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Lawyer: Russian developer’s staffer also at Trump Tower meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) — A representative of the Russian developer who partnered with President Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow was the eighth person at a Trump Tower meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign, a lawyer for the developer said Tuesday.

Ike Kaveladze attended to help translate at the meeting with Trump Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others, attorney Scott Balber told The Washington Post and CNN.

Balber told the outlets that Kaveladze works for developers Emin and Aras Agalarov and was there to represent them. The father and son worked with Trump on the pageant in 2013. They were named in the emails that set up the Trump Tower meeting, which promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Balber didn’t return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. He told the other media outlets that officials from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office were in touch with him about Kaveladze and that he and Kaveladze were cooperating.

A person familiar with the meeting speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation confirmed to the AP that Kaveladze attended.

Mueller is investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s eldest son arranged the June 2016 meeting after he was promised that a Russian government lawyer would provide negative information about Trump’s Democratic rival during the campaign.

In emails, Trump Jr. expressed enthusiastic support at the prospect of receiving such material.

Balber said Kaveladze wasn’t needed as a translator at the meeting because Veselnitskaya brought one with her.

The meeting also was attended by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rinat Akhmetshin, a prominent Russian-American lobbyist and a former Soviet military officer.

Trump Jr. scheduled the gathering after a British publicist for Emin Agalarov promised that Veselnitskaya might have damaging information on Clinton she could share at the meeting. Trump Jr. has said the information wasn’t useful.

Vaselnitskaya has denied that she works for the Russian government. She says the meeting focused on US-Russian adoption policies and a sanctions law.

Associated Press writer Desmond Butler in Baltimore contributed to this report.

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Callista Gingrich casts Trump as guardian of the environment 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Callista Gingrich, Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to the Vatican, told skeptical Democrats on Tuesday that the president wants the United States to be an environmental leader even after pulling the country out of the landmark accord aimed at combating global warming.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gingrich said Trump is committed to sustaining “our clean air and our clean water.” She said “we aren’t backing off of that” despite Trump’s recent decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

“We’re all called to be stewards of the land,” said Gingrich, the wife of Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and a close ally of Trump’s.

Democrats have criticized Trump sharply for leaving the Paris accord, a move that left the United States, Syria and Nicaragua as the only sovereign countries to not be part of the agreement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Trump’s withdrawal “one of the worst decisions of the 21st century because of the huge damage to our economy, our environment and our geopolitical standing.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Callista Gingrich that he must have missed the statements from Trump that gave her such faith.

“I wish it were so,” he said. “I’m not persuaded.”

Pope Francis met with Trump in late May at the Vatican, days after the president announced he was nominating Gingrich to the ambassador’s post. Francis — who has framed climate change as an urgent moral crisis and blamed global warming on an unfair, fossil fuel-based industrial model that harms the poor — presented Trump as a gift his 2015 encyclical on the need to protect the environment.

Merkley asked Gingrich whether Trump has read the encyclical. She said she’s not aware whether he has or not. Merkley asked her whether she shares the pope’s desire to urgently address the factors causing global change.

Gingrich said she believes that climate change exists and that “some of it is due to human behavior.”

Trump “wants the United States to be an environmental leader,” she said. “But we are looking to increase the security of this country, to provide more jobs for Americans and to have better prosperity.”

Callista Gingrich is president of Gingrich Productions and has produced a number of documentaries, including one about Pope John Paul II.

She worked for the House Committee on Agriculture as chief clerk until 2007. She was a key figure in her husband’s 2012 bid for the Republican nomination.

She was a congressional aide when she began a six-year affair with Newt Gingrich, then a married Republican congressman.

In 2012, Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne Gingrich, told ABC News that he had proposed an “open marriage” so he could continue to see Callista without divorcing. The former House speaker denied the charge.

He converted to Catholicism in 2009, after years of attending mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., where Callista Gingrich has performed in the choir.

