Sleep is for the weak » « If this is Mittwoch, must be Flugzeit

Look at all the white people

Once again, the timer has run out on the ongoing discussion of American racism, so here’s a fresh thread for you all. I thought you might appreciate the magnitude of the Black Problem: black people get gunned down by the police. The police are far less trigger-happy when it’s a mob of hundreds of heavily armed white people shooting each other.

A composite image of handout booking images made available on 19 May 2015 by the McLennan County Sheriff's Department showing scores of men and women arrested and charged with crimes stemming from a large shootout and fight between biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant at the Central Texas Marketplace in Waco, Texas, USA, 17 May 2015. Reports indicate that nine bikers were shot and killed and 18 other wounded. Police have announced that 192 people face charges of engaging in organized crime. EPA/MCLENNAN COUNTY SHERIFF HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY

epa04757409 A composite image of handout booking images made available on 19 May 2015 by the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department showing scores of men and women arrested and charged with crimes stemming from a large shootout and fight between biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant at the Central Texas Marketplace in Waco, Texas, USA, 17 May 2015. Reports indicate that nine bikers were shot and killed and 18 other wounded. Police have announced that 192 people face charges of engaging in organized crime.

I think this suggests an easy solution to the problem of police brutality. Instead of 40 acres and a mule, give every black person in the country a black leather jacket and a shotgun.

Don’t worry, though. The Waco incident was completely thug-free.

Sleep is for the weak » « If this is Mittwoch, must be Flugzeit

Comments

  1. says

    There are several black people in that composite mug shot. Isn’t it nice to know that biker gangs are more integrated and diverse than many atheist organizations?

  2. says

    Thanks for the new thread PZ.
    Oh, and thanks for this too:

    I thought you might appreciate the magnitude of the Black Problem: black people get gunned down by the police.

    Far too many news sites refer to the problem as ‘ black men get gunned down by the police’., overlooking cis- and trans- women who are brutalized and/or killed by LEOs.

  3. rq says

    Well, get set. I’ve got nearly 70 pages worth of links to post up. :)
    Including lots on the Waco massacre.

    Thanks, PZ. :) Safe travels!

    +++
    Well, at least the previous ended on a positive note.
    This one starts off with some positive stuff, too:
    10 Underrated Neo Soul Artists You Should Be Listening To

    Tired of hearing the same old pop and hip hop artists on the radio? Take a break from all those tunes and switch to a more soulful vibe with neo-soul music. A subgenre of soul and R&B, neo-soul music is influenced by bits of electronica, hiphop, jazz and funk, and is sure to help when you’re relaxing and chillin’ after a hard day’s work.
    We’ve gathered up 10 amazing neo soul artists that you should definitely look up and add to your chill-out music playlist:

    Looks pretty solid to me, though I haven’t listened to the entire list yet!

    I can’t even tell if my tweets are going thru lol Tryna live tweet and lift up the Ferguson graduates today. Congrats

    Deadly police shooting of unarmed teen reopened after Channel 2 investigation

    Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has reopened a controversial police shooting case for review, after a Channel 2 Action News – Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation uncovered new evidence and witnesses the grand jury did not see.
    Union City police Officer Luther Lewis shot and killed 19-year-old Ariston Waiters in December 2011.     
    Waiters took off running when police arrived to break up a fight between teenagers after shots were fired into the air.
    Lewis chased Waiters, got him on the ground and then shot him twice in the back.
    In a never-before-seen video, Lewis showed agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation his version of the shooting, by reenacting how Waiters grabbed his gun. The video differed from earlier statements Lewis had given, so much so that an expert called his statements self-contradictory and inconsistent with the forensic evidence.
    “It’s not sat right with me from the first time I arrived on the scene,” says Union City police Officer Chris McElroy.
    McElroy was a lieutenant at the time of the shooting and was the first supervisor to arrive on the scene. He has never before spoken publicly about what he heard and saw.
    “There’s a lot of things that need to be answered,” says McElroy. “I think Mr. Waiters died senselessly and his family deserves closure.”
    McElroy told investigative reporters Jodie Fleischer and Brad Schrade that he’s never believed the shooting was justified, based on Lewis’ statements immediately following the shooting.
    McElroy says initially there was no mention of a struggle over the officer’s gun.
    “He was unable to pull his hands out from underneath him. He didn’t know what was under there so he shot him, twice,” recounts McElroy.
    He says he expressed his concerns to several other command officers and Chief Chuck Odom, who directed him not to write a statement.
    The GBI investigated the shooting, but did not interview McElroy. […]

    The May 2012 grand jury opted not to indict Lewis on the recommended charges of felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and violation of oath.
    The next day, Lewis told Channel 2 he wasn’t out to hurt anyone that night.
    “The second I had to pull that trigger, and I use ‘had’ because I had no choice, I know in my heart I was not walking away, I made peace with God,” said Lewis. He declined to be interviewed again for this story.
    The reporters contacted Howard on Wednesday; by Thursday morning he had called GBI Director Vernon Keenan and both reopened their respective cases.
    “Listening to what you’re saying, I’m going to be looking very closely at re-presenting it. There is no statute of limitations with respect to a [felony] murder charge,” said Howard.
    Freda Waiters says that’s what she’s been hoping for since the day her son died.

    Just a note, Funeral held for homeless man shot by LAPD on Skid Row

    Funeral services were held Saturday for the homeless man who was shot and killed by Los Angeles police on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles two months ago.

    Charles Keunang was killed in an officer-involved shooting after allegedly grabbing an officer’s holstered pistol during a scuffle on March 1.

    A witness at the scene shot cellphone video of the confrontation, including the gunshots that killed him. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called the shooting justified.

    And she’s filing a claim against the city. Because criminal justice seems to be impossible.

    Wednesday, May 20th #MikeBrown’s 19th Birthday 5:30pm @ #Canfield Memorial #Ferguson

    And here’s another on the entertainment front, 10 Black Actors to Watch in 2015 and Beyond, though really, what are the chances we’ll see them all that often?? I hope LOTS!

    The summer movie season is FINALLY upon us, and we’re ready to get out there and enjoy some blockbusters. But as always, it’s vital we support Black actors and actresses making waves in the film world. Here’s our pick of just a few Black up-and-comers and familiar names to watch out for this summer and next. Enjoy!
    1. Michael B. Jordan, everybody’s bae, will soon play Adonis Creed, son of Apollo in the Rocky reboot film, Creed, coming out later this year. Also check him out in the role that pissed off white people around the world, as Johnny Storm in the new Fantastic Four, set to be released this summer.

    2. Anthony Mackie, although not a newcomer, is nonetheless still one to watch for this year and next. On his IMDB page, you’ll find that he actually has four movies in pre-production for a 2015 release, and one major motion picture, Captain America: Civil War,  debuting in 2016. Once Mackie reached Marvel status, he was pretty much set. Let’s keep supporting this Notorious and She Hate Me star.

    3. Nate Parker is soon to play Nat Turner in the biopic titled Birth of a Nation (I hope they change that; know your history). The film does not have a release date yet. Parker played alongside Gugu Mbatha-Raw as her hero and love interest in Beyond the Lights.

    4. Speaking of Gugu Mbatha-Raw — the star of Belle will be gracing our screens this year on Christmas Day in Concussion, a film about football injuries, with well-known costars Will Smith and Alec Baldwin.

    So there’s your top four.

  4. rq says

    Here’s another about that absurd Disney movie. a movie about a white dad declaring his daughter the #PrincessofNorthSudan.

    In cased you missed it, last year a random white dude from Virginia wanted to make his daughter a princess so he found some “no-mans land” between Sudan and Egypt and claimed it for his family. Yes, a random White dude just went to Africa, put up a flag and claimed the land for his family. Now, if this seems impossible or outlandish, it’s unfortunately very true.
    If your heart is warmed by a father’s love for his daughter, cool, but, this is trash. Colonialism is real. The arrogance and entitlement that possessed that man to claim African land for his own. While there are a multitude of histories and (counter)narratives from across the continent, I believe few on that continent (or dispersed from it) would welcome a White man from across the Atlantic Ocean and calling it “his.”
    Now because this story is about a random American white dude, other random white dudes are really about it.  Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame), recently signed a deal with DISNEY to turn this modern day Christopher Columbus into a family film. Yes. Disney. Now white people have done, do, and will do some bold things – but a movie about going to Africa (unsolicited) and claiming land reeks of such ahistorical awareness. Just when we thought getting artificial lips, stealing our language, and erasing us from our music wasn’t enough, you gotta go and not only claim African land but make the *first African Disney princess* a white girl? Tiana was a frog for most of the movie but you wanna have a white girl be an “African” princess. OH. OK.

    Responses from Black Twitter at the link.

    No quotes, as this one is mostly about the video within: Obama Calls Out Fox News For Spreading Negative Stereotypes About The Poor. Very nice.

    Food! Restaurants in North America & the U.K.That Might Put Your Grandma’s Cooking to Shame (this one’s not about racism as such, but it’s nice to know more about the available cultural diversity out there – signal boost, I suppose).

    There’s no question that in order for Blacks to gain economic empowerment across the diaspora, we have to start providing monetary support for our own businesses.
    After Whole Foods decided to feed the National Guard rather than the 84 percent of Baltimore City Public School students who went without lunch in the wake of the Freddie Gray riots, Blavity curated a list of Black farmers to purchase fresh produce from instead of the popular grocery chain.
    Blavity wants to continue supporting this effort by bringing our readers a curated list of Black-owned restaurants to dine at across North America.
    Know of any more great Black restaurants that weren’t featured on our list? Let us know in the comments below.

