A South Carolina man was charged in a murder-for-hire plot for allegedly trying to enlist the help of a white supremacist to have his black neighbor killed.
Brandon Cory Lecroy, 25, contacted a white supremacist extremist organization in March offering $500 to have his neighbor killed and hung from a tree, according to a criminal complaint. Unwittingly speaking to an undercover FBI agent, Lecroy allegedly requested a "flaming cross" also be put in the neighbor's front yard.
"$500 and he's a ghost," Lecroy told the undercover agent, according to the complaint.
Lecroy then texted the agent photos of his neighbors and two days later confirmed the arrangement in a telephone conversation, while also providing the agent with additional information, including the best time to kill his neighbor, according to the FBI.
Lecroy also allegedly told the agent he has more jobs for him in the future.
On April 9, Lecroy met with the undercover agent in Greenwood, South Carolina, and gave him a $100 deposit, "with acknowledgement that this payment was for the murder of his neighbor," according to the criminal complaint.
He was arrested and charged with solicitation to commit a crime of violence. A judge ordered Lecroy to undergo a mental health evaluation.
He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
“I didn’t really see anything sacrilegious,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He also joked he lent Rihanna his hat.
As you may know, the annual Met Gala took place this Monday in New York City, and celebrities from all over the world hit the red carpet, donning their best take on the theme "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination."
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The affair was inspired by a new fashion exhibit at the museum called "Heavenly Bodies," which featured artifacts loaned out by the Vatican. Rihanna was there, wearing an impressive pope-inspired outfit, miter and all.
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As well as Solange Knowles, sporting a halo.
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And Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman was wearing some gold crucifixes.
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Well, the Met Gala has found another unlikely defender: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of New York Catholic Archdiocese.
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"There were some aspects that looked like kind of a masquerade party, a Halloween party," Dolan told SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel about the event, which he also attended.
"I didn’t really see anything sacrilegious. I may have seen some things in poor taste, but I didn’t detect anybody out to offend the church," he said.
Dolan also said that although he was at first "apprehensive" about attending the gathering, he was assured by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who organized the event, that outfits deemed too provocative would not be permitted.
According to Dolan, a priest was able to review outfits and ask that certain things "not make the cut" and Wintour obliged.
"So I appreciated their sensitivity," he said.
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Dolan for comment.
Jemal Countess / Getty Images
Dolan also joked during the interview that Rihanna borrowed the headpiece typically worn by bishops from him. "She gave it back to me this morning," he said with a laugh. "She was very gracious.”
(The cardinal didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but the archdiocese told America Magazine he was indeed joking).
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
Overall, Dolan says he appreciated the reception he got from celebs over the course of the night. “A number of people came up and spoke about their Catholic upbringing and things they remembered and it was a powerful evening," he said.
The 36-year-old musician has not been seen since leaving a hotel in South Queensferry, Scotland, at 1 a.m. Wednesday and is now thought to be in Edinburgh, according to the BBC.
His family reported him missing to the police, who are now reportedly searching for him.
"Be so good to everyone you love," Hutchison wrote. "It’s not a given. I’m so annoyed that it’s not. I didn’t live by that standard and it kills me. Please, hug your loved ones."
About 20 minutes later, he tweeted, "I'm away now. Thanks."
Inspector Graeme Dignan of the Scotland Police told the BBC they "are keen to locate Scott as soon as possible to ensure he is safe and well and would urge anyone who can assist with our ongoing inquiries to come forward."
"If you believe you have seen him since the early hours of Wednesday morning or know where he currently is, then please contact police immediately," Dignan said. "I'd also urge Scott to get in touch with family, friends or with police, to let us know he is alright."
Frightened Rabbit formed in 2003, and features Hutchison alongside his brother, Grant, on drums.
Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images
The band has released five albums, with the most recent one, Painting Of A Panic Attack, coming out in 2016.
In February, they embarked on a tour to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their 2008 album Midnight Organ Fight,.