Trump’s vision for foreign relations and diplomacy has been starkly different from that promoted by the vastly popular Pope Francis. While Francis has spoken of the need for bridges between nations, Trump has advocated building a wall on the Mexican border and restricting travel to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries as necessary national security measures.

By RICHARD LARDNER

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‘Let Obamacare fail,’ Trump says after GOP plan collapses

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump declared Tuesday he’s going to “let Obamacare fail” after the Republicans’ effort to rewrite the 2010 health care overhaul imploded in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed a vote on a backup plan simply repealing the statute, but desertions by his own party seemed to ensure that would fail, too.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said they opposed McConnell’s Plan B. That’s enough to spell defeat and could send a message to conservative Republicans that it is time to abandon efforts to tear down Obama’s law.

All Senate Democrats are opposed to the GOP changes.

In the morning, Trump tweeted a barrage of criticism over his party’s failure on its flagship legislative priority. For seven years, the GOP has pledged to repeal President Barack Obama’s law.

“Most Republicans were loyal, terrific & worked really hard,” Trump tweeted. “We were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans.”

Later, the president went further, describing a legislative tactic and political outcome that contradicts the views of many in the GOP.

“I’m not going to own it,” he said as he opened a White House event with military officers. “I can tell you that the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us and they’re going to say how do we fix it?”

Many Republicans worry that the public already views health care as their responsibility, since they control the White House and both houses of Congress.

Trump has talked before about discontinuing federal payments to insurers that have let the companies subsidize out-of-pockets costs for millions of low-earning customers. Insurers say the threat of such disruption has already encouraged them to leave some markets and seek higher premiums.

Two GOP senators — Utah’s Mike Lee and Jerry Moran of Kansas — sealed the doom of McConnell’s bill replacing much of Obama’s law late Monday when they announced they would vote “no” in an initial, critical vote that had been expected as soon as next week. That meant that at least four of the 52 GOP senators were ready to block the measure — two more than Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had to spare in the face of unanimous Democratic opposition.

On the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell conceded that the legislation repealing the 2010 law and replacing it with GOP-preferred programs “will not be successful,” essentially waving a white flag.

He said instead, the Senate would vote on legislation dismantling much of Obama’s statute that would take effect in two years, which Republicans say would give Congress time to approve replacement legislation. But such legislation seems unlikely to be approved, with many Republicans concerned the two-year gap would roil insurance markets and produce a political backlash against the GOP.

Moderate Republican Sen. Capito said she’d oppose scuttling Obama’s statute “without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians.” She’s criticized the GOP bill’s cuts in Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people that her state relies on heavily.

Another moderate, Susan Collins, also said she’d oppose McConnell’s measure. She said repealing the law without an immediate replacement would produce “great anxiety for individuals” who benefit from Obama’s statute and “cause the insurance markets to go into turmoil.”

Alaska has extremely high medical costs because many residents live in remote areas, and it also benefits from Obama’s expansion of Medicaid coverage. Murkowski has been wary of anything that would jeopardize federal funds for her state.

The three women are helping sink a McConnell repeal effort that initially saw him appoint an all-male group of senators to try crafting an overhaul bill. McConnell opened those closed-door meetings to all GOP senators after the women complained.

This is the second stinging setback on the issue in three weeks for McConnell, whose reputation as a legislative mastermind has been marred as he’s failed to unite his chamber’s Republicans behind a health overhaul package that highlighted jagged divides between conservatives and moderates. In late June, he abandoned an initial package after he lacked enough GOP support to pass.

The episode has also been jarring for Trump, whose intermittent lobbying and nebulous, often contradictory descriptions of what he’s wanted have shown he has limited clout with senators. That despite a determination by Trump, McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to demonstrate that a GOP running the White House and Congress can govern effectively.

McConnell’s failed bill would have left 22 million uninsured by 2026, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a number that many Republicans found unpalatable. But the vetoed 2015 measure would be even worse, the budget office said last January, producing 32 million additional uninsured people by 2026 — figures that seemed likely to drive a stake into that bill’s prospects for passing Congress.