    This is kind of neat, though I’m not sure how well it works: Tyler the Creator trolls racists by appropriating their symbols for his new gay pride tee

    Nothing like fighting some Neo nazis and racists with their own medicine. Tyler the Creator has made of a new T-shirt which uses neo-Nazi symbolism to promote gay rights. According to the Huffington Post, the symbol in the logo appropriates s an old school neo-Nazi emblem known for its slogan, “White Pride Worldwide.”
    Tyler the Creator took to Wolf Gang’s Tumblr Page to share his thinking on the t-shirt.

    It was a period in time where all i wanted to do was read about different dictators across the world. The way that one man could control so many brains always intrigued me. This opened a door to a lot of things, one of them being the Nazi regime during the 40s. Soaking my brain with as much info as i could on the subject, i pondered to myself if there was anyone still pushing this Nazi propaganda during these days? That is when i came across Neo-Nazis, The Ku Klux Klan and The White Nationalist Community. To make it simple, its just a group of Caucasians who take pride in being white. Nothing wrong with that correct? But the weird thing is that its primarily supported by White Supremacist organizations.( KKK, Aryan Nation, Etc) Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that these guys aren’t fans of Blacks, Gays, Asians or anything else that doesn’t fit in “white” box.Now having the thought process that i have, i asked myself some questions: What if a black guy wore this logo on a shirt? Would he be promoting self hate? Would he be taking the power out of a shape? What if a gay guy wore this on a shirt? Would he promoting Homophobia? Then BAM! I Had it. Throw a little rainbow in the logo ( i still wonder, who was the guy that said a rainbow is the gay symbol? thats another article stay tuned) and take a photo with a white guy in it and we have an amazing photo. The thing that tops it off is the homo erotic tone of the hand holding, which to some degree HAS to piss off the guys who takes this logo serious. This made the photo even more important to me, because it was me playing with the idea of taking the power out of something so stupid. Or maybe my whole idea on this is stupid. Who knows, but why not try it out? Also, ever since my career started, ive been labeled as a homophobe, simply because of my use of the word f*ggot. Again, trying to take the power out of something, I WAS NEVER REFERRING TO SOMEONES SEXUAL PREFERENCE WHEN USING THAT WORD. I mean, i’m legit one of the least homophobic guys to walk this earth but, most people just read the surface. But maybe someone will see this photo and say “ hey, he’s just mocking gays” or “ this has a negative undertone to it, he is still pushing this homophobic whatever the fuck it is”. What ever it is, i just wanted to give you guys some background info on the design before you purchase the shirt. You should know what you are wearing. be safe, love. RACISM FUCKING SUCKS golfwang[dot]com – Tyler 

    The shirts have been met with mixture of praise and critique as many have rightfully pointed out that in his debut album Tyler used the word ‘f*ggot’ more than 200 times. Tyler defended his insanely heavy usage of the word saying “It’s just another word that has no meaning” later elaborating that “I was never referring to [someone’s] sexual preference when using that word… I’m legit one of the least homophobic guys to walk this earth but, most people read the surface.”

    Well, sure, there is that problematic language together with a not-pology… so all in all, a very mediocre effort. Still.

    And here’s one for the #CrimingWhileWhite. I’m just going to stick this one article up, but I hope to get more response to the media portrayal of this event for comparison purposes (and yeah, it’ all so post-racial!).
    Anyway, Waco, Texas, motorcycle gang shoot-out, with police, 9 dead… UPDATES: Police believe five motorcyle gangs involved in deadly Twin Peaks shootout. Note language here, and elsewhere it was also called a ‘melee’, a ‘rumble’, a ‘brawl’, and all kinds of other things. But in this situation, where gunfire and dealy force were actually used, was the National Guard called in? Were these ‘thugs’ labelled as such? No.

    Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said part of the altercation that preceded Sunday’s biker gang shooting at Twin Peaks started in a restroom, spilled into bar, then into the parking lot.
    At least two of the gangs were trying to do some recruiting in the area Sunday, and Twin Peaks was a known place for that kind of activity, Swanton said. Multiple law enforcement sources confirmed that the Bandidos and Cossacks biker gangs were at the center of the incident.
    “In 34 years of law enforcement, this is the most violent crime scene I have ever been involved in,” Swanton said.
    “There is blood everywhere. We will probably approach the number of 100 weapons.”
    “What happened here today could have been avoided … They failed and this is what happened,” referring to the Twin Peaks local management.
    “Next door were families dining in Don Carlos,” he added. “Twenty-five feet away there were families.”
    Swanton continued, “This is one of the worst gun fights we’ve ever had in the city limits. They started shooting at our officers.”
    He added, “None of our innocent civilians were injured today in this melee.”
    Officials are interviewing people of interest in multiple areas, he said, and while there are no other active crime scenes, there have been scuffles and disturbances throughout the city.
    “The unfortunate side of gangs such as these is that they work intel just like we do,” he said.
    Central Texas Marketplace was closed entirely Sunday because of additional bikers coming to the scene, including the three arrested earlier.

    Oh, and yeah, the police knew it was happening, as they’d had prior warning. Let me get this straight: Walter Scott was scary. Rodney King was scary. 300 bikers converged, armed to the teeth, and police “watched”. Yup. More to come on this.

  5. rq says

    White Waco gang members that just killed 9 people v. a Black man walking home in Ferguson. Oh, America.: (see photos)

    9 dead. 18 injured. 100+ weapons recovered. & the gang is literally hanging out at the scene. #TwinPeaksShooting

    9 dead in Texas biker brawl. Brawl.

    I think the BPD got the credible threat memo from the wrong gangs. There was a purge alright too. Maybe we should send the BPD to Waco?

    The police literally had heard there would. E biker gang violence, waited for them, then watched them begin to kill each other. Waco.

    CNN stays trolling black folks but gives everyone else a pass! The mass disturbance in Waco has been relegated to a “brawl”….smh

    ** Some of these have been posted in the Lounge already.

  6. rq says

    Let’s hear it for privilege! Manchester Valley junior devises crime scene ‘promposal’

    When Manchester Valley High School junior Elijah Williams, 16, was planning to ask to prom senior Marie Kasten, 16 — his girlfriend of two years — he wanted to ask in a special way.

    His sister Alexes Williams, 20, thought up the idea of doing a crime scene-themed “promposal” because Kasten’s father, Phil Kasten, is a former chief deputy of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office and is now a police chief in Vermont.
    “I thought that since her dad works for the police, it would be a good idea,” he said.

    His sister bought tape for the fake crime scene that they staged on the driveway in front of Kasten’s house. They knew they would need time to set up the scene to surprise her.
    So they enlisted their mother, Tristam Williams, who contacted Marie’s mom, Kay Kasten. Both moms devised a plan that Kay would take Marie grocery shopping for the Easter holiday to distract her while Alexes helped Elijah set up the scene.
    When they were on their way back from the Walmart store, Kay alerted them.

    Upon pulling up to their house, Marie saw the crime tape and Elijah lying in her driveway with a chalk outline around his body, next to a message written in chalk that said, “I’m dying to go to prom with you!”
    Marie said she never expected Elijah to come up with such a creative way of asking her to prom.
    “I was really surprised,” Marie said. “It meant a lot to me because my father is a police officer.”
    She said yes. The couple will attend their first prom together tonight at the Wyndham hotel in Gettysburg, Pa.
    Kasten will be moving in about a month to Vermont with her family once the school year is finished, and that’s why Elijah wanted to make the proposal a memorable one.
    “I thought that I’d make it special rather than just being ordinary and just asking her,” Elijah said.

    OMG THEY’RE SO CUTE, RIGHT? Please pass me a puking bucket.

    @deray #KendrickJohnson

    VIDEO: Cop Pulls Over Funeral Procession On L.A. Freeway for Going Too Slow. Even in mourning.

    Cellphone video captured an emotional dispute on the side of the 10 Freeway in the Mid-City area last Friday between members of a funeral procession and a California Highway Patrol Officer who pulled them over.
    A uniformed traffic escort was leading a motorcade of about 100 cars to Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills to bury family matriarch Sandra Louise Behn-Capel when they were stopped for traveling too slow on the freeway, according to Behn-Capel’s daughter Rachel Behn-Humphrey.
    She claimed the actions of the CHP officer were outrageous and showed no compassion.
    On behalf of the law-enforcement agency, the sergeant offered his sympathies to Behn-Capel’s grieving loved ones.
    “The California Highway Patrol would like to extend condolences to the the family for their loss,” he said.
    The deceased woman’s daughter said the traffic stop delayed the family’s arrival at the cemetery by more than an hour.
    “It exceeds the bounds of all human decency,” said family attorney Edward Ramsey. “An officer has the discretion to stop or not stop a funeral procession. If it was me, I would have probably escorted this procession to the burial.”

    Missouri lawmakers set aside dozens of Ferguson-inspired bills

    Missouri’s legislative session began with hundreds of protesters shutting down the Senate, demanding changes to state law in response to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer.
    It ended Friday with the Senate again shut down — this time because of partisan divisions — and without action on a Ferguson-inspired bill that would have rewritten the laws on police use of deadly force.

