Christians drop, 'nones' soar in new religion portrait | Human Rights Watch details abuse of mentally disabled prisoners | Iran Rapidly Building Cyber Warfare Capabilities | "Garland’s police chief made clear Monday that his department had no advance warning that two gunmen from Phoenix would target a controversial art exhibit." - Garland police say they received no info on credible terror threat before attack at Culwell Center
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"Garland’s police chief made clear Monday that his department had no advance warning that two gunmen from Phoenix would target a controversial art exhibit."
Garland police say they received no info on credible terror threat before attack at Culwell Center
"Iran is rapidly building cyber warfare capabilities and recent reports suggest Tehran is set to conduct cyber attacks on global critical infrastructures, according to a State Department security report.
The internal report sent to U.S. businesses last week by the Overseas Security Advisory Council concludes that Iran’s offensive cyber capabilities have evolved in recent years, making the nation a sophisticated cyber adversary.
“Iranian hackers have been suspected in multiple incidents that inflicted damage on various entities in the private sector, including finance and energy firms,” according to the five-page report, “Pistachios and Saffron: Investigating the Iranian Cyber Threat.”"
In jails and prisons throughout the United States, correctional staff have sprayed mentally disabled prisoners with painful chemicals, shocked them with electric stun weapons, and strapped them for days in restraining chairs and beds, according to a report that will be released Tuesday.
In its 127-page investigation of mostly state and local prisons, Human Rights Watch details incidents in which prison workers have used unnecessary and excessive force against prisoners with mental disabilities.
In one case in the report, “Callous and Cruel: Use of Force Against Inmates With Mental Disabilities in U.S. Jails and Prisons,” staff members at a California prison used pepper spray on a prisoner about 40 times and threw four pepper-spray grenades into his cell after the man, who claimed to be “the creator,” resisted being removed.
“Jails and prisons can be dangerous, damaging and even deadly places for men and women with mental-health problems,” said Jamie Fellner, U.S. program senior adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Force is used against prisoners even when, because of their illness, they cannot understand or comply with staff orders.”
Fellner said that no national data is available on the scale of the problem in the nation’s 5,100 jails, and state and federal prisons, but her group found that prison staffers have broken prisoners’ jaws, noses and ribs and left them with lacerations requiring stitches, second-degree burns, deep bruises and damaged internal organs.
In some cases, she said, the amount of force the staff has used has led to the deaths of mentally ill prisoners, such as 35-year-old Christopher Lopez.
Lopez, suffering from “schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type,” was found lying face down on the floor of his cell at 3:30 a.m. March 17, 2013, by workers in a Colorado prison. He was barely able to move, according to the report.
Instead of calling for medical help or taking him to the prison clinic, officers handcuffed him, fastened the cuffs to a belly chain, shackled Lopez’s ankles and chained him to a “restraint chair.”
When prison staff removed Lopez from the chair a couple of hours later and left him on the floor, still in restraints, his breathing was labored, the report said. In a graphic video, Lopez can be seen having a seizure.
“It was clearly audible and visible from where all the guards were, and no one lifts a finger to help him,” David Lane, the attorney for Lopez’s family, said in the video. He died at about 9 a.m. from hyponatremia, a blood condition that is treatable with prompt medical attention.
“Prisoners with mental illness are more likely to have disciplinary problems, to wind up in solitary confinement and to be subjected to use of force by corrections staff,” said Eldon Vail, former Washington state secretary of corrections.
Deborah Golden, director of the D.C. Prisoners’ Project, which represents D.C. inmates in federal prisons, said that the largest number of requests for assistance involve issues revolving around inappropriate mental health care or use of force against mentally ill inmates.
Human Rights Watch recommends that officials reduce the number of inmates with mental disabilities confined to prison by increasing the availability of community health resources and access to programs that divert offenders out of the criminal justice system and into treatment. The group also calls for improved mental health services that address the needs and vulnerabilities of mentally ill prisoners.
“Custody staff are not trained in how to work with prisoners with mental disabilities, how to defuse volatile situations or how to talk prisoners into complying with orders,” Fellner said. “All too often, force is what staff members know and what they use.”
Sari Horwitz covers the Justice Department and criminal justice issues nationwide for The Washington Post, where she has been a reporter for 30 years. Follow her @SariHorwitz.
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Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei / Reuters
BY: Bill Gertz
Iran is rapidly building cyber warfare capabilities and recent reports suggest Tehran is set to conduct cyber attacks on global critical infrastructures, according to a State Department security report.
The internal report sent to U.S. businesses last week by the Overseas Security Advisory Council concludes that Iran’s offensive cyber capabilities have evolved in recent years, making the nation a sophisticated cyber adversary.
“Iranian hackers have been suspected in multiple incidents that inflicted damage on various entities in the private sector, including finance and energy firms,” according to the five-page report, “Pistachios and Saffron: Investigating the Iranian Cyber Threat.”
“Current analysis indicates Iran may intend to use its growing cyber force to attack global critical infrastructure,” the report added.
Once limited to website defacements and other less damaging attacks, Tehran’s hacker forces are now capable of using customized malicious software designed for use against specific victims.
Recent evidence of the large investment in offensive cyber warfare capabilities indicates “Iran is rapidly improving its cyber warfare capabilities,” the report said.
Iranian hackers were blamed for several serious cyber attacks in recent years following reports of the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet virus attack against Tehran’s covert uranium centrifuge program at Natanz.
Among Iran’s recent cyber attacks are:
- Cyber disruptions aimed at U.S. government officials involved in nuclear nonproliferation;
- A 2012 cyber attack on the state oil producer Saudi Aramco that destroyed 30,000 computers;
- Cyber attacks against Israeli communications during the conflict with Hamas in the summer of 2014;
- Hacking that compromised the Marine Corps intranet in 2012;
- Large-scale denial-of-service cyber attacks against U.S. banks in two waves in 2012, and;
- The use of wiper malware against networks at the Las Vegas Sands casino in 2014.
The Las Vegas casino attack was confirmed by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, during congressional testimony in February.
Clapper stated that Iran regards cyber attacks as one of many tools for conducting asymmetric, proportional retaliation against its enemies. The Iranians were behind the cyber attacks against U.S. banks and the Sands, Clapper said.
Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, told a Senate hearing in March that the government of Iran, along with those of China and Russia, have been using semi-official hackers in cyber attacks.
“Each of the three use a slightly different structure,” Rogers said March 19. “But in each case, the cyber activities we have seen to date display a strong and direct linkage between the individual actors doing the actual activity and the nation state directing it.”
Rogers said one future trend could be that nation states begin using techniques to “try to confuse our attribution ability by creating different relationships.”
“For example, using other partners, trying to distance themselves in a visible way so their activity is not as directly attributable,” he said. “I think that’s a trend that we’re going to be looking for.”
According to the State Department report, multiple reports linked Iran’s cyber attacks against the $14 billion Sands casino network attack to critical remarks on Iran from the casino’s chief executive Sheldon Adelson.
“In similar fashion, the multi-stage 2012 attacks against U.S. banks and financial institutions were assessed to be a response to economic sanctions” against Iran, the report said.
The report identified four trends in Iranian cyber activities: Retaliation, coordination between cyber and political strategy, increased technical sophistication, and a focus on attacking critical infrastructure.
Critical infrastructures include computer networks that control such sectors as finance, transportation, water, public health, security, telecommunications, and electrical grids. Electrical grid control networks are considered among the most critical infrastructure because electricity is common to all networks.
“Assessments continue to place critical infrastructure, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and transportation systems at the top of the list for potential targets of Iranian cyber operations,” the report says, adding that the cyber security firm Cylance reported that the Iranian government and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), “is backing numerous groups and front entities to attack the world’s critical infrastructure.”
The report, published May 8, was based on several recent studies of Iranian cyber attacks conducted by the American Enterprise Institute and three security firms: Cylance, iSight Partners and FireEye.
“We have seen Iranian cyber capabilities increase in scale and sophistication over the last few years,” said Frederick W. Kagan, co-author of the AEI report.
“As others have noted, Iranians have been trying to identify and compromise vulnerable industrial control systems,” Kagan told the Free Beacon. “Our report shows that the Iranians have not stopped their cyber activities while negotiations have been going on, and that, on the contrary, their cyber attack infrastructure continues to expand.”
The Cylance report concluded that Iran’s cyber attack capabilities have increased sharply since 2010. Cylance also said North Korean cyber attacks against South Korean infrastructure suggest Tehran and Pyongyang may be cooperating on cyber attack strategy.
State Department documents made public by Wikileaks bolster the unclassified report’s conclusions.
“Several Iranian institutions and organizations conduct [open source intelligence (OSINT)] against USG programs,” one 2009 State Department cable said. “Most of the Iranian universities involved in this activity maintain longstanding ties to the IRGC.”
One organization, Farhang Azma Communication Co., downloaded over 100 U.S. Navy websites in a hunt for data on Pentagon equipment, weapons systems, unmanned vehicle technologies, communications, and intelligence systems.
“Persistent OSINT efforts show the continued interest and knowledge of U.S. capabilities and operations by Iranian institutions, as well as the Government of Iran (GoI),” the classified 2009 cable said.
“Individuals from many Iranian universities, as well as a variety of commercial organizations, also routinely attempt to solicit information from cleared defense contractors and U.S. firms via socially engineered email messages in order to acquire information related to restricted U.S. operations and research. This information could then be used to develop similar programs for the GoI, shared with third-party entities (e.g., Islamic extremist groups), or exploited through additional Iranian computer network operations activities,” the report said.
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LAS VEGAS — When John P. Carlin, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division, appealed on Friday to the hedge fund industry to share more information with the government, it was a tough sell.
“I encourage you to come in and talk to the F.B.I. and prosecutors,” Mr. Carlin told an audience of financial advisers and hedge fund managers at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference. But, he quickly assured the audience, “You will not leave the office with handcuffs.”
After years of close regulatory scrutiny after the financial crisis — and indictments and prosecutions of insider trading — there is no shortage of hedge fund managers who complain that the financial industry has become a punching bag for government regulators.
Mr. Carlin and his department want the industry to engage in a dialogue with the government to help prevent the proliferation of what he called cyberweapons of mass destruction.
“What they are stealing is what you have,” Mr. Carlin said of online criminals the department has monitored. “They are stealing economic information. They are stealing your negotiating strategies, and they are stealing your algorithms.”
Emboldened by a series of recent government measures to focus more on such crimes, the Justice Department has been sounding the warning bell across the country. Speaking at conferences like SALT and in private meetings with the heads of companies in sectors like the entertainment industry, utilities and finance, Mr. Carlin’s team has been urging the prompt reporting of online attacks.
It has met with large institutional investors and warned them to think twice before investing in a hedge fund that doesn’t have the proper security systems set up against such attacks, Mr. Carlin added.
Last month, President Obama gave the government new power to impose financial sanctions on overseas hackers who seek to benefit from stolen corporate information. Speaking at the time, Mr. Obama said that online threats posed “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States.”
On Friday, Mr. Carlin raised the specter of a new Cold War era, pointing to nations like China, North Korea and Russia as states that sponsor online attacks, both for commercial gain and to disrupt United States national security.
“You are being targeted by the same spies as those in the Cold War,” he said, recalling the recent attack on Sony Pictures, which United States officials have attributed to North Korea.
During a closed-door session moderated by a KPMG executive and attended by a small group of hedge fund managers, advisers and general counsels on Thursday afternoon, some expressed hesitation about coming forward to the government with information and questioned whether that would open the door to other scrutiny, according to two people who were at the meeting.
On Friday, Mr. Carlin spoke after Marc D. Powers, a former Securities and Exchange Commission investigator who is now a private sector lawyer, told the audience what to do when investigators come knocking at their doors.
“The S.E.C. is not your friend,” Mr. Powers said.
It was a tough act to follow.
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — THE recent unrest in Baltimore raises complex and confounding questions, and in response many people have attempted to define the problem solely in terms of insurgent American racism and violent police behavior.
But that is a gross oversimplification. America is not reverting to earlier racist patterns, and calling for a national conversation on race is a cliché that evades the real problem we now face: on one hand, a vicious tangle of concentrated poverty, disconnected youth and a culture of violence among a small but destructive minority in the inner cities; and, on the other hand, of out-of-control law-enforcement practices abetted by a police culture that prioritizes racial profiling and violent constraint.