That would seem to leave McConnell with an option he described last month — negotiating with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. That would likely be on a narrower package aimed more at keeping insurers in difficult marketplaces they’re either abandoning or imposing rapidly growing premiums.

Similar to legislation the House approved in May after its own setbacks, McConnell’s bill would repeal Obama’s tax penalties on people who don’t buy coverage and cut the Medicaid program for the poor, elderly and nursing home residents. It rolled back many of the statute’s requirements for the policies insurers can sell and eliminated many tax increases that raised money for Obama’s expansion to 20 million more people, though it retained the law’s tax boosts on high earners.

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Voice of Kermit The Frog, Steve Whitmire, Fired After 27 Years!

The Muppets Studio did not detail the nature of Whitmire’s “repeated unacceptable business conduct,” but said it spanned “a period of many years,” adding that “he consistently failed to address” his employers’ feedback.

In the post, the first on his site, Whitemire said the Muppets, for him, "are not just a job, or a career, or even a passion". Disney and The Muppets Studio, however, claimed that they made a decision to terminate Whitmire because of his "unacceptable business conduct".

The 57-year-old told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday he was reportedly let go by Disney last October due to unwanted notes during the short-lived Muppets  reboot on ABC, as well as a union disagreement.  Whitmire could not immediately be reached for comment, but in an interview Monday with The Hollywood Reporter he said the studio felt he had been too outspoken in expressing how the Kermit character should be portrayed on the ABC prime-time Muppets mockumentary series that aired in 2015-16.  Whitmire said he had only been trying to help keep the show “on track.”  Although he has always been outspoken and took pride in getting involved in the creative process, Whitmire insisted that he treated everyone with respect.

Henson’s daughter and son told The New York Times Monday that they supported the decision to fire Whitmire.

Henson’s daughter, Lisa, told the Times that Whitmire refused to train an understudy for low-level performances and “played brinkmanship very aggressively in contract negotiations.” Lisa Henson is president of the Jim Henson Co., which sold The Muppets brand to Disney in 2004.

Brian Henson, who is the company’s chairman, told the Times that Whitmore often sent emails attacking writers, directors and others involved in Muppets projects.

Whitmire began handling and voicing over Kermit the Frog since 1990, when his hero, Jim Henson passed away.

The studio said veteran Muppets performer Matt Vogel is now taking over as Kermit.

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Relatives demand answers in fatal Minnesota police shooting.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Relatives and neighbors of an Australian woman who was fatally shot by Minneapolis police over the weekend demanded answers Monday about her death, with one calling the shooting of the meditation teacher and bride-to-be “an execution.”

Details about what led to the shooting remained unclear, with authorities saying only that officers were responding to a 911 call about a possible assault when she was killed.

The woman’s family members released a statement Monday through Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, saying they “are trying to come to terms with this tragedy and to understand why this has happened.”

Minneapolis authorities have not released the woman’s name. The Star Tribune (http://strib.mn/2tZtSB2 ) identified her as Justine Damond, 40, from Sydney, Australia. The newspaper reported that she was engaged to be married and had already taken her fiance’s last name. Her maiden name was Justine Ruszczyk.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension released a statement Sunday saying two Minneapolis officers responded to the call late Saturday. At some point, an officer fired a gun, hitting Damond. The BCA said Monday that no weapons were found at the scene.

Local media identified the officer who fired his weapon as Mohamed Noor, who is a Somali-American.

His attorney, Tom Plunkett, released a statement to Minneapolis television station WCCO saying: “We take this seriously with great compassion for all persons who are being touched by this.” Plunkett did not return messages left by The Associated Press.

According to a city newsletter, Noor joined the police department in March 2015.

The Star Tribune, citing three people with knowledge of the shooting it did not name, said Damond had been the one to call 911 about a possible assault in the alley behind her house.

The three people said two officers pulled into the alley in a single squad car. Damond, wearing pajamas, stood at the driver’s side door and talked to the driver. The newspaper’s sources said the officer in the passenger seat shot Damond through the driver’s side door.