    All told, more than 60 Ferguson-related measures were introduced this session.
    Though a measure, propelled by concerns in Ferguson, was passed limiting the powers and revenues of municipal courts, as was one rewriting the state’s student transfer laws that some said would aid families in the St. Louis suburb, some legislators said they had failed to pass anything meaningful directly in response to Brown’s death.
    ‘‘We don’t have one piece of legislation that anyone here in this body can go home and say, hey, we did this for Ferguson,’’ Representative Clem Smith, a Democrat, said. ‘‘As it was this summer . . . it still is today. Nothing has changed.’’
    Brown, a black 18-year-old, was fatally shot Aug. 9 by white Ferguson officer Darren Wilson — an event that touched off protests in the St. Louis area and across the nation. But a grand jury declined to charge Wilson and a US Justice Department report determined Wilson acted in self-defense.
    A separate Justice Department report criticized Ferguson’s law enforcement for racial bias and using its courts to generate revenue. In response, the Legislature passed a bill capping traffic fines, eliminating warrants for a failure to appear, and limiting detainment for minor traffic violations.
    Governor Jay Nixon praised the bill as a ‘‘significant piece of legislation — one that will have a lot of effects for a lot of years.’’ He has not signed the bill.
    Both the transfer and municipal court bills ‘‘were spurred out of concerns surrounding the events in Ferguson,’’ said House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Republican.
    Some Democratic senators said the transfer measure, which allows students to change schools within their districts and expands charter and virtual school options, would help address systemic education issues in poor minority communities.

    Obama to Limit Military-Style Equipment for Police Forces. I have a feeling that most of the horse is already out of that stable, but hey! Pray tell, what are the limits?

    President Obama on Monday will ban the federal provision of some types of military-style equipment to local police departments and sharply restrict the availability of others, administration officials said.
    The ban is part of Mr. Obama’s push to ease tensions between law enforcement and minority communities in reaction to the crises in Baltimore; Ferguson, Mo.; and other cities.
    He is taking the action after a task force he created in January decided that police departments should be barred from using federal funds to acquire items that include tracked armored vehicles, the highest-caliber firearms and ammunition, and camouflage uniforms. The ban is part of a series of steps the president has made to try to build trust between law enforcement organizations and the citizens they are charged with protecting.
    Mr. Obama planned to promote the effort on Monday during a visit to Camden, N.J. The city, racked by poverty and crime, has become a national model for better relations between the police and citizens after replacing its beleaguered police force with a county-run system that prioritizes community ties.
    Mr. Obama is expected to hold up Camden as a counterpoint to places like Ferguson, where the killing of a young black man by a white police officer last summer and the violent protests that followed exposed long-simmering hostility between law enforcement agencies and minorities in cities around the country.
    The trip and the action on military-style equipment are to coincide with the release on Monday of a report from a policing task force that Mr. Obama formed late last year in response to the crisis in Ferguson. The 116-page report calls for law enforcement agencies to “embrace a guardian — rather than a warrior — mind-set to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and with the public.” It contains dozens of recommendations for agencies throughout the country.
    “We are, without a doubt, sitting at a defining moment in American policing,” Ronald L. Davis, the director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the Department of Justice, told reporters in a conference call organized by the White House. “We have a unique opportunity to redefine policing in our democracy, to ensure that public safety becomes more than the absence of crime, but it must also include a presence for justice.” […]

    “The idea is to make sure that we strike a balance in providing the equipment, which is appropriate and useful and important for local law enforcement agencies to keep the community safe, while at the same time putting standards in place,” said Cecilia Muñoz, the director of Mr. Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.
    The report to be released on Monday represents a two-pronged response to a problem that has emerged as a central predicament for Mr. Obama in recent months. He has struggled to acknowledge the sense of fear, grievance and victimization by the police that dominates many minority communities without seeming to forgive violence or condemn law enforcement with a broad brush.
    In doing so, he is grappling with the limits of his power to force changes in police departments around the country, where practices and procedures are varied and the federal government’s ability to influence change can be minimal. The equipment task force stems from an executive order, and its conclusions affect only the material supplied by the federal government, while the policing recommendations are merely a blueprint for what Mr. Obama would like to see happen in jurisdictions throughout the country.
    Mr. Obama on Monday will announce $163 million in grants to encourage police departments to adopt the suggestions. The administration also will launch a “tool kit” for the use of body-worn cameras; the Justice Department created a grant program for law enforcement agencies to purchase them.
    Ms. Muñoz said the task force’s report was “not just a blueprint for us and for local law enforcement agencies, but also for community leaders and others and stakeholders,” giving them “some very specific things to be asking for and, frankly, insisting on in order to improve policing practices.”
    That is why Mr. Obama made plans to visit Camden, where he wants to highlight a policing model that emphasizes a collaborative approach. Camden is also one of 20 cities participating in a new White House initiative to enhance the use of police data, by releasing detailed information on such things as traffic stops, officer-involved shootings and the use of force.

    And here’s a downer: This Student Who Got into All 8 Ivies Didn’t Go For the Most Depressing Reason. You can probably guess.

    High school senior Ronald Nelson had a pretty enviable decision to make during college admission season this year.
    The star student of Houston High School in Memphis, Tennessee, scored entry into all eight of America’s prestigious Ivy League schools. Nelson was certainly qualified, graduating with a 4.58 weighted GPA, a 2260 out of 2400 SAT score and 15 AP classes. He was also a national merit scholar and president of his high school class, Business Insider reports, along with being a state-recognized alto saxophone player.

    Nelson, however, decided to forgo the big-name schools in favor of the University of Alabama. The reason, he said, came down to cost. While the big-name schools all offered Nelson some form of aid, none of it was remotely close to what he needed to get through all four years without taking loans. Alabama, in contrast, offered Nelson a full ride to the school as well as entry into the university’s prestigious honors programs.
    “With people being in debt for years and years, it wasn’t a burden that Ronald wanted to take on and it wasn’t a burden that we wanted to deal with for a number of years after undergraduate,” Nelson’s father, Ronald Sr., told Business Insider. Instead, the family is eager to save resources for the even more crippling costs of medical school, which Ronald plans to attend down the road.
    Loans. Stories like Nelson’s are becoming more common as America’s most prestigious schools continue to grow financially out of reach for more and more students. Over the last 40 years, college expenses have been rising at a breathtaking pace. Since 1978, college costs have skyrocketed more than 1,100%. Today, the ten most expensive colleges in the United States all cost more than $60,000 a year. Predictably too, student loan debt has been growing in America every year since at least 1992, reaching more than $35,000 per average borrower in 2014.

    The ballooning costs add further weight to questions about the relative value of attending other prestigious academic institutions. In a host of other metrics measured by the data company PayScale, less well-known colleges like the Oregon Institute of Technology and Brigham Young University performed better than Harvard and Yale in their return on investment to students. 
    It seems increasingly clear something is going to have to change in the way Americans go to college. While Nelson will certainly be fine, eminently qualified students like him shouldn’t be forced into backbreaking loans. For America to retain its preeminent place in the world, its young people can’t start off their professional lives mired in debt.

    I mean just wow. The opportunity, and to be shut down like that… Tuition in Canada was bad enough back in my day.
    I note he wasn’t offered any scholarships, though – are those only sports-based or is there some additional criteria for which he may not have qualified?

  7. rq says

    Same story, different source: Miami Beach Police Officers Exchanged Racist Emails: State Attorney.

    And here’s another post-racial story about others’ perceptions:
    So I get to my internship orientation. Hop out the car. A lady walks up to me and asks am I there for orientation. I say yes. +
    She says I’m at the wrong location. For some reason they sent a group of “us” to the wrong orientation and she gives me new address. +
    I travel 30 mins away to find out she sent me to the orientation for housekeepers and other support staff… +
    Come to find out, I was in the correct place the first time. There is no way I was suppose to be there for the nursing orientation, right?
    Yes, it’s my first day and yes when I get back to the correct place I am going to call them on their shit. Fucking microaggressions.
    That’s not even a microaggression, is it?

  8. rq says

    A former undercover agent explains what’s behind the Waco biker gang shootout. Too many Clint Eastwood westerns, judging from the headline. Plus some white privilege and white supremacy (I thought I grabbed some, but didn’t find them, but many of those bikers had Nazi tattoos).

    Assault on Justice, with audio.

    The charge of assaulting a police officer, which is meant to shield police from danger, also can be used as a tactic against citizens.
    […]

    Wiggling while handcuffed. Bracing one hand on the steering wheel during the arrest. Yelling at an officer.
    All these actions have led to people being prosecuted for “assaulting a police officer” in Washington, D.C., where the offense is defined as including not just physical assault but also “resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering” with law enforcement.
    A five-month investigation by WAMU 88.5 News and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University — and co-produced by Reveal — documented and analyzed nearly 2,000 cases with charges of assaulting a police officer. The results raise concerns about the use or overuse of the charge. Some defense attorneys see troubling indicators in these numbers, alleging that the law is being used as a tactic to cover up police abuse and civil-rights violations. Police sources contend that this perspective overemphasizes troubling but rare incidents, and fails to account for the dangers police face on the job.
    However, as protests and rioting have exploded across the county in response to police conduct, even Cathy Lanier, the chief of police in the nation’s capital, is urging lawmakers to revise the statute because its broad application “naturally causes tensions between police and residents.” […]