First, we need a more realistic understanding of America’s inner cities. They are socially and culturally heterogeneous, and a great majority of residents are law-abiding, God-fearing and often socially conservative.
According to recent surveys, between 20 and 25 percent of their permanent residents are middle class; roughly 60 percent are solidly working class or working poor who labor incredibly hard, advocate fundamental American values and aspire to the American dream for their children. Their youth share their parents’ values, expend considerable social energy avoiding the violence around them and consume far fewer drugs than their white working- and middle-class counterparts, despite their disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates.
In all inner-city neighborhoods, however, there is a problem minority that varies between about 12.1 percent (in San Diego, for example) and 28 percent (in Phoenix) that comes largely from the disconnected youth between ages 16 and 24. Most are not in school and are chronically out of work, though their numbers are supplemented by working- and middle-class dropouts. With few skills and a contempt for low-wage jobs, they subsist through the underground economy of illicit trading and crime. Many belong to gangs.
Their street or thug culture is real, with a configuration of norms, values and habits that are, disturbingly, rooted in a ghetto brand of core American mainstream values: hypermasculinity, the aggressive assertion and defense of respect, extreme individualism, materialism and a reverence for the gun, all inflected with a threatening vision of blackness openly embraced as the thug life.
Such street culture is simply the black urban version of one of America’s most iconic traditions: the Wild West. America’s first gangsta thugs were Billy the Kid and Jesse James. In the youth thug cultures of both the Wild West and the inner cities, America sees inverted images of its own most iconic values, one through rose-tinted glass, the other through a glass, darkly.
While there is some continuity between the old Western and thug cultures learned through extensive exposure to the media, that of the urban streets originated more in reaction to the long centuries of institutionalized violence against blacks during slavery and Jim Crow. The historian Roger Lane has traced the roots of Philadelphia’s black “criminal subculture” all the way back to the mid-1800s; W. E. B. Du Bois found it thoroughly entrenched in his own study of Philadelphia in the 1890s.
This culture is reinforced by contemporary conditions like poverty, racial discrimination, chronic unemployment, single parenting and a chemically toxic, neurologically injurious environment, like the lead paint that poisoned Freddie Gray.
Its intersection with overly aggressive law enforcement was not random or inevitable, but rooted in a historical irony. As the political scientist Michael Javen Fortner documents in his forthcoming work “Black Silent Majority,” when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York introduced draconian new drug laws in the early 1970s to combat the increasingly violent street life of New York City, he did so with the full support of black leaders, who felt they had no choice — their lives and communities were being destroyed by the minority street gangs and drug addicts.
But it was not long before the dark side of this intervention emerged: Soon all black youth, not just the delinquent minority, were being profiled as criminals, all ghetto residents were being viewed and treated with disrespect and, increasingly, police tactics relied on the use of violence as a first resort.
And yet it didn’t work, at least in one important respect: Although the black homicide rate has declined substantially, it still remains catastrophic, with blacks being murdered at eight times the national rate — and, among teens, it has been rising again since 2002.
In tackling the present crisis, it is thus a clear mistake to focus only on police brutality, and it is fatuous to attribute it all to white racism. Black policemen were involved in both the South Carolina and Baltimore killings. Coming from the inner-city majority terrorized by the thug culture minority, they are, sadly, as likely to be brutal in their policing as white officers.
We see this in stark detail in the chronic violence of New York’s Rikers Island correction officers, the leadership and majority of whom are black. We see it also in the maternal rage of Toya Graham, the Baltimore single mom whose abusive reprimand of her son, a video of which quickly went viral, reflects both her fear of losing him to the street and her desperate, though counterproductive, mode of rearing her fatherless son.
WHAT is to be done? On the police side of the crisis, there should be immediate implementation of the sensible recommendations of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, including more community policing; making the use of violence a last resort; greater transparency and independent investigation of all police killings; an end to racial profiling; the use of body cameras; reduced use of the police in school disputes; and fundamental changes in officer training aimed at greater knowledge of, and respect for, inner-city neighborhoods.
Accompanying this should be a drastic reduction in the youth incarceration rate, which President Obama can make a dent in immediately by pardoning the many thousands of nonviolent youths who have been unfairly imprisoned and whose incarceration merely increases their likelihood of becoming violent.
In regard to black youth, the government must begin the chemical detoxification of ghetto neighborhoods in light of the now well-documented relation between toxic exposure and youth criminality. Further, there should be an immediate scaling up of the many federal and state programs for children and youth that have been shown to work: child care from the prenatal to pre-K stages, such as Head Start and the nurse-family partnership program; after-school programs to keep boys from the lure of the street and to provide educational enrichment as well as badly needed male role models; community-based programs that focus on enhancing life skills and providing short-term, entry-level employment; and continued expansion of successful charter school systems.
The president’s My Brother’s Keeper program, now a year old, is an excellent and timely initiative that has already begun the coordination and upscaling of such successful programs, as well as the integration of the private sector in their development.
And finally, there is one long-term, fundamental change that can come only from within the black community: a reduction in the number of kids born to single, usually poor, women, which now stands at 72 percent. Its consequences are grim: greatly increased risk of prolonged poverty, child abuse, educational failure and youth delinquency and violence, especially among boys, whose main reason for joining gangs is to find a family and male role models.
As one gang member told an interviewer working for the sociologist Deanna Wilkinson: “I grew up as looking for somebody to love me in the streets. You know, my mother was always working, my father used to be doing his thing. So I was by myself. I’m here looking for some love. I ain’t got nobody to give me love, so I went to the streets to find love.”
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Eight police officers and 14 suspected members of an Albanian rebel group have been killed in fighting in a northern Macedonian town, the authorities said Sunday, amid increased concerns about the political stability of the Balkan nation, which has a history of ethnic hostilities. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Ivo Kotevski, said 37 other police officers were wounded in the clashes, which began on Saturday. He called the rebels terrorists and said the group had been “neutralized.” Some of those killed were in uniforms with insignia of the disbanded ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought for Kosovo’s independence in the late 1990s. Mr. Kotevski said the militants enteredMacedonia at the start of May with an aim to attack state institutions.
