Barbara group formed in response to a catastrophic 1969 California oil spill.
The federal government’s approval to restart the pipelines ignores painful lessons the community learned from the 2015 oil spill, said California Assemblymember Gregg Hart, a Democrat representing Santa Barbara.
California has been reducing the state’s production of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy for years. The movement has been spearheaded partly by Santa Barbara County, where elected officials voted in May to begin taking steps to phase out onshore oil and gas operations.
Washington
DOJ says Smith report on Trump investigation ‘belongs in dustbin of history’
WASHINGTON (AP) — A report by former special counsel Jack Smith on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents belongs in the “dustbin of history” and should remain sealed, the Justice Department said in a sharply worded court filing Friday.
“The illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution belongs in the dustbin of history. The United States will leave it there,” prosecutors wrote.
The department’s position echoes that of Trump, whose lawyers this week asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to permanently block the release of the Smith report. It adds to the likelihood that a detailed report on a criminal investigation once seen as posing significant legal peril to Trump might continue to remain hidden from public view.
Smith and his team produced a two-volume report on investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Biden and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House following his first term.
Both investigations produced indictments that were abandoned by Smith’s team after Trump’s November 2024 election win in light of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution.
The volume on the election investigation was released in the final days of the Biden administration. But Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge in Florida who issued multiple favorable rulings for Trump and his two co-defendants in the classified documents case, last year granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt the release of the report dealing with that case. That edict meant that Smith could not discuss the substance of that investigation when he testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee.
The injunction is set to lift on February 24.
But Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where the case was filed, said in a three-page court filing that the report should remain sealed. He and another prosecutor in that office, Manolo Reboso, wrote that Smith’s investigation was “unlawful from its inception.”
They also wrote that Attorney General Pam Bondi had determined that the report was “an internal deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be released” outside the Justice Department.
“Smith not only weaponized the Department of Justice against a leading presidential candidate in pursuit of an anti-democratic end, but he did so without legal authority and while targeting constitutionally protected activity,” the prosecutors wrote.
Smith, during his testimony Thursday, defended his investigations of Trump and insisted that he had acted without regard to politics and had no second thoughts about the criminal charges he brought.
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said of Trump.
Family of man crushed by a bulldozer in his tent at homeless encampment sues nonprofits
The family of a homeless man who died after a bulldozer crushed his tent last year during an encampment sweep filed a lawsuit Friday against the nonprofits involved in clearing the encampment, the second lawsuit they filed over his death.
The lawsuit says Partners for HOME and SafeHouse Outreach are partly responsible for Taylor’s death because employees did not check whether Taylor, 46, was in his tent before a bulldozer was deployed to clear it, flattening his tent while he was in it and leaving blood on the street.
Taylor lived in an encampment on Old Wheat Street in Atlanta, which city officials asked to clear ahead of celebrations for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday last January. The encampment was near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had preached and now the site of annual events to honor him.
Partners for HOME is the city’s lead agency on homelessness. SafeHouse Outreach is another Atlanta nonprofit that serves unhoused people. The lawsuit says the organizations should have known to check Taylor’s tent after they did outreach at the site in advance.
Cathryn Vassell, CEO of Partners for HOME, said the nonprofit cannot comment on the lawsuit because they have not seen it but “is committed to its mission making homelessness in Atlanta rare, brief and nonrecurring.” SafeHouse Outreach did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Taylor’s family sued the city of Atlanta in July, alleging city employees also should have checked whether Taylor was in his tent.
Taylor’s death sparked outrage among local advocates and neighbors at the encampment who at the time called the city’s policies on clearing encampments inhumane. They said the city faces a dire affordable housing shortage that makes it inevitable that people will end up living on the streets.
Right after Taylor’s death, the city put a temporary moratorium on encampment sweeps. With the FIFA World Cup coming to Atlanta this Summer, the city has since resumed clearing encampments with the goal of eliminating all homelessness in the downtown area before then. Partners for HOME is close to its goal of housing 400 people ahead of the World Cup, said Vassell.
The lawsuit filed Friday seeks unspecified damages as well as compensation for medical and hospital bills, burial costs, attorney’s fees and litigation costs.
Harold Spence, one of the lawyers representing the family, said at a news conference Friday that city officials and the nonprofit employees didn’t want the “dignitaries” attending the Martin Luther King Jr. event to see the encampment.
“They were in a rush to remove it,” Spence said. “Unfortunately, it turned out they were willing to remove it at any cost.”
Spence added that Taylor had recently secured a job and was ready to “turn his life around.”
Florida
Former Miami Heat security officer gets 3 years in prison for selling stolen memorabilia
MIAMI (AP) — A former Miami Heat security officer has been sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $1.9 million in restitution for stealing hundreds of game-worn jerseys and other valuable sports memorabilia while working for the team.
Marcos Thomas Perez, 62, was sentenced earlier this month, according to court records. He pleaded guilty last August to transporting and transferring stolen goods in interstate commerce.