    A team of researchers and reporters analyzed thousands of court records from 2012 through 2014, including charging documents, case summaries and police affidavits.
    The investigation found:
    Ninety percent of those charged with assaulting a police officer (APO) were black, although black residents comprise only half of the city’s population.
    Nearly two-thirds of those arrested for assaulting an officer weren’t charged with any other crime, raising questions about whether police had legal justification to stop the person.
    About 1 in 4 people charged with a misdemeanor for assaulting a police officer required medical attention after their arrest, a higher rate than the 1 in 5 officers reporting injury from the interactions.
    The District uses the charge of assaulting a police officer almost three times more than cities of comparable size, according to a 2013 FBI report and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) numbers.
    Prosecutors declined to press charges in more than 40 percent of the arrests for assaulting an officer.
    D.C. Council member Mary Cheh proposed a crime bill two weeks ago that includes a measure to narrow the “assaulting a police officer” statute. After being briefed on the results of this investigation, Cheh felt moved to explore the possibility of emergency legislation.
    “Having the benefit of the research … and given the consequences … there may be some interim step that we on the Council can do,” she said in an interview. “I could pass that reform on an emergency basis so that it could go into effect far more quickly.”
    […]

    A defendant arrested for assaulting an officer generally faces a monumental challenge defeating the charge, even when the judge believes the person behaved reasonably under the circumstances.
    Emanual Wilson was tackled and arrested for assaulting an officer the moment he stepped out of a car during a traffic stop. The police were arresting his pregnant girlfriend for driving with a suspended license. Wilson couldn’t see what the police were doing but could hear his girlfriend yelling that she was pregnant and not to touch her.
    Wilson testified that he was acting on instinct to protect his unborn child and girlfriend. Judge Harold Cushenberry agreed. At the trial, he said, “You had a normal human reaction.”
    But that reaction was also technically interference, so Cushenberry had to convict Wilson of assaulting the police. The judge concluded Wilson’s trial by saying, “Good luck to you. I’m sorry this happened.”
    Because the APO statute includes interference as one element under its broad umbrella, Wilson now has a criminal record with the violent connotations of “assaulting a police officer,” which can negatively impact future employment prospects, security clearances, home loans or anything that requires a criminal background check.
    “The real horror about the assault on a police officer statute is that we have thousands of people in our community who are now facing lifelong consequences for what really is harmless conduct,” said Patrice Sulton, a criminal defense attorney who frequently assists the District branch of the NAACP. […]

    Neighborhoods subjected to a stronger police presence inevitably have a greater frequency of interactions, which has led to an unequal distribution of arrests. A 2013 report by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee found that black people represented eight in 10 of all those arrested in the District. The WAMU-IRW investigation found an even larger disparity in cases of assaulting police officer: 90 percent of those charged from 2012 through 2014 were black.
    “This should be an early warning system for the agency,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police violence. “It tells you something is wrong and they need to figure what is going on…. The statistics, the patterns, the practices, just don’t look right.”

    However, Burton, the head of the police union, doesn’t believe that the APO statistics reveal bias or discriminatory policing: “The reality is that the numbers reflect the people involved in that type of crime. It’s just that simple.”
    The police department, in a statement, said the issue of racial disparity in crime statistics is complex but “researchers generally agree that simply benchmarking arrest rates against a demographic proportion is not a reliable indicator of bias.”
    One place where the police presence is heavy, the economically depressed Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast D.C., also appears to have a higher prevalence of APO charges. Some residents say they are collectively viewed and treated as criminals by police.
    “They think we are the bad guys, but we’re not,” said Antonio Bates, a resident of the neighborhood who had his own experience with APO charges.
    […]

    During the three-year period of cases examined, nearly two-thirds of those arrested for assaulting a police officer weren’t charged with any other crimes. That statistic marked a red flag to more than a half-dozen criminal defense attorneys interviewed for this project.
    “That tells you a lot: That there is no other crime being committed,” said Copacino of Georgetown. “The police, they’re probably stopping or detaining people where there is no justification for doing so, and any resistance to that becomes grounds to an arrest.”
    He added that the charge can be deployed to sidestep the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures: “It turns a bad stop into a legitimate arrest that [the police] can then use to justify whatever they find in the course of that stop, be it guns, drugs, knives, whatever.”
    However, Burton, head of the police union, disagrees with the conclusions of defense attorneys.
    “To look at some cold numbers and conclude, ‘Well, this is troubling,’ in my view, tells me they are making some type of political statement,” he said.
    Lanier said cases with only an assault charge don’t necessarily indicate a problem: “Interactions with enforcement in a lot of different community environments —interactions with people with mental health issues — that can lead to a confrontation, and there’d be no other charge. That just goes to show that there are certain interactions with police that we want to limit. If it doesn’t need a police officer, we don’t want a police officer doing it.”
    Burton said the number of people getting arrested for assaulting an officer reflects the reality of police work in Washington: “It’s a very, very tough place to work. You are working [around] people who … hate the police and will fight the police every chance they get. And every chance they get to injure a police officer, they will take it.”
    Forty percent of those arrested for assaulting a police officer from 2012 through 2014 had those charges “no papered,” meaning that they were arrested and booked by the police but prosecutors did not formally file charges.
    In a statement to WAMU, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes most local criminal cases in the District, said it does not pursue charges that can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt: “When charges are declined, this does not necessarily mean that the conduct did not take place, and that police were not justified in making an arrest, but rather that we have determined that we cannot meet the burden of proof.”

    The article doesn’t end there, and it is a lot of information. But wow. Also, the research shows what black people have probably been saying for years – and I sincerely hope that there will be emergency action.

    Texas Austin American-Statesman (@statesman) covers. Left: #TwinPeaksShooting Right: #BaltimoreUprising

    And The Atlantic calls it what it is: The Texas Biker-Gang Massacre.

    And you have to read the tweet within to get this: Really? But, they smear the victims of police shootings before the are buried. #WacoThugs Though you can probably guess.

    Reporting on Waco biker gang killings reveals disparities in news coverage

    Nine people have died after a shootout between rival motorcycle gangs in Waco on Sunday, when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant in the central Texas city.

    I use the terms “shootout” and “gunfire erupted” after reading numerous eyewitness reports, local news coverage and national stories about the “incident,” which has been described with a whole host of phrases already. None, however, are quite as familiar as another term that’s been used to describe similarly chaotic events in the news of late: “Riot.”
    Of course, the deadly shootout in Texas was exactly that: A shootout. The rival gangs were not engaged in a demonstration or protest and they were predominantly white, which means that — despite the fact that dozens of people engaged in acts of obscene violence — they did not “riot,” as far as much of the media is concerned. “Riots” are reserved for communities of color in protest, whether they organize violently or not, and the “thuggishness” of those involved is debatable. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Texas.
    A riot is not simply a demonstration against police brutality. It can also be what happens when scores of hostile white people open gunfire in a parking lot. And when that happens, it can be described as anything but a “riot.”
    Here are some synonyms different outlets, as well as law enforcement officials, came up with:
    CNN:
    melee
    ruckus
    fracas
    brawl
    fistfight
    brouhaha
    “issues”
    trouble
    chaos
    New York Times:
    shootout
    chaos
    fight
    confrontation
    problems
    Waco Tribune:
    shootout
    altercation
    biker gang shooting
    incident
    “What happened here today” (Police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton)
    “gun fights” (Swanton)
    melee (Swanton)
    scuffles and disturbances (on the issue of related violence around the city)
    very dangerous, hostile criminal biker gangs (Swanton)
    something akin to a war zone
    KWTX:
    turned a local restaurant into a shooting gallery
    a rival motorcycle gang fight
    melee
    absolute chaos (Swanton)
    a situation like happened Sunday afternoon

  9. rq says

    A rightwinger said the police were not more forceful with the “bikers” because they were not looting. Neither was Tamir Rice.

    What the Response to Waco Says About How We Treat White vs. Black Criminals – turns out, there’s a lot of comparative analysis going on out there. Will it bring enlightenment?

    A shootout between biker gangs outside of a restaurant in Waco, Texas, on Sunday has resulted in the deaths of at least nine people, with 18 people injured. As of today, more than 165 members of several rival gangs have been arrested or jailed in connection to the shooting, according to KWTX. 
    Although Waco Police Department spokesman Sgt. Patrick Swanton described the massive shootout as “the worst crime scene, the most violent crime scene, that [he has] ever been involved in” during a press conference on Sunday, one photo taken after the event depicts a seemingly relaxed interaction between police and gang members, who appear to be mostly white. 
    The photo contrasts sharply with those taken in the aftermath of police violence in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, leading some to question the extent to which the police and media respond differently to white and non-white potential suspects.
    At Judd Legum points out at ThinkProgress, some commentators have noted the photo appears to depict “a remarkably casual treatment of individuals who could be potential suspects for mass murder. No one is handcuffed and several people appear to have access to their cell phones.”
    The images of comparatively calm police and civilian engagement in Waco is strikingly different than those captured during the Ferguson protests and the Baltimore uprising, where protesters were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and police and National Guard officers in riot gear and armored vehicles. 
    In Baltimore, droves of police sequestered specific areas in black neighborhoods as if they were preparing for battle. 
    According to ThinkProgress, gang members in Waco had reportedly shot at police upon their arrival. Yet the Waco crime scene looked relatively at ease in the aftermath of the shootout.
    While these images may not yet tell the whole story, they reveal a certain hypocrisy in police and media responses to violence when it primarily involves white people:
    The police didn’t don riot gear. 
    Despite law enforcement’s apparent foreknowledge of the impending gang clash, officers did not don the militarized riot gear seen in spaces across the country where mostly black groups have been protesting against police brutality. 
    The media didn’t call the bikers “thugs.” 
    The incendiary commentary that typically follows mass violence in the U.S. was largely missing from the media narratives following the Waco shootout as well; dismissive descriptors and causal factors often used to describe violent encounters involving black people were virtually nonexistent.
    After the shootout, for example, many media outlets referenced suspects and participants in the melee as “members of the motorcycle club” and “bikers.” Unlike in Baltimore, local and federal elected officials did not host press conferences where Waco suspects were referred to as “thugs.”
    Leather jackets and and rock music weren’t blamed.
    There aren’t any detailed think pieces commenting on the various forms of cultural pathology inherent in bike culture surfacing on the Internet, either. Pundits like Bill Maher have yet to connect country or rock music to the violent behaviors of the Waco shooting suspects (something Maher attempted when interviewing rapper Killer Mike about hip hop and violence on Real Time With Bill Maher in May). Leather motorcycle jackets and tattoos haven’t been cited as potentially problematic aspects of biker culture. 
    Contrast this with the sartorial chooses of young black people, like donning hoodies and sagging pants, being frequently highlighted as evidence of black youths’ lack of ethics. 
    There was no hand-wringing over “white on white” crime.
    The shooting was also not characterized as another example of “white on white” crime. In fact, the lack of focus on the race of the suspects suggests the public still believes whiteness is incidental, whereas black people are exceptionally criminal. “American discourse on crime is deeply politicized and influenced by racial and class bias. ‘Crime’ is synonymous with ‘black.'” Adam Hudson wrote at AlterNet. If that is the case, “white” is seemingly synonymous to lawful. 
    Parents weren’t blamed for the bikers’ behavior.
    Finally, unlike during the response to Baltimore, there is no talk of absent fathers nor bad mothers causing the violence in Waco. 
    While much has yet to be revealed regarding the specific details of the Waco shooting, including the names of those arrested, this incident uncovers the potential extreme hypocrisy at the root of both American policing and media coverage of crime.

