A bill that would end cash bail in Illinois was passed last Wednesday, spearheaded by the state’s Legislative Black Caucus.

What We Know:

• The Pre-trial Fairness Act was passed last week and is currently awaiting Governor J.B. Pritzker’s signature. Pritzker has previously expressed support for the bill, which would make Illinois the first state in the country to end all cash bail.
• Across U.S. courtrooms, judges offer pre-trial release payments, or bond/bail, to incarcerated individuals which allows them to be released prior to their hearing. If the individual does not pay the bond, they remain in jail despite being legally innocent. This institution creates a classist and racist system of justice where the wealthy can pay their way out of incarceration while those who can’t afford it may even receive a harsher prison sentence.
• As reported by The Guardian, Black, Latino, and indigenous people are detained pre-trial at significantly higher rates than people of other ethnicities. If given a money bail, Black people receive far higher bail than all other ethnic and racial groups and are less likely to be able to post the bail amount. The bail system consists of a thoughtless price usually set by a judge in a matter of seconds, allowing people with almost identical charges to be assigned bails that differ by tens of thousands of dollars.
• Briana Payton, a policy analyst for the Chicago Community Bond Fund, tells The Daily Northwestern that the system, “is profoundly unjust. It essentially puts a price tag on someone’s freedom.” She adds that defendants incarcerated before their trial could also lose housing, employment, or custody over children.
• Despite the tremendous movement toward justice reform, the bill faces a ton of backlash. More than 112,000 people have signed a petition opposing the bill, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The Illinois State’s Attorneys Association put out a statement saying the bill has provisions that are “deeply problematic and will only result in further significant increases in violent crime, undermine public safety, and deny justice to crime victims.”

After being signed, the bill will be implemented over the course of two years, creating a new system that will hopefully encourage other states to follow suit and work towards criminal justice reform across the nation.

Massachusetts Police are investigating after two threatening emails were sent from Gardner Public School’s email account.

What We Know:

• According to NBC News, an email hit the inboxes of children who attend Gardner High School, and their parents, on Friday containing racial slurs and a threat against the school. A second email sent at 1 a.m. included extremely graphic content, including child pornography, taken from the internet. The threat to blow up the school was scheduled to be carried out on Sunday.
• The Gardner Police Department began receiving calls about the emails at around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. They have since opened a criminal investigation into the matter. According to the school’s IT department, they quickly discovered a problem in one of the family communication tools and shut it down. The application allowed users to broadcast emails across the community of users.
• In a post to its Facebook page, the Gardner Public School released a statement.

The administration wrote, “Unfortunately, many students and parents are reporting that they received a very inappropriate email last night, appearing to be sent from a school email account. We want to apologize for the graphic content of this email. We are working closely with the Gardner Police Department to investigate this and to determine the origin of the email. Again, our apologies and we will keep you updated as more information becomes available.”

• A police statement told the community, “The Gardner Police Department has checked the schools to ensure they were secure and no threats were located at this time. The police department is working with the school department and the city’s technology department to investigate this matter and will continue to do our best to ensure the students and staff’s safety.”

The school is working with a crisis team to support students and parents during this alarming time.

Master P is working to create Black-owned supercars. He will be working with a former Tesla engineer to try and make this happen.

What We Know:

• Master P took to Instagram on Martin Luther King Day to announce that he is partnering with former Tesla engineer Richard Patterson to create the next generation of supercars, Trion Supercars. This would make the Louisiana entrepreneur and music mogul the head of the first Black-owned supercar manufacturer in the United States.
• #RichardPatterson CEO of Trion, the first black-owned supercar manufacturer in America. He is a former engineer at Tesla, designing the Model S from scratch. He also designed the landing gear on the Boeing 777 and the folding seat system in the Dodge Minivan,” P wrote.

 

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• In a press release that went out last week, Percy “Master P” Miller and his son Romeo featured Patterson on the Master P Reviews YouTube program. Putting a focus on Patterson’s Trion Supercars Group, P and Romeo checked out the company’s 2000-horsepower Nemesis car. The Millers were so blown away by the car that they gave it a rating of 10 across the board.
• Patterson’s foray into automobile manufacturing and design began when he was just a teenager in Detroit, Mich. for General Motors. He went on to work as the advanced vehicle engineer for the Tesla Model S and is reportedly only one of four automotive engineers that can build a car from early design schematics to full production. In addition, Patterson designed the Model S car from scratch. Patterson also created the landing gear for Boeing 777 and the folding seat in the Dodge Minivan.
• Master P’s announcement comes just a month after he announced that he is trying to buy Reebok from Adidas in March of this year. Master P said that if he acquires Reebok, he plans on turning it into a lifestyle brand. Prior to that, Master P had created his own substitutes for Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s after both brand logos were replaced last year. His food company, PJ Foods Company, launched “Uncle P’s Louisiana Seasoned,” which makes rice, beans, grits, pancake mix, syrup, and oatmeal.

This project is currently in its early stages, and further details of the design have not been released as of late.