SEPTEMBER
Sept. 11
The Urban Institute released a report noting that an estimated 6.8 million people ages 10 to 17 are food insecure, meaning they don't have reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food. Another 2.9 million are very food insecure, and roughly 4 million live in marginally food secure households, where the threat of running out of food is real. Food-insecure teens who don't get enough to eat sometimes resort to extreme measures to cope with hunger. Such measures may include engaging in criminal behavior, ranging from shoplifting food directly to selling drugs and stealing items to resell for cash. Some traded sex for money to buy food.
Sept. 12
A Washington Post website report said that Christian Vargas, a 25-year-old Hispanic man, was shot dead in a parking lot in Colton, Calif. by police.
Sept. 16
Mapping Police Violence website revealed that police have killed at least 263 black people in the United States as of September 16, 2016.
Sept. 19
The Guardian website reported that a new survey showed that Americans own an estimated 265 million guns and there are an estimated 55 million American gun owners. There are America's gun super-owners - an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between eight and 140 guns. Since 1994, America' s estimated total number of gun owners has grown by 10 million. More than 30,000 gun deaths take place annually.
On the same day, the CBS reported on the same day that an African-American man Terence Crutcher was fatally shot by a white Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officer responding to a stalled vehicle. Crutcher had no weapon on him or in his SUV.
Sept. 20
An article at the Gallup website said that the percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61 percent average between 2000 and 2008 to 51 percent today. That could means that 25 million people whose economic lives have crashed. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering around 48 percent since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since 1983.
Sept. 21
The Guardian website reported that on September 20, Keith Scott, 43, was shot and killed in Charlotte, North Carolina by Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer Brentley Vinson, who is also black, after being mistaken for a wanted man. Police said officers went to a Charlotte apartment complex looking for a suspect with an outstanding warrant when they encountered Scott, who was not the suspect they were looking for, inside a car. According to the police, officers saw the man get out of the car with a gun and then get back in. When officers approached the car, the man got out of the car with the gun again. At that point, officers deemed the man a threat and at least one fired a weapon. A weapon was recovered by detectives at the scene. However, the police version is at odds with that of Scott's family. Scott's sister insisted that Scott, a father of seven, was disabled, sitting in the shade reading a book, waiting on his kids to get off the bus. She said Scott had no gun and wasn't messing with nobody. Protesters took to the streets after the fatal police shooting. As protests swelled on, police used teargas in an attempt to disperse crowds heard yelling "Black lives matter" and "Hands up, don't shoot!" One person held up a sign saying "Stop killing us;" another sign said: "It was a book."
On the same day, the Miami Herald website reported that a 16-year-old girl in Georgia told her high school she was sexually assaulted by a boy at the school's newsroom, but was suspended for multiple times for the case. In the course of the school' s investigation, officials forced her to participate in questioning in the same room as her alleged assaulter, act out what had happened.
Sept. 26
The FBI released its annual compilation of crimes noting that there were an estimated 1,197,704 violent crimes committed around the nation in 2015 and the estimated rate of violent crime was 372.6 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants, about 4 percent and 3.1 percent increases respectively when compared with 2014 data. Aggravated assaults accounted for 63.8 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement in 2015. Robbery offenses accounted for 27.3 percent of violent crime offenses; rape accounted for 7.5 percent; and murder accounted for 1.3 percent. There were an estimated 7,993,631 property crimes, resulting in losses estimated at 14.3 billion U.S. dollars. Nationwide, law enforcement made an estimated 10,797,088 arrests in 2015. Of these arrests, 505,681 were for violent crimes. The estimated arrest rate for the United States in 2015 was 3,363.0 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants.
On the same day, the U.S. State Statista website revealed statistics that in 2015, an estimated 15,696 cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter occurred nationwide.
Sept. 27
The website of Washington Post reported that Alfred Olango, an unarmed 38-year-old black man, was shot in El Cajon, California by police.
Sept. 30
Chicago Tribune website said in an article that the Chicago State University reported that only 86 new students enrolled in its freshman class in September 2016. The total enrollment of 3,578 that year is less than half the 7,362 students who attended CSU in 2010. Other state universities also reported significant declines in freshman enrollment. Eastern Illinois University in Charleston said its freshman class was 25 percent smaller than a year ago. It is believed that the situation is "a result of the ongoing Illinois budget crisis." The per-student funding for Illinois' public colleges and universities is 54 percent below 2008 levels. Arizona has cut education funding by 56 percent.