    Motorcycle. Club. Culture.

    The #Wagner4 were suspended last week over a fashion statement, some possibly won’t walk @ graduation.

    https://twitter.com/deray/status/600400318115876866

  10. Pteryxx says

    Thanks for the new thread PZ. (This one should run out a few weeks after the one-year anniversary of Mike Brown’s death in a little town outside St. Louis that almost nobody had heard of.)

  11. rq says

    I see paragraph breaks cut-and-paste rather funny. Sorry ’bout that.

    +++

    Remember that guy, VonDerrit Myers? Got shot after buying a sandwich because he reached for his waistband, by an off-duty cop working his security job? No charges against St. Louis officer who killed VonDerrit Myers

    St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced Monday that no charges will be filed against the city police officer who shot and killed VonDerrit Myers Jr.
    Joyce issued a press release and a report detailing an investigation her office conducted separately from police. An assistant U.S. attorney helped with the investigation.
    Joyce did not name the officer in a 51-page report because he was not charged with a crime, but Police Chief Sam Dotson released a separate statement including the name of Officer Jason Flanery, which had become public months ago anyway.
    The prosecutor’s report on the Oct. 8 shooting reads, in part, “Given all the available facts, witness statements, physical and forensic evidence” prosecutors “have determined a criminal violation could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, charges will not be filed in this case.”
    The material Joyce released suggested, in fact, that Flanery, 31, was attacked and shot Myers, 18, in self-defense while on patrol that night for a private residents’ association in the Shaw neighborhood. The encounter occurred about 7:30 p.m. in the 4100 block of Shaw Boulevard.
    But it did cast a new light on the beginnings of the incident, which Flanery had told investigators started when three youths ran from his marked security car, one of them holding his hand against his body as if securing a gun. The officer did not catch them, and approached Myers shortly later, believing it was the same person.
    But Myers was wearing a GPS monitor on his ankle as a condition of his bail on charges from June 27 of unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest. “Based on this GPS information, it appears Myers was not the person Officer X was chasing…” the prosecutor’s report says.
    It puts Myers at the Shaw Market, where he also is seen on video, and then going home briefly, where acquaintances said they went for jackets.
    But the officer did have reason to suspect from Myers’ behavior in their encounter that he was armed, the report says, and after they struggled had “probable cause to give chase.” It was during the foot pursuit, officials said, that Myers fired at least three shots before Flanery returned fire. Flanery was not hit.
    Flanery declined to be interviewed separately for Joyce’s investigation, so his part of it was based on statements he made earlier to police investigators.
    The circumstances of the killing of Myers, who was black, by Flanery, who is white, drew angry protests as it occurred just two months after international attention focused on the killing of Michael Brown, who was black, by a white Ferguson officer Aug. 9.
    An attorney for the Myers family, Jerryl Christmas, challenged Joyce’s report Monday and said he is close to filing a wrongful-death lawsuit on their behalf.
    “Jason Flanery should have been charged with murder,” Christmas said. “The killing of VonDerrit was the same situation as the Walter Scott killing with the exception that (Myers’ shooting) was not on video.” He was referring to the killing of an unarmed man who fled a South Carolina officer, who was charged with murder.
    “I don’t believe for a minute that VonDerrit had a weapon,” Christmas said. “Flanery threw that gun down on him just like they threw that stun gun down on Walter Scott in South Carolina.” The lawyer claimed a private autopsy showed that Myers was shot in the back while fleeing and fatally in the head as he lay wounded on the ground.

    There’s more at the link.

    And from the attorneys, Prosecutors release findings in SLMPD officer-involved shooting death of VonDerrit Myers, Jr.

    Based upon the investigation, prosecutors concluded that Mr. Myers produced a firearm on the evening in question.
     
    Multiple witnesses confirm there was gunfire coming from both directions and from two different guns at the scene. Ballistics evidence confirms that two different guns were fired at the scene. There is no evidence that Officer X (prosecutors are not naming the officer because charges have not been filed) was the person who fired both guns. No witness claims to have seen Officer X alter evidence in any way, such as throw down a gun, fire a weapon in any direction other than towards Mr. Myers or scatter bullet casings. Additionally, there are witnesses that describe how Mr. Myers illegally came into possession of the Smith and Wesson firearm used in this matter.
     
    Given the fact that Mr. Myers produced a weapon, Missouri laws pertaining to self-defense and an officer’s use of deadly force apply. Given all the available facts, witness statements, physical and forensic evidence and for reasons outlined in the detailed report, prosecutors have determined a criminal violation could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
     
    “This is a tragic situation for our entire community, and my thoughts and prayers remain with the Myers family. I know their loss is heartbreaking,” said Circuit Attorney Joyce. “I want to express my appreciation to the community for its patience. This is a challenging time for law enforcement across the country, and I believe in the power of the community and law enforcement working together to keep our community safe.”
     
    Joyce has been vocal in her position that officer-involved shootings that result in injury or death receive a secondary, independent review to ensure the actions of police are lawful.
     
    “Prosecutors in my office have worked diligently to review the facts of this matter,” she said. “We appreciate the cooperation of the many witnesses we interviewed in our investigation. As with all criminal investigations, the assistance of the public is essential.” 
     
    Prosecutors reviewed all available evidence, including but not limited to, ballistics analysis, physical and forensic evidence and autopsy reports. They conducted multiple interviews with people claiming to have specific knowledge of the events.
     
    Prosecutors attempted to interview several other key witnesses, including the officer and three people who were with Mr. Myers that night. Through their lawyers, they each declined to be interviewed.
     
    Prosecutors will not make comments regarding the efficacy of police policies, procedures, training or other aspects of police conduct outside of the laws of the State of Missouri. Additionally, the findings of this office bear no weight on potential disciplinary or civil litigation in these matters.
     
    In the interest of openness and transparency, the CAO has provided selected crime scene photos, created renderings of the scene and autopsy report conclusions and included in the report additional items for an appendix so the public can best understand the basis for the CAO’s conclusion. Questions regarding any other source documents or materials relative to the investigation should be directed to the SLMPD.

    You can also read the full report at the link.

    @deray Again, prosecutor says “beyond reasonable doubt” in declining charges, when he knows all he needs is probable cause.

    Via Mano, Texas gang warfare.

    More gang members are now reported to be heading to Waco and are now not only threatening revenge against rival gangs, they have also reportedly issued a call to kill anyone in uniform and even threatened hospital staff. […]

    I am sure that Fox News will have exhaustive discussions around the clock on the problem of white-on-white violence, the problem of gang culture in the white community, and ask where the parents of these gang members are and why they did not raise their children properly.
    The discussions should start any minute now.

    No, really – where’s the national guard? The state of emergency?

    And here’s a bit of WTF: School calls police over pupil’s ‘sword’ ruler

    Two days earlier, she’d gone into school to meet with the head teacher following complaints Kyron had used a broken ruler in the playground as a weapon.
    During the meeting, Ms Bradley, a carer, said her son, a Year 4 pupil, explained he had been playing a chasing game with two other boys involving pretend swords.
    She said: “We explained to my son it was a stupid game to play as he could have fallen with the ruler.
    “He cried but he understood.”

    Ms Bradley said she thought the matter was closed following the initial meeting with the headteacher until she was told the police had been asked to speak with Kyron on April 29.
    She added: “I had already dealt with him myself. Why the police were involved I haven’t a clue.
    “I was so disgusted with the way he was being dealt with I burst out crying.

    “I am quite a strict parent.
    “I am not saying my child is an angel but he has never been in trouble for anything more than being a bit chatty.”

    Parent deals with child, police are still called. WTF?

    Petition: Justice for 7 year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones

    Please help bring the killer cop of this innocent 7 year old child to justice.
    Five years ago, while executing a “no-knock” raid after midnight on a duplex in Detroit in an attempt to find a murder suspect (and in a supposed attempt to show off for the A&E TV show “The First 48,”) Detroit Police threw a flash bang grenade into the residence and kicked down the unlocked front door despite warnings from neighbors there were children present. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana, who was sleeping on the couch, that it burned her blanket. As officers entered a single fatal shot was fired that struck Aiyana Stanley-Jones in the head. 
    All charges against her killer have been dismissed.