The owner of a coffee shop at Duke University has apologized for firing two employees for playing a hip hop song after a school official complained.
"We would welcome their return to the company," Robbie Roberts, who owns the popular North Carolina coffee chain Joe Van Gogh, told BuzzFeed News.
The issue arose when Larry Moneta, Duke University's vice president of student affairs, came into the campus Joe Van Gogh cafe on Friday for his regular tea and vegan muffin. Young Dolph's "Get Paid" was playing on the speakers, a track from a Spotify playlist chosen by Britni Brown, who worked on the register.
Moneta told Brown the lyrics of "Get Paid"— which include "get paid, young nigga, get paid" and "I fucked her so good, she got up and started cooking" — were "inappropriate," according to the Indy Week.
Brown quickly turned the music off and apologized, and offered Moneta his muffin for free, which he declined.
Shortly after Moneta left the store, her boss Robbie Roberts called her and said another university official, Robert Coffey, the executive director of dining services, had called him to pass on Moneta's complaint.
On Monday, both Brown and Kevin Simmons, who was working as a barista at the time of the incident, were fired.
A human resources representative for the coffee shop told Brown and Simmons that Duke University "has instructed us to terminate the employees that were working that day," according to Indy Week, who obtained a recording of the meeting.
"We had gotten a call from Robert Coffey of Duke saying that the VP of the university had come into the shop and that there was vulgar music playing," HR rep Amanda Wiley said, Indy Week reported. "Joe Van Gogh is contracted by Duke University, so we essentially work for them. And they can shut us down at any point."
Monata, Coffey, and Duke University did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
On Wednesday morning, Roberts released a statement apologizing for how the company handled the situation while also welcoming the terminated staffers to return. He also noted that Duke was not to blame for the firings.
"We attempted to understand Duke’s position in this case, but we should have taken a different approach in making personnel decisions," Roberts said.
"As the owner of the business, I take full responsibility for Joe Van Gogh’s actions. I apologize to all of the people directly involved and those who have been touched or offended, of which there are many. We are taking steps to remedy this matter, but all company personnel issues are private and will remain private."
Brown did not respond to questions about whether she planned to return to her old job. Simmons could not be reached.
The president of Nordstrom Rack personally apologized to three black teenagers on Tuesday after they were falsely accused of shoplifting last week at a Nordstrom Rack outlet in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mekhi Lee, a 19-year-old freshman at Alabama A&M University, told BuzzFeed News that he, along with two of his friends — Dirone Taylor, 18, and Eric Rogers, 18 — visited the Nordstrom Rack outlet to buy after prom outfits.
Within five minutes they were "racially profiled" as two store employees followed the three young men around the store, Lee said.
"Wherever we went, they went. Whenever we looked up, they looked up," he said.
The three men decided to buy something to prove to the suspicious employees that they were not shoplifting. But as they exited the store and walked towards their car, three officers with the Brentwood police department approached them, Lee said.
The police told the three men that the store had accused them of theft and read out a list of items that they had been accused of stealing, according to Lee.
After the teens explained what had happened and showed the officers the receipt for their purchase, the police let them go without any charges, Lee said.
"The police did a good job. They understood everything," he said.
But the experience left the three young men "humiliated and embarrassed," Lee added.
It wasn't the first time he had been racially profiled at the Nordstrom Rack store, Lee said, but that it was the first time police were called.
"Being a young black male you experience certain things, you experience being watched, but no one ever takes it to the next level as much as they did," Taylor told KMOV. "By calling the police."
Lee said that he "felt like everyone was looking at us like we were three young black men doing something negative."
"We were not raised that way," he said. "I feel less than equal."
The teens said that they also had "an encounter" with a female customer at the store who called Taylor a "punk" and told them "are your parents and grandparents proud of you?"
After local media coverage of the incident prompted outrage, Nordstrom Rack's president Geevy Thomas apologized to the three teens and met them along with their families, their attorney, and the NAACP's St. Louis chapter on Tuesday.
