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National
Psychologist Appointed Head Of Chicago Jail
Grant Available
To Grow Your Business
CHICAGO, IL -- A clini- cal psychologist will be ap- pointed head of Chicago's Cook County Jail, the na- tion's second-largest jail where a third of the inmates are mentally ill, officials an- nounced on Tuesday.
Nneka Jones Tapia
will become executive direc- tor of the jail on May 26, county officials said. Tapia, who has been with the sher- iff's office since 2013 and oversees mental health strat- egy, replaces Cara Smith, who will become chief strat- egy officer for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
Cook County houses an average of 9,000 inmates daily, of which 25 percent to 35 percent suffer from men-
Nneka Jones Tapia will become the executive direc- tor of the 2nd largest jail in the U. S.
tal illness, according to a spokesman. That number has grown in recent years as the number of mental health facilities fell, jail officials said.
Officials said Tapia is
the first mental health pro- fessional to be appointed to head a large jail. Cook County is the nation's largest single-site jail - Los Angeles County has more inmates but multiple sites, said Dart.
Most of the mentally ill inmates in the jail are charged with low-level, non- violent offenses, such as trespassing and drug posses- sion, and some get into jail just to receive treatment, Tapia said.
Dart said that since the 1960s, the number of beds in Illinois' state-run psychiatric hospitals has fallen to fewer than 1,500 from 35,000, which is why there are so many mentally ill people in- carcerated.
HOUSTON, TEXAS – Minority entrepreneurs and business owners can apply for the $2,500 in grants to launch or grow their busi- ness through the Merchant- Negotiators.com’s Small Business Grant competition, announced this week. Appli- cations, available at Mer- chantNegotiators.com’s website, are open June 1 through August 1.
Why Supporting Minority Entrepreneurs Is So Important
Entrepreneurs and their small businesses are the en- gines of the American econ- omy. Half of all private-sector workers and 70% of all new jobs are gen- erated by small businesses, and small businesses are re- sponsible for more than 50%
of US GDP or over $6 trillion dollars annually.
Today, minority owned businesses make up almost 15 percent of the 28 million small businesses and employ 5.9 million workers in the United States and are one of the fastest growing subsets of small businesses. Despite this growth, however, His- panic and African-American owned companies still com- prise just 15% of American small businesses, a massive underrepresentation consid- ering they make up 37% of the U.S. total population.
Rise In Elementary Age Suicides By Black Children Needs Action
Victims Of Terrorists: Boko Haram Militants Raped Hundreds Of Women And Girls
NATIONWIDE -- The rise in young Black children committing suicide is mostly accounted for by boys, al- though there was also an in- creasing rate, but without statistical significance, of Black girls dying by suicide while the rate remained sta- ble among white girls.
Within the stable suicide rates, numbering an average of around 33 children in the U. S. annually over the past 2 decades, fewer white chil- dren have been affected while more Black children have succumbed.
Lead author of the study is epidemiologist and suicide researcher Jeffrey Bridge,
PhD, of the Research Insti- tute at Nationwide Chil- dren's Hospital in Columbus, OH. With col- leagues, Dr. Bridge also made the following findings:
• A total of 657 children aged between 5 and 11 years died by suicide between 1993 and 2012.
• Most of these kids, 84%,
were boys (553 of them, compared with 104 girls).
The rate for all U. S. child suicides in the age group overall remained stable, at around one death in every million children.
The report's conclusion says the disparity of suicide numbers among young Black children is significant and requires action.
The most common means by which the kids in the age group died overall was hanging/suffocation - accounting for 514 of the 657 suicide deaths, or 78%. Use of firearms resulted in 116 suicides (18%) and 27 were by other methods (4%).
BOKO HARAM SOLDIERS
DALORI, Nigeria — Hun- dreds of women and girls captured by Boko Haram have been raped, many re- peatedly, in what officials and relief workers describe as a deliberate strategy to dominate rural residents and possibly even create a new generation of Islamist militants in Nigeria.
In interviews, the women described being locked in houses by the dozen, at the beck and call of fighters who forced them to have sex, sometimes with the specific goal of impregnating them.
“They married me,” said Hamsatu, 25, a young woman in a black-and-pur- ple head scarf, looking down at the ground. She said she was four months pregnant, that the father was a Boko Haram member and that she had been forced to have sex with other militants who took control of her town.
“They chose the ones they wanted to marry,” added Hamsatu, whose full name was not used to pro- tect her identity. “If anybody shouts, they said they would shoot them.”
Boko Haram, a radical Is- lamist sect that has taken over large stretches of terri- tory in the country’s north-
BOKO HARAM VICTIMS ... AT REFUGE CAMP
east, has long targeted women, rounding them up as it captures towns and vil- lages. Women and girls have been given to Boko Haram fighters for “marriage,” a eu- phemism for the sexual vio- lence that occurs even when unions are cloaked in reli- gion. Now, dozens of newly freed women and girls, many of them pregnant and bat- tered, are showing up at a sprawling camp.
The full human toll of that occupation is only now emerging. More than 15,000 people have sought shelter at the camp. Over 200 have so far been found to be preg- nant, but relief officials be- lieve many more are bearing the unwanted children of Boko Haram militants.“
“The militants have openly promised to treat women as chattel. After Boko Haram militants kid- napped nearly 300 school- girls from the village of Chibok last year, the group’s leader called them slaves and threatened to “sell them in the market.”
Increasingly over the past year, the terrorists have used women and children to carry out suicide bombings against civilian targets like markets.
Logo At School Named After S.C. Congressman Questioned
BEAUFORT COUNTY, S.C. --- Alumni of a school named for a slave who later became a South Carolina
congressman say school's logo is offensive.
the
The school is named after Robert Smalls, a slave who escaped and later cap- tured a Confederate ship during the Civil War. He went on to serve five terms in Congress.
The logo shows a man with a two-toned face, pony- tail and colonial-era garb with the words "Robert Smalls Generals."
Beaufort County schools superintendent Jeffrey Moss said the Academy doesn't have an athletics mascot. He said several mas-
ROBERT SMALLS
ROBERT SMALLS SCHOOL LOGO
cots have been suggested and district officials and the Robert Smalls Association will review the choices and present them to the school board for approval.
Moss said he thinks the picture was chosen by the middle school students at Robert Smalls and a bulldog was chosen by the elemen-
tary school-age students. Robert Smalls Middle School was renamed the Robert Smalls International Academy last year as it be- came a school for from pre- school to eighth-grade
students.
The school was originally
built 1925, serving only Blacks until 1970.
PAGE 20 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY MONDAY, MAY 25, 2015