  12. rq says

    See some examples of police bigotry while at work:
    In Dayton, OH, which is 42% black, the captain of the sheriff’s department, a 20 year veteran said this: (He hates n*gg*rs.)
    Ferguson Police Officers, including the CAPTAIN, and Darren Wilson’s supervisor sent these, but racism isn’t real? (Ferguson racist emails we’ve already seen.)
    Ft. Lauderdale Police exchanged these texts w/ one another on “killing n*gg*rs”.
    ‘What do apples and black people have in common? They both hang from trees.’ THIS IS A QUOTE from Dayton Police. They’re STILL ON THE FORCE
    Baton Rouge Police. I wish someone would pull a Ferguson on them and take them out. I hate those African monkeys. (Those second two sentences are quoted from the police.)

    US cracking down on ‘militarization’ of local police

    The federal government will no longer provide heavy military equipment like tanks and grenade launchers to local cops following weeks of backlash against officers who confronted protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in armored vehicles and camouflage last year, President Barack Obama will announce Monday.
    And if they want other, less-imposing military equipment, local law enforcement agencies will have to submit to stringent federal oversight and restrictions, according to guidelines Obama will outline during a visit to discuss police reform in Camden, New Jersey, for years one of the most dangerous cities in America.
    A White House official told NBC News that the Justice Department is seeking to strike a balance by making only appropriate equipment available, and with clear operating standards, training and safety procedures.
    The measures are the followup to an executive measure Obama issued in January to crack down on the intimidating image presented by local agencies patrolling the streets bristling with advanced military weaponry.
    The controversy was fueled when Ferguson police took to the streets in camouflage with military gear after the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed. But complaints about paramilitary-style equipping of local police have been widespread at least since protests over the World Trade Organization exploded into riots in Seattle in 1999.
    Local law enforcement agencies have been eligible to receive surplus military equipment through a Defense Department program enacted in 1997.
    The equipment that’s being banned Monday includes tanks and other tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, firearms and ammunition measuring .50-caliber and larger, grenade launchers and bayonets, the Justice Department said.
    Restrictions and conditions will be put on other types of equipment — including armored tactical vehicles like those used in Ferguson, as well as many types of firearms, ammunition and explosives.
    The conditions are likely to rankle some local agencies.
    Besides having to give the feds a “clear and persuasive explanation of the need for the controlled equipment,” local law enforcement agencies won’t be eligible unless they’ve adopted what are known as General Policing Standards. Those include so-called community policing programs, with foot cops on the beat interacting with the public and regular consultation with community groups — a different approach from the “zero tolerance” policies adopted in recent years by many big-city police agencies.

    And hey, let’s throw in some workshops on racism, too.

  13. rq says

    There was that advisor who called waiting in a waiting room harrassment. Students have taken action:
    Students r tired of advisors not giving them the academic support they need. @kennesawstate #ItsBiggerThanKSU @deray
    @IamKB_ and #ItsBiggerThanKSU team submit demands to the @kennesawstate administration . #AbbyDawson . (In short, an apology; statistics on advisor numbers; survey of student experience with advisors; meeting with specific people (listed); sensitivity and interpersonal communication training; clarification on walk-in hours in Advising Centres.)
    #ItsBiggerThanKSU

    Launching the Police Data Initiative

    Today, the President is in Camden to talk about the promising progress that city is making in enhancing community policing. Last December, President Obama launched the Task Force on 21st Century Policing to better understand specific policing challenges and help communities identify actions they can take to improve law enforcement and enhance community engagement. Since that time, we have seen law enforcement agencies around the country working harder than ever to make the promise of community policing real.
    Many of the Task Force’s recommendations emphasize the opportunity for departments to better use data and technology to build community trust. As a response, the White House has launched the Police Data Initiative, which has mobilized 21 leading jurisdictions across the country to take fast action on concrete deliverables responding to these Task Force recommendations in the area of data and technology. Camden is one such jurisdiction. 
    By finding innovative work already underway in these diverse communities and bringing their leaders together with top technologists, researchers, data scientists and design experts, the Police Data Initiative is helping accelerate progress around data transparency and analysis, toward the goal of increased trust and impact. Through the Initiative, key stakeholders are establishing a community of practice that will allow for knowledge sharing, community-sourced problem solving, and the establishment of documented best practices that can serve as examples for police departments nationwide.
    Like many police departments, Camden wants to use smarter, more data-driven ways of improving community policing efforts and reducing uses of force. However, challenges with technology systems often get in the way. For instance, the Camden County PD cobbles together 41 systems that have individual value but are not designed to work together, requiring their beat officers to enter the same data multiple times. In this environment, meaningful data analysis ends up being extremely difficult to conduct, requiring analysts to spend more time on extracting the data than on critical analysis.
    The President’s Police Data Initiative has assembled a volunteer team of technology experts who are also in Camden today. The team will spend two days in Camden on a design sprint, engaging directly with front line officers, detectives, crime analysts and department leadership to help envision what a truly effective technology system could look like. The two-day deployment will help the team consider best practices and address specific technology questions as they arise, enabling departments like Camden to find the solutions that most fit their needs.
    By upgrading its technology practices, the Camden County PD will have more efficient data supply chains, and will be better positioned to use that data to improve its internal operations and to identify and solve policing problems in a more timely manner. The lessons learned in Camden can help law enforcement around the country both by example and also directly since some of the development work can be shared though open source best practice.
    Camden is just one of 21 communities currently participating in our Police Data Initiative. Through this effort, local police departments and other participants are responding first to Task Force recommendations within two streams of work:
    Using open data to increase transparency, build community trust, and support innovation
    Better using technology, such as early warning systems, to identify problems, increase internal accountability, and decrease inappropriate uses of force
    The effort has focused on specific actions law enforcement agencies can take to make progress in these two areas. The collaboration has generated multiple commitments to action and the White House is working with agencies and key enabling partners now to drive quick implementation.

    Interlude: Broadway! Hedwig Gets Her Groove Back! Taye Diggs is Broadway’s Next Hedwig and the Angry Inch Star

    Following speculation, it’s been confirmed that stage and screen star Taye Diggs will take over for Darren Criss in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Diggs will assume the role of our favorite internationally ignored song stylist at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre on July 22 for a 12-week engagement. In addition to Criss, the show currently stars Rebecca Naomi Jones, who will continue in the role of Yitzhak.

    Hedwig will mark Diggs’ return to Broadway after nearly 12 years, when he briefly played the role of Fiyero in Wicked opposite his wife at the time Idina Menzel (the two separated in 2013). He has appeared in Rent and Chicago (he also appeared in the screen adaptations of both), as well as Carousel and off-Broadway’s The Wild Party. His screen credits include Private Practice, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Best Man and Brown Sugar. He is currently in production for the second season of Steven Bochco’s crime drama Murder in the First.

    Written by 2015 Tony honoree John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask, Hedwig and the Angry Inch tells the story of a fictional rock ‘n’ roll band, fronted by Hedwig, a transgender woman from communist East Berlin. Between rock songs, Hedwig regales the audience with stories about her life, including her botched sex change operation. Trask’s score features “Tear Me Down,” “Wig in a Box,” “Wicked Little Town,” “The Origin of Love” and “Angry Inch.” Michael Mayer directs the Tony-winning production.

    Grapevine officer not charged in fatal shooting of Mexican immigrant

    A Tarrant County grand jury has declined to indict the Grapevine police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Mexican immigrant by the side of a Euless freeway in February.
    Officer Robert Clark, 33, shot Rubén García Villalpando, 31, on Feb. 20 after pursuing Garcia from the parking lot of a closed Grapevine business.
    Jim Lane, an attorney who represented Clark, said the grand jury made the right decision.
    “The only two things that soldiers and street cops can rely on is their instincts and their training,” Lane said. “When they don’t follow their instincts and their training, we end up going to that officer’s funeral. It’s always a tragedy when an officer takes a life. No one is ever sure what they could have done better. You have to take the facts as they are presented.”
    The officer did not know García was unarmed until afterward, Lane said.
    “One shove out in the middle of that traffic, and the officer could have been killed,” Lane said. “Our experts said Clark probably waited too long before using deadly force.”
    On Monday, shortly after announcing the grand jury’s decision, the Tarrant County district attorney’s office released a video of the encounter.
    It shows García walking slowly toward Clark, with his hands on his head. Clark repeatedly tells García to “get to the back of the car.” As García walks out of the frame of the dash-cam video, gunshots can be heard.
    “It has been very frustrating to listen to people mischaracterize this incident while our department honored the request of the Tarrant County district attorney not to release the video until it could be presented to the grand jury,” Grapevine Police Chief Eddie Salame said in a email.
    “The dash-cam video tells a very different story from the one the public has been hearing.”

  14. rq says

    A couple more, then I’ll let y’all catch up.

    +++

    ACLU on the militarization: War Comes Home

    All across the country, heavily armed SWAT teams are raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night, often just to search for drugs. It should enrage us that people have needlessly died during these raids, that pets have been shot, and that homes have been ravaged.
    Our neighborhoods are not warzones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color.
    As our new report makes clear, it’s time for American police to remember that they are supposed to protect and serve our communities, not wage war on the people who live in them.

    And yep, it’s from June 2014. So all the warning signs were there – Ferguson was just the practical application on a larger scale.