"Recently there was a situation in one of our Rack stores that resulted in our employees calling the police," Nordstrom said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. "We have guidelines that direct our employees to only call the police in emergency situations. Unfortunately, those guidelines weren’t followed."
After meeting the men, Geevy said the company was conducting a "thorough internal investigation of the actions taken by our employees."
“I feel fortunate to have met these young men and their families," Geevy said in a statement. "I appreciate the opportunity to listen to their concerns and offer our sincere apologies on behalf of Nordstrom."
He also thanked the men for "their poise" in dealing with law enforcement and thanked the police for "handling the situation professionally."
Brentwood police did not return BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
The incident occurred in the wake of backlash against Starbucks and law enforcement after a video of two black men being arrested while waiting for a friend at a Philadelphia Starbucks went viral. The city settled with the men for a symbolic $1 each — and a $200,000 grant to teach entrepreneurship, while Starbucks said it would close more than 8,000 stores and corporate offices in the US one afternoon in May to hold anti–racial bias training.
Adolphus M. Pruitt, the president of the NAACP in St. Louis, said that Nordstrom officials apologized to the three teens and praised them for how they handled the situation.
Pruitt said that the meeting concluded with all parties agreeing to a "continued dialogue with an emphasis on a common desire to prevent incidents of this nature from happening in the future; and the implementation of the things necessary to achieve such."
Videos of a faculty member dragging several black graduates off stage prompted outrage with many saying it was racial discrimination. He has been put on paid leave.
The University of Florida acknowledged Tuesday that students of color were most affected by the actions of an usher who "aggressively and physically" rushed graduates across the stage during commencement this weekend.
"Although students of multiple identities experienced this aggression during a milestone accomplishment for themselves, we urge everyone to acknowledge the added hostile environment created for black students who rightly showed excitement," the university's Black Student Union said in a statement on Monday
The Black Student Union said the most aggression was shown towards Nafeesah Attah and Oliver Telusma, who were trying to perform moves significant to their black Greek organizations and which possessed "rich cultural significance in African symbolism."
"It’s a situation where time and time again the university has made black bodies feel unsafe," Telusma told the Gainesville Sun.
After the ceremony, University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs apologized in each subsequent ceremony and said that he had personally reached out to the 22 students who were impacted.
The faculty member who served as the usher was put on paid administrative leave pending a review of "appropriate administrative steps," university spokesperson Margot Winick told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. She did not identify him, citing university policy.
In a campus message Tuesday night, the university acknowledged that the marshal's actions "disproportionately affected students of color and are not in line with UF’s stated institutional values."
"The University of Florida and I failed to provide an appropriate event for all of our students so that they could be celebrated and that they could celebrate their graduations," Fuchs said in the message.
He also apologized that he and other administration officials who were seen sitting on stage during the commencement ceremony did not stop students from being rushed across the stage and from being "physically constrained and pulled."
Fuchs announced the formation of a task force that would provide suggestions on how to "re-conceptualize commencement for students." The university said it was in the final stages of searching for its first chief diversity officer who would serve on the task force along with the senior director of multicultural and diversity affairs.
“All of our students, through their hard work and dedication, have earned their moment to be celebrated," Fuchs said. "This incident is an opportunity to reaffirm our institutional commitment to improving campus climate, while recognizing that we have work to do.”
Syringes are scattered in the remains of a tent city along Division Street in San Francisco.
Eric Risberg / AP
Mark Farrell had just stepped off a train and was walking through San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza when he felt something strange under his foot. He looked down and discovered in horror a discarded syringe stuck to the sole of his shoe.
"It poked the sole of my shoe," said Farrell, who is now the city's interim mayor. "I had a moment of, obviously, a huge scare."
To his relief, the needle hadn't pierced through his shoe — which could have exposed him to a variety of serious diseases — but it was nonetheless a jarring experience.