Police referred questions to the BCA. A spokeswoman for the agency did not return messages seeking to confirm that account. A Monday statement from the BCA said more information would be provided once the officers were interviewed.

Neighbor Joan Hargrave called the killing “an execution” and said there was no reason for a well-trained officer to see Damond as a threat.

“This is a tragedy — that someone who’s asking for help would call the police and get shot by the police,” Hargrave said.

Officials said the officers’ body cameras were not turned on and that a squad car camera did not capture the shooting. Investigators were still trying to determine whether other video exists.

It’s not clear why the officers’ body cameras were not turned on. The department’s policy allows for a range of situations in which officers are supposed to do so, including “any contact involving criminal activity” and before use of force. If a body camera is not turned on before use of force, it’s supposed to be turned on as soon as it’s safe to do so.

Once the investigation is complete, it would be up to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to decide whether to charge the officer.

Freeman would not comment on the broader case Monday, but said both officers likely should have turned on their body cameras as they were approached by Damond in an alley.

Police Chief Janee Harteau called the killing a “tragic death” and said she understands why the community has questions. “I’ve asked for the investigation to be expedited to provide transparency and to answer as many questions as quickly as we can,” she said.

The Fulton neighborhood where the shooting happened is a mix of middle- and upper-middle-class homes about a half-mile from city lakes that are a popular destination for residents and tourists.

Some 50 friends and neighbors gathered in a semicircle Sunday near the shooting site, with many more looking on from the sidewalk and street. Chalk hearts containing the names of some people who were victims of police violence were drawn on the driveway.

By Monday, flowers had also been left at the scene, along with a handwritten sign that asked, “Why did you shoot and kill our neighbor?”

Damond’s death is yet another high-profile police shooting in the Twin Cities area in recent years. Last year, 32-year-old Philando Castile was killed by an officer during a traffic stop in a nearby suburb after he told the officer he was armed. And in November 2015, a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Jamar Clark during a struggle in which the officer said Clark grabbed his partner’s weapon.

Damond’s business website indicates that she relocated to Minneapolis and worked as a yoga instructor, meditation teacher and personal health and life coach.

Originally trained as a veterinarian, Damond indicted on the site that she was “most passionate about supporting individuals and organizations to discover the power and potential within their own brains and hearts.”

Damond’s mother was Australian, and she spent her formative years there, but also spent some of her early childhood in the Buffalo, New York, area, said Peter Suffoletto, a cousin of Damond’s father. Suffoletto said Damond frequently returned to New York state, and stayed with Suffoletto and his wife, Elaine, in Hamburg, New York, as recently as April.

“She was the sweetest soul that I’ve ever met,” Elaine Suffoletto said.

Peter Suffoletto added: “She was just a loving free spirit ... We’re devastated, beyond devastated.”

Zach Damond, 22, said Damond was engaged to marry his father, Don Damond, in August, although she had already taken his name.

“Basically, my mom’s dead because a police officer shot her for reasons I don’t know,” Zach Damond said. “I demand answers.”

By AMY FORLITI;    Associated Press writers Jeff Baenen, Doug Glass and Kyle Potter contributed to this report from Minneapolis. Associated Press research Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.

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Flood victims ‘Heard a roar, and it was on top of them’

TONTO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. (AP) — The flash flood that killed nine people in an Arizona canyon began its deadly descent as an impressive but avoidable surge of churning water, black with cinders from a recent wildfire and choked with tumbling tree trunks and limbs.

By the time it reached a rocky swimming hole several miles downstream, it was a roaring torrent 6 feet high, and an extended family seeking refuge from the summer heat had no warning — and no chance to escape.

The bodies were found up to 2 miles away. Five other people were rescued, some of them clinging desperately to trees, and were treated for hypothermia and released.

As rescuers searched Monday for a 27-year-old man still missing about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix, authorities identified the victims, who ranged in age from 3 to 57.

Among them were three generations of a family. Five of the dead were children.

The victims had been lounging Saturday in the Water Wheel swimming hole, where the river narrows and rocks create pools and a series of small waterfalls. The narrowing of the canyon squeezed the flow of water and helped give it deadly force.