The 25-year retired veteran of the Miami Police Department worked for the Heat from 2016 to 2021 and as an NBA security employee from 2022 to 2025.
“This defendant was a former police officer who betrayed the public trust and exploited his access to our beloved hometown team for personal gain,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said in a statement. “The Miami Heat represent excellence built through hard work and discipline in South Florida — and this conduct was the opposite.”
According to federal prosecutors and the FBI, Perez stole more than 400 jerseys and other items from a secured equipment room and sold items through various online marketplaces. He had access because he worked on the game-day security detail at the Kaseya Center. He was one of a few employees with access to a secured equipment room that stored memorabilia the Heat organization planned to display in a future team museum.
Over a three-year period, authorities say Perez sold more than 100 stolen items for approximately $1.9 million and shipped them across state lines, often at bargain prices. They say he sold a Miami Heat jersey LeBron James wore during the NBA Finals for approximately $100,000. That same jersey later sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $3.7 million.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant at Perez’s home last April and recovered nearly 300 additional stolen game-worn jerseys and memorabilia, officials said. The Miami Heat confirmed the items had been stolen from their facility.
California
State sues Trump administration over plans to restart pipelines along the coast
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California sued the federal government Friday for approving a Texas-based company’s plans to restart two oil pipelines along the state’s coast, escalating a fight over the Trump administration’s removal of regulatory barriers to offshore oil drilling for the first time in decades.
The administration has hailed the project by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill as the kind of project President Donald Trump wants to increase U.S. energy production.
The state oversees the pipelines that run through Santa Barbara and Kern counties, said Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“The federal administration has no right to usurp California’s regulatory authority,” he said at a news conference. “We’re taking them to court to draw a line in the sand and to protect our coast, beaches and communities from potentially hazardous pipelines.”
But the U.S. Transportation Department agency that approved Sable’s plan pushed back on the lawsuit.
“Restarting the Las Flores Pipeline will bring much needed American energy to a state with the highest gas prices in the country,” said a spokesperson with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Sable did not respond for comment on the lawsuit.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term to reverse former President Joe Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts. A federal court later struck down Biden’s order to withdraw 625 million acres of federal waters from oil development.
The federal administration in November announced plans for new offshore oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts, which the oil industry has backed for years.
But critics say the plans could harm coastal communities and ecosystems.
Bonta said one of the pipelines Sable wants to restart burst in 2015, spilling oil along the Southern California coast. The event was the state’s worst oil spill in decades. More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. It polluted a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.
The drilling platforms were subsequently shuttered.
Sable has faced a slew of legal challenges but has said it is determined to restart production, even if that means confining it to federal waters, where state regulators have virtually no say. California controls the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore. The platforms are 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) offshore.
“It’s crazy that we are even talking about restarting this pipeline,” said Alex Katz, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, a Santa Barbara group formed in response to a catastrophic 1969 California oil spill.
The federal government’s approval to restart the pipelines ignores painful lessons the community learned from the 2015 oil spill, said California Assemblymember Gregg Hart, a Democrat representing Santa Barbara.
California has been reducing the state’s production of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy for years. The movement has been spearheaded partly by Santa Barbara County, where elected officials voted in May to begin taking steps to phase out onshore oil and gas operations.
Washington
DOJ says Smith report on Trump investigation ‘belongs in dustbin of history’
WASHINGTON (AP) — A report by former special counsel Jack Smith on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents belongs in the “dustbin of history” and should remain sealed, the Justice Department said in a sharply worded court filing Friday.
“The illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution belongs in the dustbin of history. The United States will leave it there,” prosecutors wrote.
The department’s position echoes that of Trump, whose lawyers this week asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to permanently block the release of the Smith report. It adds to the likelihood that a detailed report on a criminal investigation once seen as posing significant legal peril to Trump might continue to remain hidden from public view.
Smith and his team produced a two-volume report on investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Biden and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House following his first term.
Both investigations produced indictments that were abandoned by Smith’s team after Trump’s November 2024 election win in light of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution.
The volume on the election investigation was released in the final days of the Biden administration. But Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge in Florida who issued multiple favorable rulings for Trump and his two co-defendants in the classified documents case, last year granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt the release of the report dealing with that case. That edict meant that Smith could not discuss the substance of that investigation when he testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee.
The injunction is set to lift on February 24.
But Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where the case was filed, said in a three-page court filing that the report should remain sealed. He and another prosecutor in that office, Manolo Reboso, wrote that Smith’s investigation was “unlawful from its inception.”
They also wrote that Attorney General Pam Bondi had determined that the report was “an internal deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be released” outside the Justice Department.
“Smith not only weaponized the Department of Justice against a leading presidential candidate in pursuit of an anti-democratic end, but he did so without legal authority and while targeting constitutionally protected activity,” the prosecutors wrote.
Smith, during his testimony Thursday, defended his investigations of Trump and insisted that he had acted without regard to politics and had no second thoughts about the criminal charges he brought.
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said of Trump.