"It certainly opened my eyes to an issue that was starting to become a major concern on the streets of San Francisco," he told BuzzFeed News. "And anecdotally it’s gotten a lot worse over the last year, combined with our residents' rightful anger over the conditions of our streets."
Open drug use has exploded in San Francisco in recent years, enraging residents who complain of having to step over people injecting heroin in train stations and traverse a seemingly unending series of tent villages on sidewalks and bike paths. The problem has ballooned into a public health crisis, officials say, leaving elected leaders scrambling for solutions as discarded needles pile up in the streets.
The issue has also tested San Francisco's image as a liberal, compassionate urban oasis, and underscores a broader trend in large California cities that have been grappling with rising homelessness and drug view on their streets.
Public drug use in San Francisco was thrust into the spotlight last week when a series of shocking videos uploaded to YouTube showed dozens of drug users, seemingly unaware that they are being filmed, sprawled out in a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station and openly injecting drugs as commuters walk past. Others appeared to be unconscious, laying next to a pool of vomit.
The videos, recorded at the Civic Center station in the heart of San Francisco — not far from where Farrell stepped on a syringe last year — highlight how dealing with drug use and needles has become a daily routine for many of the city's residents.
Farrell said Friday he was meeting with BART officials to address the problem.
Beau Brady, a San Francisco resident and street performer, told BuzzFeed News that he's asked several times a day if he'd like to buy drugs — most often heroin, methamphetamine, or crack cocaine — outside his apartment in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood. Brady, a former heroin and oxycodone user who has been on methodone for the past five years, said he has seen a noticeable increase in open drug use in San Francisco neighborhoods.
"They’re doing it more blatantly now," said Brady, who contended that drug users face few repercussions from law enforcement. "They know they’re not going to get in trouble or get arrested."
Data from the city paints a similarly bleak picture.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, there are about 22,000 intravenous drug users in the city, or about 470 per square mile. Most of those people are using heroin and prescription opioids but the use of methamphetamines is on the rise, said Rachael Kagan, a health department spokesperson.
And while it's unclear if the total number of drug users has increased in recent years, the problem has become more visible. "The general public are having more exposure to this activity," Kagan said.
A graph shows overdose deaths in San Francisco in recent years. Heroin is included in the opioid figures.
San Francisco Department of Public Health
Complaints related to drug use in San Francisco have skyrocketed as well. Between 2008 and 2017, reports of needles and other medical waste on the streets grew from 132 to 6,363 — an increase of nearly 4,800% — according to the city’s database of non-emergency calls.
Complaints about human waste on the streets have also spiked, from 1,748 in 2008, to 20,960 in 2017, a jump of nearly 1,100%. Since 2014, the number of reports has doubled. And complaints about homeless encampments have risen from 315 in 2008 to 42,208 in 2017 — a surge of almost 13,300%.
A man lies on the steps of the Powell St. BART station as evening commuters walk by.
Blake Montgomery / BuzzFeed News
Police regularly respond to reports of drug use and have the option to make arrests, issue citations, or intervene to refer people to various social service resources, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Robert Rueca told BuzzFeed News. The department has been "cracking down" on open drug use, but has limited resources, he said. "We only have so many officers to police the city."
California law prohibits possession of drugs like heroin. However, the law allows people convicted of "non-violent" drug offenses to receive treatment rather than jail time. And in 2014, voters in the state approved a law that allowed simple possession of drugs such as heroin to be classified as a misdemeanor, rather than a felony. The proposition was endorsed by prominent newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, as well as advocacy groups such as the ACLU.
Rueca said that arresting people with small amounts of drugs is ineffective because they quickly return to the street and the habit, but added it is "challenging to enforce some of these laws when we’re not putting people into custody."
"What’s to keep them from going to the next corner?" he said. "The quick fix would be to just go in with a power wash and clear everyone out, but how long will that last?"
Eric Risberg / AP
Transit officials face similar challenges. Alicia Trost, a BART spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News that the agency has spent $32 million since 2014 on "quality of life" issues that include cleaning up drug use, and is requesting another $1.6 million for the coming year. The agency has stationed attendants in elevators, recently hired 21 new cleaning staffers, and has "community service officers" who patrol station corridors and tell people to move along.