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GARLAND — Garland’s police chief made clear Monday that his department had no advance warning that two gunmen from Phoenix would target a controversial art exhibit.
A week ago Sunday, two men armed with assault rifles and wearing body armor pulled up to the Curtis Culwell Center and opened fire, wounding a Garland ISD security guard.
Five Garland police officers, who were providing security at the Muhammad Art Exhibit, returned fire, killing Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi.
“We had no information from the FBI or anyone else that Elton Simpson posed a threat to our event,” Police Chief Mitch Bates said at a news conference.
FBI Director James Comey
Last week, FBI Director James Comey said federal investigators learned that Simpson might show up in Garland, but they had no indication he would attack the event, which featured provocative cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Comey said his agency sent an intelligence bulletin to police in Garland, including a picture, license plate and other information about Simpson. (See an FBI transcript of Comey’s comments here.)
Authorities say they were already investigating Simpson, who was previously convicted as part of a terrorism-related investigation. When the FBI learned that he could be heading to the event, the agency sent an intelligence bulletin to police in Garland, Comey told reporters.
“We didn’t have reason to believe that he was going to attack the event, or, in fact, we didn’t have reason to believe that he had left Phoenix,” Comey said, according to a transcript. “But because we developed reason to believe that he might be interested in the event, we sent it to them as part of what we’ve been doing with the event generally.”
But Bates said the bulletin was just one of many the department receives regularly and made no specific mention to the Garland event.
FBI evidence team members boxed up an assault rifle and clip at the scene in Garland. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)
“There is a little miscommunication as to the term ‘bulletin’ and what it means,” he said. “It was not intended to inform us or make us aware that Mr. Simpson was potentially targeting this event. He was simply one of many, many individuals they had looked at.”
The police commanders at the Culwell Center didn’t receive the FBI email, which described Simpson’s conduct over the years, Bates said.
A Garland police officer assigned to an FBI task force, who was in the command center, received the email, but didn’t actually read it until after the shooting, Bates said.
“Please note that the contents of that email would not have prevented the shooting, nor would it have changed the law enforcement response in any fashion,” Bates said.
Garland City Councilman Tim Campbell, who represents the area, said he believes the site itself is not still a target. The Culwell Center will host 200,000 people this graduation season.
“I’ve not heard anything, haven’t seen any tendency of people being afraid, and haven’t seen any reason for them to be,” Campbell said.
The FBI is investigating the suspected terrorism, including the claim by the Islamic State, or ISIS, that the group was connected to the attack. Garland police are investigating the shooting itself — both internally and criminally, said department spokesman Officer Joe Harn.
In their first news conference since the morning after the attack, Garland police revealed a few more details about the seconds-long shootout.
There were 150 attendees at the event, rather than 200 as previously stated, Bates said.
Garland police set up a perimeter outside a Wal-Mart evacutated Sunday after gunmen opened fire and were killed by police outside the nearby Culwell Center. A contest for cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad was being held at the Garland ISD facility. (Gregory Castillo/Staff Photographer)
Pamela Geller, who organized the contest through her group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has said she paid $10,000 for heightened security outside the event, in addition to her own guards inside.
For an event that size, there would usually be two to four officers working security, Bates said. But because of the known threats and violence associated with the attendees in the past, authorities upped the number by dozens.
There were at least 40 Garland police officers there, which included a SWAT team and a bomb unit. That’s in addition to FBI and ATF agents, Garland Independent School District security guards and Texas Department of Public Safety officers.
The traffic officer, who had never been in a shooting before, fired first and hit both suspects, Bates said.
Seconds later, four SWAT officers arrived and shot the suspects who were still moving, police said. The suspects tried to retrieve more weapons from their vehicle and they fell to the ground, police said.
The chief declined to identify the five Garland officers who shot at the suspects, saying there were “direct and indirect threats for their safety and the safety of their families.” Police are monitoring social media.
After the shooting, authorities found no bombs, but they recovered several weapons the suspects brought, including three assault rifles, three pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Bates thanked several agencies for their help with the investigation, including: the FBI’s Dallas office, the ATF, Texas Department of Public Safety and Irving Police Department’s SWAT team. Four bomb units were involved — from Garland, the FBI, the Plano Police Department and the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
“Anytime we have an officer-involved shooting, there’s a protocol that kicks out,” City Attorney Brad Neighbor said. “This was just a little different, with the FBI and intelligence overlay.”
The chief saved his highest praise for Garland police.
“I could not be more proud of the men and women of the Garland Police Department,” Bates said. “Most deserving of our praise … are those who responded to the attack by engaging the enemy.”
“These are our true heroes.”
Staff writer Ray Leszcynski contributed reporting.
Original post:
Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates will update the news media at 10 a.m. about the investigation into the shooting last Sunday that officials call an attempted terrorist attack.
A Garland police officer shot and killed two gunmen who police say drove from Phoenix to wage jihad on a Muhammad cartoon-drawing contest they saw as offensive to Muslims.
The assailants jumped out of their car with assault rifles and shot Garland ISD security guard Bruce Joiner in the ankle.
The Garland police officer, who has not been identified, fired back.
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GARLAND (CBSDFW.COM) – Garland Police say they had no advance warnings that could have prevented the May 3 shootings outside Culwell Center, where a Muhammed art cartoon contest was being held.
The men, identified at Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, had three automatic weapons, two pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They were gunned down before they could enter the building, where law enforcement believes they intended to carry out a mass shooting.
In the days following the shooting, the FBI reported it had sent an advance warning to Garland Police, naming Simpson as a potential threat to the event three hours before the shooting.
Garland Police Chief Bates said the FBI did issue a bulletin two days prior to the Muhammad exhibit, saying there were no known credible threats, but the event was a potential target. Bates said the general information bulletin email did not define Simpson as a threat.
“We had no information from the FBI that Elton Simpson or anyone else post a threat to our event,” said Bates.
Bates also disclosed that 40 Garland officers were added to the security detail for the event. Five of those officers opened fire on the two suspects. The first officer to see and shoot at the suspects is credited for killing them.
The names of the officers involved have not been released, due to continuing threats, according to Bates. Police also continue to monitor social media for any future potential threats against the department and the community.
Authorities had "absolutely no information" about an imminent threat to the prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, where two gunmen opened fire last week, police said Monday, revealing new information about how officials responded to the May 3 attack.