    New militarization recommendations a good first step, but we need action on surveillance purchases, too

    The new rules go beyond limiting what kinds of equipment different agencies may acquire using federal resources. They also require police departments to keep detailed records of how they use such equipment, and report it to the feds. Critically, the White House recommends that this information also be shared with the public.
    These recommendations, and a very promising new initiative from the White House pertaining to police data collection practices, constitute a big step in the right direction. But we can’t stop here. We need a corollary program to deal with the quiet but perilous expansion of the surveillance state through federal grant programs and joint task force operations. For the past decade plus, the feds have been buying hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of surveillance equipment for state and local police departments, mostly without any public debate or scrutiny. License plate readers, stingray cell phone snooping tools, biometric technology, surveillance cameras, finger print readers, powerful intelligence databases, rapid DNA testing machines, and fusion centers deserve the same level of attention.
    With this White House executive order on police military gear acquisitions, we are getting closer to a formal reckoning vis a vis police militarization; we need to get to the same place concerning police spying. Bearcats and tanks in the streets are menacing to democracy, but so is omnipotent, high-tech surveillance. The police response to the Ferguson protests caused a national uproar about militarized cops. But those cops were probably using all manner of surveillance gear purchased with federal funds. Those technologies operate under cover of secrecy, making them perhaps even more dangerous than tanks. It’s time to pull the curtain back on this federal surveillance funding bonanza and begin to roll it back.

    @Nettaaaaaaaa @deray students are staging a #blackout wardrobe day to support. Please sign: Petition here: Wagner High drop the suspension and any other disciplinary actions against the Wagner Four

    Video captures police trying to illegally detain teenage girls, women rushing to their aid

    Police, apparently from the 30th precinct near West Harlem in New York City, attempted to illegally detain two teenage girls from the community. As you will see in the video below the fold, these young girls didn’t do anything wrong.
    At 6:08 in the video, all hell breaks loose.
    This is about as a bold of an example of witnesses courageously standing up to bad policing as you will ever see.

    Just wow.

    And here’s a pick-me-up: Video: Nicki Minaj feat. Beyoncé – ‘Feeling Myself’

    Pretty on fleek. Out of nowhere, Nicki Minaj has decided to bless us with the flawless video for “Feeling Myself” featuring Beyoncé. Queen Bey and Queen Nicki join forces in the quirky clip, which premiered on TIDAL. The BFFs hit the desert and look like they’re having tons of fun as they eat hamburgers, party at Coachella, and have a water gun fight. Plus, look for cameos from Vic Mensa and Hit-Boy.

    (Full video on, of course, Tidal.)

  15. rq says

    Shock value! Ala. Man Receives Death Threats for Removing Confederate Flags From Grave Sites

    Myron Penn, a prominent attorney in Union Springs, Ala., removed small Confederate flags that were placed at the grave sites of Confederate soldiers in a local cemetery, WSFA reports. As a result, he has drawn the ire of some locals.
    Penn explained why he felt compelled to remove the flags.
    “The reason why we picked them up is because the image of the flags in our community. A lot of people feel that they’re a symbol of divisiveness and oppression of many people in our community,” Penn told WSFA. “Especially with the history that that flag, and the connotation and negativism that it brings, I would think that no one in our community would have a problem with this or with my actions at all.”
    Some people from the community said that Penn disrespected the legacy of the Confederate soldiers by removing the emblem of their struggle.
    “It’s not about race or the flag or anything else. It’s about decency and respect for the dead. You don’t do stuff like that,” Rebecca Atkins, a Union Springs resident, said. “You got to give respect where it’s deserved, and those soldiers gave their lives just like any other soldier gives their lives. It’s nothing racial and it’s not about discrimination. You look at the person who served for our country, and that’s what matters.”
    Still, others supported Penn’s decision, especially appreciating the fact that Penn was motivated by his son to take his actions.
    “I just thought it was great when he did that. He said that he came up there with his little boy, and I thought it was absolutely great,” Tchernavia Blackmon, a Union Springs resident, said. “He did the right thing. I wish I had been out there to help him pick up the flags. He did a great job.”
    The mayor of Union Springs, Saint T. Thomas Jr., said that an outside group, not relatives or a city group, had come into town and placed the Confederate flags in the cemetery. Thomas said the group should have sought permission from the City Council before doing so.
    “They had no business putting them out in the first place,” the mayor said.
    For removing the Confederate flags, Penn has been getting death threats and hate mail, including calls that he be disbarred.

    So… they weren’t even flags original to the graves, placed by local families…

    I will be introducing a resolution this week to create a special committee to examine police-involved shootings.

    No charges filed in police shooting of VonDerrit Myers Jr., investigation differs with police on key points and raises case of mistaken identity. Basically, a case of ‘they all look the same’, and a person paid with his life.

    Don’t Answer That!

    San Francisco v. Sheehan had all the makings of a blockbuster Supreme Court case. It emerged from a horrifying tragedy: Two police officers repeatedly shot a mentally ill woman in her own home after she threatened them with a bread knife. It centered around a contentious question: whether police officers must take mental disability into account before using deadly force. It pointed toward a disturbing outcome: During oral arguments the court appeared poised to let cops kill belligerent disabled people so long as the cops could rustle up some plausible pretext.

    But on Monday the Sheehan saga ended anticlimactically. Rather than handing police officers an expanded right to shoot disabled people, the court swatted away the case. Although the justices granted qualified immunity to Sheehan’s shooters, they grudgingly dismissed the question of whether the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, requires cops to “accommodate” mentally disabled people during police encounters. San Francisco, the court noted, dropped this question after the justices agreed to hear its case. And if San Francisco wouldn’t ask the question, the Supreme Court had no business answering it.

    This resolution may be bathetic—but it’s also a pretty big victory for disability rights advocates and for police accountability. The ADA instructs local governments to give “reasonable accommodations” to disabled people. Several federal appeals courts have found that police officers—who are, of course, government employees—aren’t exempt from this requirement, and must take care not to treat mentally ill people like violent offenders. (In Sheehan’s case, the officers might have recognized her threats as deranged rambling and resisted the urge to draw their guns.) Had the Supreme Court considered this question, it might well have ruled that the ADA did not apply to police confronting mentally ill people, and thus overturned previous rulings. San Francisco, by simply accepting the proposition that police should accommodate the mentally ill, removed it from the conservative justices’ crosshairs, leaving the ADA safe for another day.

    Baltimore Police Department Categorical Use of Force Review Board Findings, as pdf.

    Ohio Prosecutor Sends Out Letters Warning Residents About Legal Gun Protest Against Police Brutality.

  16. rq says

    Baltimore NAACP sends letter to @FOP3, accusing union of “subtly threatening” city’s female leaders & “making borderline racist statements” .

    White-On-White Crime Strikes Again In Waco, mostly for the headline.

    Following a spate of white-on-white violence over the weekend in Waco, Texas, that claimed nine lives and resulted in scores of casualties and over 190 arrests, there has been a marked lack of interest in talking about where the event fits into the epidemic of such white criminal behavior in the U.S. — despite the fact that every year, more white people are murdered by white people than by any other group.
    In recent years, a national pattern has begun to emerge in the wake of shootings in which a black man is killed by a white man. Of course the death is a tragedy, goes the narrative, but the dead man probably provoked the killing somehow — and more importantly, if you truly care about young black men, why aren’t you more concerned about black-on-black violence?
    The same pattern doesn’t hold even when white-on-white crime unfolds in full view of the nation, as it did in the parking lot of the Twin Peaks Restaurant on Sunday.
    Yet white-on-white crime should be a huge concern — because it’s out of control. Granted, there are 201 thugs off the streets for the time being, but what about the rest of them?
    Around 83 percent of white victims in 2011 were murdered by other whites, based on the most recent FBI homicide data.
    As many as 3,172 white people were killed in 2011 — and 2,630 of them lost their lives at the hands of another white person. This is compared to 2,695 black people, 2,447 of whom were killed by another black person.
    Whites lead when it comes to gang violence too: 53.3 percent of gang-related murders between 1980 and 2008 were committed by white people, according to the Justice Department, compared to 42.2 percent committed by blacks. Victims of gang-related violence were also mostly white.
    For HuffPost Black Voices, comedian Kerry Coddett asks some important questions about why such horrid violence plaguing the white community can’t be reeled in:

    In 2013, whites led all other groups in aggravated assault, larceny-theft, arson, weapons-carrying, and vandalism. When it comes to sexual assault, whites take the forcible rape cake. They are also more likely to kill children, the elderly, family members, their significant others, and even themselves! They commit more sex-related crimes, gang related crimes, and are more likely to kill at their places of employment. In 2013, an estimated 10,076 people died in the U.S. due to drunk driving crashes. Driving while drunk is almost exclusively a white crime because everyone knows black people prefer to drink on their porches or inside their homes.
    So why is white on white crime so prevalent, one may ask? Is it the music they listen to? Is it the white divorce rate, resulting in more white children coming from broken homes? Perhaps it’s the TV shows they watch or the violent sports they play. More than likely, it is a combination of all of those things, with the exact root cause unclear. What is clear, though, is that not enough people are talking about the crime plaguing the white community. We need to spread the word, holding protests and demonstrations that call attention to this growing matter. Because, after all — white lives matter, too.

    It’s time for a national conversation on how we can help these people alleviate crime rates in their community — I mean, where are the fathers? — and it’s time for responsible white Americans to step up and condemn the violence.

