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Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine's racial equity problem - Los Angeles Times
Erika D. Smith

After weeks of being talked up and fawned over by public health officials, the new COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson is finally starting to make an appearance in California.

In most quarters, this has been a cause for celebration. Hundreds of thousands of doses that don’t have to be stored in freezers and can be administered in one shot instead of the two required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines? No wonder I’ve heard several politicians call it a “game changer,” especially after so many months of supply shortages.

But in other quarters, the arrival of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been treated more as a cause for concern — yet another reminder that having doses available and actually getting them into people’s arms in an equitable way are two very different challenges to overcome.

At issue are fears about the effectiveness the newest vaccine compared with offerings from Pfizer and Moderna, and suspicions that it will be sent primarily into poor Black and Latino neighborhoods where cases of COVID-19 have been the deadliest. (Both state and federal officials have insisted that they’re taking steps to ensure the latter doesn’t happen.)

“That they are going to put Johnson & Johnson in our communities really feels like a slap in the face,” said Corey Matthews, chief operating officer of Community Coalition. “It just doesn’t feel like it is the best shot. It feels like a second-class shot.”

Investigators said David M. Crawford, who resigned as the police chief of Laurel, Md., in 2010, had targeted “victims with whom he had previous disagreements.”

The “target list” found on David M. Crawford’s cellphone pointed to a former police chief consumed with grievances in his personal and professional life, the authorities said.

It named, among others, two doctors who had treated Mr. Crawford for a back injury, a woman who had led a training program for Mr. Crawford’s wife that discussed “white privilege,” and three former police officials who had served with Mr. Crawford during his career of more than three decades in Maryland law enforcement.

The “target list” was a key piece of evidence, the authorities said, that linked Mr. Crawford, a former police chief in two Maryland cities, to an arson spree that is believed to include at least 12 fires that targeted Mr. Crawford’s perceived enemies across the state from 2011 to 2020.

All the fires were set at night. In six of the arsons, the victims were asleep in their homes with their families. No one was injured, but the fires caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, and the authorities said there had been “clear signs” that people were home when Mr. Crawford set a number of the fires.