Armed with assault rifles, Elton Simpson, 30, and his roommate Nadir Soofi, 34, shot and wounded a security guard outside the event, but were shot to death by police before they could kill anyone, police have said.
In a news conference Monday, Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates said SWAT team members, not a traffic officer, fired the final shots at the suspects seconds after the attack began. It had previously been reported that a Garland traffic officer with a service pistol had confronted and killed the suspects.
According to Bates, that officer wounded both suspects seconds before Garland SWAT team members used assault rifles and duty pistols to shoot at Simpson and Soofi. Both men died at the scene.
Three assault rifles, three pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were later found in the suspects' car and on their bodies. Bomb squad officers also spent several hours searching for explosives on the suspects and in their car, but found none, police said.
Simpson was well known to federal agents and had been prosecuted in a terrorism-related investigation. Investigators had learned hours before the event that Simpson "might be interested" in going to the event, FBI Director James Comey said last week.
But on Monday, Bates rejected reports that law enforcement officials had been warned the suspects might attack the event, calling such reports inaccurate.
"We absolutely had no information that anyone, including Simpson and Soofi, were targeting this event," Bates told reporters. "That did not exist, that did not happen at all, nowhere."
The information contained in an FBI memo would not have changed the police response, he said.
On May 1, the FBI issued a national bulletin to law enforcement officials that identified the contest as a "potential target" based on the nature of the event and who would be present, Bates said Monday.
Then, several hours before the contest was to begin, an FBI analyst sent an "informational email" about Simpson to the local FBI joint terrorism task force, which includes a Garland police detective.
According to the FBI, the bulletin included a picture of Simpson and information about his associates and possible license plates. Bates told reporters that no one with the Garland Police Department or FBI nor state trooper officials at a command post set up for the event were aware of the email until after the shooting.
Bates insisted that the information it contained would not have changed his department's response to the shooting and could not have prevented it.
Bates noted that 40 police personnel had been assigned to a security detail for the event, a much higher number than the usual handful of officers usually required for a gathering of that size.
For more breaking news, follow me @cmaiduc
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
1:16 p.m.: This article has been updated with additional details about the shooting from police.
This article was originally published at 10:43 a.m.
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John Lennon appeared on The Dick Cavett Show on this date more than forty years ago and made a bold prediction: The FBI were keeping a close eye on him. This might sound like a typical conspiracy theory of the early '70s, except that it was totally true...either an indication that the FBI was predictable or it just wasn't very good at the secrecy thing. Lennon had all of the makings for a good FBI target: He had a record with drugs, he was vocally against the Vietnam War, and his political leanings were just right of being a godless communist. He wasn't the first, nor would he be the last, to gather attention from the Bureau. Here are another lot of otherwise harmless musicians that would get lengthy files in Washington D.C., from Elvis Presley to N.W.A.
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Woody Guthrie et al
Woody Guthrie's guitar famously had the words "this machine kills fascists on a sticker on its front. One would think that the United States, clearly the black-and-white good guys during the Cold War, would be pleased with such sentiments...after all, it was Nikita Khrushchev and his gang that represented the fascists, wasn't it? Unsurprisingly, real history played out little differently, and American folk musician Guthrie was proudly enrolled in the Communist Party despite it being under constant fire from the federal government. If you haven't heard it a million times by now: "This Land Is Your Land" isn't a patriotic anthem. The FBI had kept a file on the performer since 1941, as well asPete Seeger and many of the folkies to follow in his footsteps. Although the report centered around his column in the openly Communist People's World magazine, the bureau went as far as it could to find dirt on Guthrie, including collecting testimony from those who served with him in the Navy.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was perhaps the most famous person to ever serve in the United States military, beating even george Washington himself. The performer's willing attitude toward required service during the '50s made him the image of patriotism, but his sheer celebrity more-or-less required that the FBI keep a file on him nonetheless. There were a litany of complaints brought to the bureau's attention by sketchy sources, such as churches declaring him to be "a definite danger to the security of the United States," with his violent hip thrusts being cited as the obvious weapon of mass destruction. That said, the FBI took any chance it could to blackmail celebrities—because J. Edgar Hoover was one of the greatest trolls in history—and, whatever they had on Presley, it inspired him to offer his services as a snitch on The Beatles, Jane Fonda and...The Smothers Brothers?
MC5
If any music genre should inspire fear in the federal government, it should obviously be the punk movement—after all, they encouraged disbanding government and otherwise being raucous, for fun and profit. Even before punk was really a thing, the FBI had a file on its activity. We're sure that The Stooges have a file describing Iggy Pop as "an obvious intellect in the argument for socialism" or something, but the bureau was more interested in the less appreciated MC5. The band is regarded as one of the most explosive live acts of all time, whether that be smashing instruments or bringing rifles onstage, but was even better known for its affiliation with the White Panther Party, a caucasian left-wing organization assisting the Black Panther Party. The band has become legendary for coming about as close as possible to performing in an actual war zone, carrying out an eight-hour set outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago when many of the other performers didn't show up. It's marked as one of the worst cases of civil disobedience in American history, and there was MC5, just standing in the middle, waiting for the world to see. Video from the more peaceful moments below:
N.W.A.
If you're an agency that spends a decent amount of time spying, the worst thing you can do, probably, is let the party you've been watching that you're do so. Such was the case when the bureau decided to let N.W.A. know that it didn't much care for the song "F*ck The Police," similar to how the Oklahoma City Thunder probably doesn't appreciate Lil B's song "F*ck Kevin Durant" (except the NBA franchise has kept it's cool and ignored the issue, rather than promote it further). Assistant director Milt Ahlericht wrote the hip-hop group to say "music plays a significant role in society, and I wanted you to be aware of the FBI's position relative to this song and its message. I believe my views reflect the opinion of the entire law enforcement community." Surely even Ice Cube stopped scowling when he read that. To get an idea how seriously the band, and the nation, took the FBI's threats, you can now see the actual letter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Nine Inch Nails
The late '80s was a time where it was popular for the FBI to seek out band with three-letter acronym names that began with "N." Trent Reznor and his collective Nine Inch Nails was the next band to get attention after N.W.A. No one will be surprised to learn that it was the band's direction in music videos that got it in trouble...after all, "Closer" is a bizarre trip full of monkeys tied to crosses and sides of meat, while "Happiness in Slavery" induces nausea with its imagery of a man being sexually tortured by a chair. But no, neither of these videos got Reznor in trouble on a major scale, as they hadn't come out yet. Instead the government came after him for "Down In It," a song that NIN fans know to be one of the band's most innocuous singles. The video featured cameras tied to helium balloons shooting Reznor from above, to correlate with its "I was up above it, now I'm down in it" lyrics. One of those balloons got loose however and flew 200 miles, where a farmer believed he had found a snuff film, leading to an FBI investigation. Imagine what they thought when the videos actually started getting scary.