BART police also respond to reports of drug use, but the agency faces limited resources, as well as people who "come right back" after being ordered to leave, Trost said.
"Our system’s so big we can’t have an officer 24-7 in every hallway and every car," she added.
The reasons for the explosion in open drug use are varied, but Kagan pointed to increased real estate development in the city as one potential factor. In the past, she said, drug users might have squatted in abandoned buildings or empty lots — places that would have kept drugs out of sight from general public. But today, San Francisco's red hot real estate market means those properties are disappearing, pushing drug users into public spaces like BART stations and city sidewalks.
"People who shoot up in public don’t want to be doing that," Kagan said. "It’s very stressful. It’s embarrassing. There’s a lot of stigma."
The reports of waste and encampments, which vastly outpaced the city's relatively modest population growth, point to the growing number of people who live on the street in San Francisco. And while not all of those who are homeless are also drug users, officials who spoke with BuzzFeed News said there is a relationship between the two issues.
"We need to work on the symptoms," Farrell said. "That includes our homeless population and the drug abuse we’re seeing on the streets. We have to be comprehensive in our approach if we’re going to solve this issue long term."
A man lies on a San Francisco sidewalk.
Ben Margot / AP
Lara Brooks, a vice president at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said the Bay Area's rising housing costs have likely contributed to the growing problems of public drug use and homelessness.
"It’s well known that housing is a challenge especially in San Francisco, and in the Bay Area more generally, and that does have a profound impact," she said. "Sometimes those lead to health disparities."
Though these problems have become particularly visible in San Francisco, the city is not alone in facing problems related to drugs and homelessness, and areas across the US are struggling with an opioid crisis.
Down the California coast, in Orange County, a vast homeless encampment stretched for miles along a riverside bike path. When officials eventually cleared the encampment in March, they reportedly found more than 13,000 used syringes and 5,000 pounds of human waste.
In San Diego County, the combination of drugs and homelessness turned deadly last year when an outbreak of hepatitis A eventually killed 20 people. A county spokesperson said that the majority of people who contracted the disease during the outbreak had been "homeless and/or illicit drug users."
Hepatitis outbreaks also affected Los Angeles and Santa Cruz counties last year, with officials stating that one of the at-risk groups were users of illegal drugs.
Last week, the union representing employees of the California Department of Transportation filed a grievance over what it described as hazardous conditions cleaning up waste from encampments. One union member told the Sacramento Bee that he had been exposed to blood, needles, and feces.
A homeless encampment stretches along a riverside bike path in Orange County.
The situation has fueled frustration and anger across California cities, including in San Francisco.
"I hear about it every single day from friends, visitors, people contacting our staff at our office," Farrell said. "These issues are no secret."
In response, Farrell has vowed to fight the problem. The same week that the videos were uploaded to YouTube showing open drug use in the BART station, Farrell announced plans aimed at getting syringes off the streets. Those plans involve using almost $13 million over two years to hire dozens of new street cleaning workers and expanding various facilities in the city.
"I’m fed up with it," Farrell told BuzzFeed News. "And I’ve made it a priority as mayor to fix the issue."
To that end, officials cleared an encampment in the city's Mission District last week, though some homeless advocates have criticized how the disbandment was handled, the San Francisco Examiner reported.
"San Francisco will continue to be a compassionate city," Farrell said when asked about push back to clearing encampments. "But our city also should be safe for visitors for families for children."
Other solutions are on the table as well. San Francisco, for example, is one of four in the US that has expressed interest in opening safe injection spaces for drug users.
The spaces would be connected to existing treatment facilities, which Kagan said when coupled with programs that provide clean syringes can actually cut down on the number of discarded needles in public, as well as reduce the number of people dying from overdoses.
"We feel as a city that we do need to do more," Kagan said. "There is a crisis."