The river roared to life after a thunderstorm had dumped up to 1½ inches of rain in an hour, prompting a flash flood warning from the National Weather Service.

But there is little or no cellphone service in the remote area, and without a weather radio, the swimmers would have been unaware.

“They had no warning. They heard a roar, and it was on top of them,” said Fire Chief Ron Sattelmaier of the Water Wheel Fire and Medical District.

About 40 volunteer workers and four search dogs looked for the missing man.

About five miles up the mountain, where a June wildfire scorched 11 square miles of the Tonto National Forest, Scott Muller first spotted the water rumbling down the nearly dry East Verde River. He was spending the day with a dozen other members of AZ Krawlers, a volunteer group of Jeep owners that was checking roads and trails for dangerous erosion and missing signs.

He began making a video with his phone and comfortably scampered to the bank before water clogged with debris whooshed past.

“We had no idea how fast and big it was going to be,” Muller said.

In a wildfire area, the scorched land repels water, making flooding worse.

Muller and the others got in their vehicles and rushed down the mountain on an unpaved fire control road to get another look. Emerging onto a paved road, they drove up the mountain to a bridge that was below where the waters would sweep through the swimming hole.

There, Muller said, they saw a couple with two young children playing in the placid river and told them to get out because the river would soon become a monster.

Several minutes later, he said, it did.

Neither Muller nor the group’s leader, Ken Maki, said they knew of the swimming hole that was about a mile up river.

It wasn’t until that night that they learned of the deaths.

The dead youngsters were identified as 2-year-old Erica Raya-Garcia; Emily Garnica, 3; Mia Garnica, 5; Danial Garnica, 7; and Jonathan Leon, 13. Also killed were Javier Raya-Garcia, 19; Celia Garcia Castaneda, 60; Maribel Raya-Garcia, 24, and Maria Raya-Garcia, 26.

In 2015, seven people were killed in Utah’s Zion National Park when they were trapped during a flash flood while hiking in a narrow canyon.

In 1997, 11 hikers died near Page, Arizona, after a wall of water from a rainstorm miles upstream tore through a narrow, twisting series of walls on Navajo land.

By ANITA SNOW and ALINA HARTOUNIAN;  Hartounian reported from Phoenix. Contributing were Justin Pritchard and Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles, Angie Wang in Tonto National Forest and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix.

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CPS: A System of Pure Evil by Design

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CPS Steals Children for Profit - Your Tax Dollars in Action!

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Child Protection Services EXPOSED - Alex Jones ‘Rant’ of 2009

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For this rare and spectacular event, we are teaming up with astrophysicist Graham Jones to bring you a live video stream with minute-by-minute commentary about the eclipse. Join us on February 26 from 12:05 UTC 6:05 AM CST 7:05 AM EST to get a front-row view of the eclipse and its awesome ring of fire!

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LONDON –  Thousands of protesters have marched on Parliament in London to demand that the British government withdraw its invitation to U.S. President Donald Trump for a state visit.

Criticism of Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May has swelled since her Washington visit to meet Trump last month, when she confirmed plans for a return visit by Trump to Britain expected in the summer.

Saturday's demonstration in the British capital involved a two-mile (3-kilometer) march of several thousand people from the U.S. embassy to the Houses of Parliament. Protesters chanted "Theresa May, shame on you!"

Lawmakers are expected to debate British plans to invite Trump later this month. An online petition calling for May to rescind the invite has attracted strong support, but May insists a Trump visit is welcome.