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DALLAS — Police officials in Garland, Tex., the Dallas suburb where two gunmen opened fire May 3 outside a contest for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, defended their handling of the event’s security at a news conference on Monday amid questions about whether local officials had been warned by federal authorities that one of the gunmen posed a threat.
“No information was missed or ignored,” the Garland police chief, Mitch Bates, told reporters. “The identities of the two suspects were not known to us until many hours after the shooting occurred.”
The comments by Chief Bates came in response to statements by officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week about the intelligence that had been gathered about one of the gunmen, Elton Simpson, 30, of Phoenix. Mr. Simpson carried out the attack outside the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest with Nadir Soofi, 34, also of Phoenix. Both gunmen were killed by officers.
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told reporters in Washington on Thursday that three hours before the attack, the F.B.I. sent a bulletin to the Garland police warning them that Mr. Simpson might show up at the event.
“We developed information just hours before the event that Simpson might be interested in going to Garland,” Mr. Comey said. On April 23, Mr. Simpson had referred on Twitter to the planned cartoon contest.
But on Monday, Chief Bates denied that the information in that communication would have prevented the shooting. He described the bulletin as an email that was sent a few hours before the event was to start. He said the email, which was about Mr. Simpson and from an F.B.I. analyst, was sent to members of a federal Dallas-area joint terrorism task force that includes a Garland police detective.
Chief Bates described the email as “a general information bulletin” that “did not contain any information that listed Simpson as a potential threat.” He said that neither the detective nor anyone in the police command center that was set up to oversee security of the event and included members of the F.B.I., was aware of the email before the attack.
“The contents of that email would not have prevented the shooting, nor would it have changed the law enforcement response in any fashion,” Chief Bates said. He did not explain why even a general email about Mr. Simpson and his past behavior did not trigger more scrutiny. Instead he played down the significance of the email.
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May 11 at 5:57 PM
I am perplexed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the National Security Agency’s sweep of phone logs goes beyond what Congress authorized in 2001 to combat terrorism under the Patriot Act [“NSA collection of phone data ruled unlawful,” front page, May 8]. But the terrorism of the Islamic State is more brutal and more sophisticated than the terrorism we faced in 2001.
On May 7, FBI Director James B. Comey , in speaking about a Garland, Tex., shooting, said that the Islamic State’s recruiting strategy — personal outreach through Twitter and slick application of other social media — is threatening to “outpace the government’s capabilities across the intelligence community.”
This does not seem to be the time for the U.S. Court of Appeals or the American Civil Liberties Union to curtail the surveillance activities of the NSA or the FBI. If combating terrorism requires strengthening the wording of the Patriot Act, so be it.
Bob Olmstead, Greenville, S.C.
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Hours before two would-be terrorists attacked a provocative Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest, the FBI sent local authorities the license plate number and photo of one of the shooters, who had a prior terrorism-related conviction, but police said Monday they didn't see the intelligence bulletin in time.
Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates also said the FBI notice was not specific enough to have altered authorities' response.
About 40 Garland police officers, along with members of federal and state law enforcement agencies, were guarding the May 3 event at a conference center in suburban Dallas when the attackers drove up and opened fire. Five officers responded, killing the two gunmen. One unarmed security guard was injured; no one attending the event was hurt.
Bates described the security plan, which he said took several months to create, as "an overwhelming success."
The FBI sent the bulletin through its Dallas command post to Garland police, informing them that one of the attackers, Elton Simpson, "might be interested in going to Garland," FBI Director James Comey told reporters in Washington on Thursday. The FBI issued the warning even though Comey said they didn't believe Simpson had left Phoenix. An FBI spokeswoman in Dallas made the transcript of Comey's comments available Monday.
But Bates said no one at the law enforcement command post was aware of the FBI's bulletin on Simpson prior to the attack.
"We had no information from the FBI or anyone else that Simpson posed a threat to our event," he said.
The FBI memo was sent to the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, a 24-agency organization that includes one Garland police detective, Bates said. That detective, who received the bulletin via email, didn't see it until after the event.
The police chief described the bulletin as "one of many emails sent on that day," and his spokesman said Bates had no access to it.
The FBI routinely disseminates information about potential national security concerns to local law enforcement officials, including members of joint terrorism task forces and regional locally operated fusion centers. In this case, the FBI flagged individuals — including Simpson — who it thought were interested in the cartoon contest.
Simpson and the other gunman, Nadir Soofi, were armed with three pistols, three assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Bates said Monday. The firefight happened outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland where the contest was held.
Neither the FBI nor Garland police said they anticipated that either suspect would target the event. And Bates added: "Please note that the contents of that email would not have prevented this shooting, nor would it have changed the law enforcement response in any fashion."
Federal and local law enforcement officials declined to provide The Associated Press with a copy of the FBI's May 3 intelligence bulletin.
Zach Horn, a Dallas attorney representing five officers involved in the shooting, said neither he nor his clients had seen the FBI memo. But, he added, "They knew they weren't guarding a Girl Scout convention."
Mainstream Islamic tradition holds that any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is blasphemous, and drawings such as the ones featured at the Garland have sparked violence around the world.
The officers, all of whom remain on paid administrative leave, are members of the Texas Municipal Police Association. The union provides legal representation for police in officer-involved shootings.
The Garland school board, which owns the publicly funded Curtis Culwell Center, said Monday it will discuss arming its security personnel and will evaluate its leasing policy. In January, the center opened its doors to a fundraiser organized by a Chicago-based nonprofit that aims to help Muslims combat negative depictions of the prophet. That event drew about 1,000 protesters.
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By EVA RUTH MORAVEC and EMILY SCHMALL, Associated Press
GARLAND, Texas (AP) — Hours before two would-be terrorists attacked a provocative Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest, the FBI sent local authorities the license plate number and photo of one of the shooters, who had a prior terrorism-related conviction, but police said Monday they didn't see the intelligence bulletin in time.
Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates also said the FBI notice was not specific enough to have altered authorities' response.
About 40 Garland police officers, along with members of federal and state law enforcement agencies, were guarding the May 3 event at a conference center in suburban Dallas when the attackers drove up and opened fire. Five officers responded, killing the two gunmen. One unarmed security guard was injured; no one attending the event was hurt.
Bates described the security plan, which he said took several months to create, as "an overwhelming success."
The FBI sent the bulletin through its Dallas command post to Garland police, informing them that one of the attackers, Elton Simpson, "might be interested in going to Garland," FBI Director James Comey told reporters in Washington on Thursday. The FBI issued the warning even though Comey said they didn't believe Simpson had left Phoenix. An FBI spokeswoman in Dallas made the transcript of Comey's comments available Monday.
But Bates said no one at the law enforcement command post was aware of the FBI's bulletin on Simpson prior to the attack.
"We had no information from the FBI or anyone else that Simpson posed a threat to our event," he said.
The FBI memo was sent to the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, a 24-agency organization that includes one Garland police detective, Bates said. That detective, who received the bulletin via email, didn't see it until after the event.
The police chief described the bulletin as "one of many emails sent on that day," and his spokesman said Bates had no access to it.
The FBI routinely disseminates information about potential national security concerns to local law enforcement officials, including members of joint terrorism task forces and regional locally operated fusion centers. In this case, the FBI flagged individuals — including Simpson — who it thought were interested in the cartoon contest.
Simpson and the other gunman, Nadir Soofi, were armed with three pistols, three assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Bates said Monday. The firefight happened outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland where the contest was held.
Neither the FBI nor Garland police said they anticipated that either suspect would target the event. And Bates added: "Please note that the contents of that email would not have prevented this shooting, nor would it have changed the law enforcement response in any fashion."
Federal and local law enforcement officials declined to provide The Associated Press with a copy of the FBI's May 3 intelligence bulletin.
Zach Horn, a Dallas attorney representing five officers involved in the shooting, said neither he nor his clients had seen the FBI memo. But, he added, "They knew they weren't guarding a Girl Scout convention."
Mainstream Islamic tradition holds that any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is blasphemous, and drawings such as the ones featured at the Garland have sparked violence around the world.
The officers, all of whom remain on paid administrative leave, are members of the Texas Municipal Police Association. The union provides legal representation for police in officer-involved shootings.
The Garland school board, which owns the publicly funded Curtis Culwell Center, said Monday it will discuss arming its security personnel and will evaluate its leasing policy. In January, the center opened its doors to a fundraiser organized by a Chicago-based nonprofit that aims to help Muslims combat negative depictions of the prophet. That event drew about 1,000 protesters.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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The gunmen who attacked a cartoon contest depicting the prophet Muhammad in Texas earlier this month were killed by multiple officers on a SWAT team, rather than a sole traffic patrol officer, as police had initially said after the encounter.
This new information was released by Garland’s police chief on Monday during a news conference seeking to emphasize that his department had no warning that the gunmen would target the contest and cartoon exhibit.
In the initial narrative outlined the morning after the incident occurred, Garland police said the two gunmen drove up to the center and opened fire in the parking lot, hitting a school security officer in the leg. A police spokesman said last week that an officer who normally works on traffic, but who was at the event as part of a heavy security detail, shot and killed both gunmen using his duty pistol.
On Monday, Mitch Bates, the Garland police chief, clarified details of this shootout between the gunmen and five of his force’s officers.
Bates said that the officer and the security guard who were confronted by the armed gunmen were not in a police car, as was initially believed, but were standing by it when the gunmen drove up to a barricade and got out of their car.
In addition, Bates said that the Garland police officer, who has not been identified, shot the gunmen and wounded, rather than killed, both of them. Four SWAT members armed with assault rifles and pistols came over within seconds, Bates said, and after dozens of rounds were fired from police and the suspected shooters, both gunmen had been killed.
Elton Simpson, 30, and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, 34, traveled from Phoenix to the inflammatory contest, which offered $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting Muhammad. Drawings of Muhammad are considered blasphemous by many Muslims, and the show had drawn worldwide attention from jihadists calling for attacks in Garland.
Bates said on Monday that the two men had six guns between them — three assault rifles and three pistols — as well as hundreds of rounds of ammunition on their bodies and in their vehicle. He said there were no indications that anyone else was involved in the attack, but said the investigation is ongoing.
The FBI had known about Simpson for nearly a decade, since it began investigating him and he was eventually suspected of trying to fly overseas to wage jihad.
FBI Director James B. Comey told reporters at a briefing last week that his agents sent an intelligence bulletin to authorities in Garland about three hours before the attack with information about Simpson. Comey said the FBI learned around that time that Simpson was possibly interested in going to Garland, so he said they sent local authorities a photo of him and information that they had.
But he said that the FBI had no reason to believe that Simpson had left Phoenix or was going to attack the event, only that he may have been interested in going to the event.
“We didn’t know more than that,” he said.
During his news conference Monday, Bates said that no one in his department or at the command post for the event’s security knew about this e-mail before the shooting.
But he also emphasized that the e-mail would not have changed what happened that day, saying that the bulletin couldn’t have prevented the shooting or changed the way law enforcement officials responded. He praised the officers who engaged in the shootout with Simpson and Soofi as heroes “who put their own lives at great risk.”
Bates also said Monday that the police were not releasing the names of any of the officers involved in the episode due to what he called “direct and indirect threats to their safety and the safety of their families.”
Mark Berman is a reporter on the National staff. He runs Post Nation, a destination for breaking news and developing stories from around the country.
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St. Roch Church in the Staten Island borough of New York between Sunday morning Masses on Nov. 2, 2014.(Photo: Gregory A. Shemitz, Religion News Service)
WASHINGTON — The United States is a significantly less Christian country than it was seven years ago.