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Sky News Live @LiveStreamNews

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#LiveStream #InaugurationDay #TrumpInauguration Complete Coverage Here: trumpinaugural.tumblr.com Via @1SourceNewsUSA

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#LiveStream #InaugurationDay #TrumpInauguration Complete Coverage Here: trumpinaugural.tumblr.com Via @1SourceNewsUSA

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Monday, January 16th 2017  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a federal holiday in the United States honoring the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. - the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement to end racial segregation. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is close to January 15, the King's birthday.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most influential of African American civil rights leaders during the 1960s, he was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The bill established the holiday was signed by the President Ronald Reagan on November 2, 1983. The first observance nationwide was in 1986, but some states opposed to observed it as a paid holiday for state employees. As of the year 2000 all of the states officially recognize the holiday.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the only three people who have national holidays in the USA, the other two are Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

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FacebookLive 2017 Chicago Hate Crime Tortured Live On Facebook (Full Video)

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Cook County Judge Denies Bail For 4 Suspects In Chicago Torture Video.

The four appeared before Cook County Associate Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil who asked them, "Where was your sense of decency?"

As seen in the horrifying video that appeared online this week, a young, mentally disabled white man was beaten, threatened with a knife and taunted with profanities directed at white people and President-elect Donald Trump. The suspects, who are black, face charges including hate crimes and aggravated battery.

"I find each of you a danger to yourself and society," Cook County Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil said, sounding baffled that the suspects who hold jobs, attend school, live with grandparents and, in one case, care for a brother in a wheelchair, could stand accused of attacking the 18-year-old victim. How, she wondered, could she agree to allow people accused of such "terrible actions" walk out of jail?

Prosecutors offered new details of the assault, explaining that one of the suspects demanded $300 from the victim's mother and that the beating started in a van and continued at a house.

The suspects are accused of forcing the victim to drink toilet water and kiss the floor, stuffing a sock into his mouth, taping his mouth shut and binding his hands with a belt.

The suspects include Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covington's 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago.

Hill was arrested in 2015 on allegations of armed robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle and residential burglary. Chicago police said they did not know the disposition of those arrests by suburban officers.

Tanishia Covington was arrested in 2007 on attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. Police records do not show any convictions as a juvenile. As an adult, she was arrested on charges of battery and aggravated assault, but those charges were dropped.

The 18-year-old victim, who is from a Chicago suburb, suffers from schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder, authorities said.

The incident also stirred emotions still raw after a presidential election campaign that split the nation. The case heightened political tensions on social media, with some conservatives suggesting it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.

Excerpts of the video posted by Chicago media outlets show the victim with his mouth taped shut and slumped in a corner of a room. At least two assailants are seen cutting off his sweatshirt, and others taunt him off camera. The video shows a wound on the top of the man's head. One person pushes the man's head with his or her foot.

A red band also appears to be around the victim's hands. He was tied up for four to five hours, authorities said.

The incident began New Year's Eve, when the victim and alleged assailant Jordan Hill met at a suburban McDonald's to begin what both the victim and his parents believed would be a sleepover, police said.

Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived, Detective Commander Kevin Duffin said.

The victim told police what began as playful fighting escalated. A downstairs neighbor who heard noises threatened to call police. When two of the suspects left and kicked down the neighbor's door, the victim escaped. A police officer later spotted the bloodied and obviously disoriented man wandering down a street.

The victim's parents reported him missing Monday evening, two days after last hearing from him. The police report said the victim's mother knew the first name of her son's friend — Jordan — but wasn't clear on his last name. The report also noted that the victim "does not like telling his parents who he's with."

The parents later received text messages "from persons claiming to be holding him captive," police said. While investigating the messages, police discovered the Facebook video.

The gruesome video is just the latest sign that criminals have been “emboldened” to lawless acts, not just in Chicago but across the country, former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy told Fox News.

"Unfortunately, this is becoming the new normal," he said on "America's Newsroom."

McCarthy said that despite nationwide outrage, political leaders respond to such crimes with a collective shrug, giving criminals the confidence to act again and again. "The more outlandish the incident, we're horrified, but there's no reaction to it."

The Windy City's former top cop stepped down in 2015 amid accusations of a cover-up over the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. A white police officer shot the black teenager 16 times. Police said McDonald had lunged at officers with a knife, but witnesses said that wasn't true.

Sources: 1SourceNewsUSA, Cook County Illinois, Fox News' Martha MacCallum and The Associated Press contributed to this report.