That's the top finding — one that will ricochet through American faith, culture and politics — in the Pew Research Center's newest report, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," released Tuesday.
This trend "is big, it's broad and it's everywhere," said Alan Cooperman, Pew's director of religion research.
Christianity still dominates American religious identity (70%), but the survey shows dramatic shifts as more people move out the doors of denominations, shedding spiritual connections along the way.
Atheists and agnostics have nearly doubled their share of the religious marketplace, and overall indifference to religion of any sort is rising as well. Only the historically black Protestant churches have held a steady grip through the years of change.
"Diversity on the Rise: Racial & ethnic minorities grow among faith groups." (Photo: Tiffany McCallen, Religion News Service.)
Remember the familiar map of American religion? The South: A bastion of white evangelicals. The Northeast: Cradle of Catholics. The Midwest: Nest of Mainline Protestants. The West: Incubator of "nones" — people who claim no religious brand label.
Well, scratch all that in the new topography.
The shrinking numbers of Christians and their loss of market share is the most significant change since 2007 (when Pew did its first U.S. Religious Landscape survey) and the new, equally massive survey of 35,000 U.S. adults.
The percentage of people who describe themselves as Christians fell about 8 points — from 78.4% to 70.6%. This includes people in virtually all demographic groups, whether they are "nearing retirement or just entering adulthood, married or single, living in the West or the Bible Belt," according to the survey report.
State by state and regional data show:
Massachusetts is down on Catholics by 10 percentage points. South Carolina is down the same degree on evangelicals. Mainline Protestants, already sliding for 40 years or more, declined all over the Midwest by 3 to 4 percentage points.The Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church, the country's two largest Protestant denominations, are each down roughly the same 1.4 to 1.5 percentage points.Every tradition took a hit in in the West as the number of people who claim no religious brand continues to climb.
Christian faiths are troubled by generational change — each successive group is less connected than their parents — and by "switching" at all ages, the report shows. While nearly 86% of Americans say they grew up as Christians, nearly one in five (19%) say they aren't so anymore.
"Overall, there are more than four former Christians for every convert to Christianity," said Cooperman.
Although evangelicals are part of the decline, their slide has been less steep. They benefit from more people joining evangelical traditions, but they're hurt by generational change and by America's increased diversity.
According to the survey, white "born-again or evangelical" Protestants — closely watched for their political clout within the GOP — now account for 19% of American adults, down slightly from 21% in 2007.
Politicians should take note, said Mike Hout, a sociologist and demographer at New York University who is also a co-director of the General Social Survey.
"Traditionally, we thought religion was the mover and politics were the consequence," he said. Today, it's the opposite.
Many of today's formerly faithful left conservative evangelical or Catholic denominations because "they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that," Hout said.
Catholics dropped both in market share and in real numbers. Despite their high retention rate for people reared in the faith, they have a low conversion rate. Today, Cooperman said, 13% of U.S. adults are former Catholics, up from 10% in 2007.
Generational shifts are also hurting Catholic numbers. Greg Smith, Pew's associate director of research, said "just 16% of the 18-to-24-year-olds today are Catholic, and that is not enough to offset the numbers lost to the aging and switching."
Where are they going? To religious nowhere.
The "nones" — Americans who are unaffiliated with brand-name religion — are the new major force in American faith. And they are more secular in outlook — and "more comfortable admitting it" than ever before, said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Their growth spans the generations, as well as racial and ethnic groups, said Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics for the Pew Research Center.
"Nones," at 22.8% of the U.S. (up from 16% just eight years ago) run second only to evangelicals (25.4%) and ahead of Catholics (20.8%) in religious market share.
The "nones" numbers are now big enough to show noteworthy diversity:
Atheists rose from 1.6% to 3.1%, and agnostics from 2.4% to 4%. Combined, there are more "nones" than Evangelical Lutherans, United Methodists and Episcopalians all together.
Christians decline as share of U.S. population. (Photo: Religion News Service)
"It's because we're right," crowed David Silverman, president of American Atheists. He hadn't yet seen the Pew findings, but commented based on other surveys he said showed nones rising numbers. Indeed, it's the public attention given to "nones" in the last decade, combined with the wide-open access to anti-religious discussion on the Internet, that drives the change, Silverman said.
"More people know the facts, and more people realize they are not alone," Silverman said. And with these shifts, the stigma of coming out as an atheist is lessening.
"It's now impossible for an atheist to think he is alone in this world. They are automatically empowered," said Silverman.
The bulk of the "nones" (15.8%, up from 12.1% in 2007) don't even commit to any view on God. Instead, they say they believe "nothing in particular."
But among the "nothings," there's a distinct split between "spiritual" and totally indifferent "nones."
Thirty percent of all "nones" still showed "a sort of religious pulse" by saying that religion is still at least somewhat important to them, said Cooperman.
However, the bulk of this group (39%) are not agnostic, atheist or vaguely spiritual — they're just not interested. Religion is not even somewhat important to them.
That same level of disinterest cuts into their social and political clout, said Hout.
The nothing-in-particular folks "don't vote, don't marry and don't have kids," at the same rate as other Americans, said Hout. "They are allergic to large, organized institutions — mass media, religions, big corporations, and political parties."
"None" is the winning category for religious switchers across society, particularly among gay and lesbians — 41% of gay or lesbian Americans say they have no religion. Cooperman said. "This suggests the degree of alienation and discomfort and sense of being unwelcome that they may have felt in traditional religious groups."
"Interfaith Marriage Grows." (Photo: Tiffany McCallen, Religion News Service)
Other trends of note:
Intermarriage is rising with each generation. Among Americans who have gotten married since 2010, nearly four-in-ten (39%) report that they are in religiously mixed marriages, compared with 19% among those who got married before 1960, according to the report.
There's an identity gender gap. Most Christians are women (55%) and most "nones" are men (57%). However, women's unbelief numbers are growing: nearly one in five (19%) now say they have no religious identity.Diversity makes a difference. Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics (up from 35% in 2007), 24% of evangelicals (up from 19%) and 14% of mainline Protestants (up from 9%). "The share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus," the report said.
The latest survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 35,071 adults interviewed by telephone, on both cellphones and landlines, from June 4-Sept. 30, 2014. The margin of error on overall findings is plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
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