    They have since stripped the restaurant of its license. America. #TwinPeaksShooting (via @dailybeast) Mustabeen the alcohol. Or the food.
    Just heard this former Sheriff on CNN describing #WacoShooting as child’s game “King of the Hill”. Boys will be boys… White boys will be white boys, he means.

    Soldier who died in custody cried out: I can’t breathe, with video.

    Interlude: Hair! The hair styles that celebrate freedom: Colombian women remember the end of slavery with contest to create the most intricate and colourful braids

    There are very few hairdressing contests in the world that are as imaginative, or as steeped in culture and history as this one in Colombia.
    Everything from reels of colourful ribbon, to appliqué flowers and even wooden buttons, were incorporated into the striking hairstyles of the women and girls who turned up for the 11th Afro-hairdressers contest in Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, this weekend.
    But while the intricate braidwork appeared colourful and vibrant, they held a poignant significance for those in attendance at the competition, named ‘Tejiendo Esperanzas’ (Knitting Hope).

    Check out the photos and video. Beautiful.

  17. rq says

    Final report of the President’s task force on 21st century policing available at the link.

    Even the BBC picked up on it: Would it have been different if the Waco bikers were black?

    After a shoot-out between rival biker gangs in Texas, civil rights activists are accusing police of double standards by comparing pictures of the scene with those of recent unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson.
    Nine people have died and 18 others have been injured in a motorcycle gang brawl outside a diner in the Texan city of Waco. In the aftermath of the violence, some activists have seized upon the relatively relaxed-looking police presence as seen in news agency pictures. Several of the arrested bikers – who mostly appear to be white – were allowed to sit alongside police without apparent being handcuffed. And some asked whether they would have been treated any differently if they had been black.
    “White Waco gang members that just killed 9 people v. a Black man walking home in Ferguson” wrote one user as she shared pictures of the bikers and demonstrators being targeted by police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The images were picked up by black civil rights campaigners, and have been retweeted thousands of times.
    One of the most widely shared posts was put up by Josh Nelson, a communications adviser with the campaigning organisation Credo Action. – their website says that they “actively encourage” people to get involved in progressive campaigns.
    The most widely re-tweeted updates on the story are all in a similar vein, with the online conversation being dominated by civil rights activists who were involved in the Ferguson movement. Deray McKesson, the curator of the “We The Protesters” website, tweeted: “They’ve recovered at least 100 weapons from the Waco #TwinPeaksShooting scene. 100. The Nat’l Guard would be mobilized by now if, black.”
    “The news is describing the Waco biker gangs as an established part of American life. If they were black, they would all be thugs by now” he added in another tweet.

    Motorcycle club culture, indeed. So American. So deadly.

    Tangential, but interesting: http://b*tchmagazine.org/post/the-post-colonial-politics-of-game-of-thrones-feminism-race (correct link as appropriate) The Post-Colonial Politics of “Game of Thrones”.

    What the show really asks is, “What if white people had committed colonial-level horrors on other white people?” In other words, all the blood and boobs, rape and torture, are not just HBO gratuitousness, but an expression of how European colonizers treated their colonized subjects, masquerading as domestic high-fantasy in Belfast castles. 
    This isn’t to say that Europe in the Middle Ages wasn’t violent in the way Game of Thrones is violent. The Medieval era was certainly not all flowers and fairies for women, people of color, or poor people. Yet the relationships of power shown in the show derive from a style of violence more aligned with 18th century and modern imperialism’s dehumanization and exploitation.
    For instance, season three of Game of Thrones featured the controversial story arc of Daenerys Targaryen’s “White Woman’s Burden” of liberating the slaves around Essos, culminating in the questionable image of her crowd-surfing, a blonde, white center surrounded by dark bodies calling her “mother.”
    This season begins to critique her liberation campaign, pointing out the hypocrisies within Dany’s vision. She refuses to open the fighting pits in her anti-slavery stance, yet leaves her own dragons, her other “children,” in chains. She faces grassroots resistance from the rebellious group, the Sons of the Harpy, showing discontent with her and her council of (almost all) white dudes. No storyline more clearly outlines the relationship between “white people who think they mean well” and a population struggling to re-assert agency in problematic ways. You can draw parallels to when the British attempted to outlaw the practice of sati (wife burning) in India, a decision that found itself marred in anti-colonial tensions and polluted by the colonial power relationship.
    Season five also introduces the location of Dorne, a region home to an interracial mix of refugees from Essos called the Rhoynar, considered by Martin to be somewhat Palestinian, who interbred with the colonizing Andals. Dorne’s filming took place in Spain, with the new cast characters of Dornish characters including many biracial actresses, like the Maori-Kiwi actress Keisha Castle-Hughes and Singaporean-British actress Jessica Henwick. Dorne is the only region in Westeros that resisted the imperial conquest of the Targaryens, like other real-world anti-colonial holdouts, Ethiopia and Thailand. As a result, the Dornish have kept their “exotic” customs of lax primogeniture, sexual licentiousness, and, you know, giving women rights. This season’s story in Dorne highlights the tensions between colonial resistors and the encroaching imperial powers, as the late Oberyn Martell’s family struggles with their resentment toward the Lannisters and King’s Landing.
    […]

    We cringe at the torture and degradation of Theon Greyjoy, yet we ignore the atrocities committed at Guantanamo Bay and in dark cells across the world by the US government. We bemoan the state of Sansa Stark, yet we struggle to hold sexual aggressors and domestic abusers in power accountable. We cry as the Lannisters kill off all our favorite characters, while everyday, Black American citizens are killed by police brutality and systemic oppression. As the character Varys ponders in this season’s premiere, “Perhaps we’ve grown so used to horror, we’ve forgotten there could be another way.”

    Rise in Suicide by Black Children Surprises Researchers

    The suicide rate among black children has nearly doubled since the early 1990s, while the rate for white children has declined, a new study has found, an unusual pattern that seemed to suggest something troubling was happening among some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
    Suicide among children ages 5 to 11, the age range the study measured, is rare, and researchers had to blend several years of data to get reliable results. The findings, which measured the period from 1993 to 2012, were so surprising that researchers waited for an additional year of data to check them. The trend did not change.
    Suicide rates are almost always lower among blacks than among whites of any age. But the study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, found that the rate had risen so steeply among black children — to 2.54 from 1.36 per one million children — that it was substantially above the rate among white children by the end of the period. The rate for white children fell to 0.77 per million from 1.14.
    It was the first time a national study found a higher suicide rate for blacks than for whites of any age group, researchers noted.
    “I was shocked, I’ll be honest with you,” said Jeffrey Bridge, an epidemiologist at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I looked at it and I thought, ‘Did we do the analysis correctly?’ I thought we had made a mistake.”
    The researchers used national data based on death certificates that listed suicide as the underlying cause. In the study, they offered a few possible explanations for the difference, including that black children are more likely to be exposed to violence and traumatic stress, and that black children are more likely to experience an early onset of puberty, which can increase the risk of depression and impulsive aggression. But it was not clear whether those characteristics had changed much over the period of the study and would account for the sharp rise. […]

    The finding seemed to buck other trends by race. Among adolescents of both races, for example, the rate declined over the same period, falling for blacks more than for whites, according to figures Dr. Bridge provided. The rate for black boys rose sharply. The rate for black girls also rose, but the change was not statistically significant, he said.
    The way the children were dying seemed to provide some clues. Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, who read the study, pointed out that gun deaths among white boys had gone down by about half while staying about the same for black boys, signaling that gun safety education may not be reaching black communities as effectively as white ones.
    Suicides by hanging, on the other hand, roughly tripled among black boys, while remaining virtually unchanged for whites.
    “He uncovered something very significant in the data,” she said, referring to Dr. Bridge. “Viewed over all, that age group looked like it was flat.”
    She said the traditionally lower rates for blacks had often been attributed to strong social networks and family support, religious faith and other cultural factors. “That makes me wonder whether there is something in those protective factors that may have shifted in the wrong direction over those two decades,” she said.

    Missouri lawmakers just snubbed almost every Ferguson-inspired Bill. Seen before, different source.

    The biker gangs have put out a call for retaliation on the police, who killed some of their members. And still no State of Emergency. Waco.

  18. rq says

    Media coverage of gang violence sure looks different when the perpetrators are white

    Over the weekend, a shootout between three rival biker gangs at a bar in Waco, Texas, left at least nine gang members dead and 18 others hospitalized with gunshot and stab wounds.
    It was a huge, devastating tragedy. The New York Times reported that law enforcement sources called it “the worst violence in the Waco area since the siege on the Branch Davidian compound in 1993 that left 86 people dead.”
    But if you follow the social media conversations around the incident, you’ll see something in addition to the predictable shock, curiosity, and mourning for the victims: there’s frustration and anger over how the Waco shootout (whose perpetrators appear to be mostly white) is being talked about — and, specifically, how that contrasts with the coverage and commentary of crimes when the people involved are black.
    With the Waco incident, we got just the news — not the racial pathology
    Those who are using what happened in Waco to start conversations about stereotypes and media biases against black people aren’t complaining about the tenor of this weekend’s media coverage. They’re saying something a little different: that by being pretty reasonable and sticking to the facts, this coverage highlights the absurdity of the language and analysis that have been deployed in other instances, when the accused criminals are black.

    In particular, you’ll see a lot of sarcasm about “white-on-white crime” and “white-on-white violence.”

    That’s because hand-wringing over “black-on-black” violence is frustratingly common — especially as an attempt to derail the focus on high profile stories of police-involved deaths of black people. It’s finally catching on that focusing on black-on-black crime in response to criticism of law enforcement practices doesn’t make sense, but the absence of any similar refrain in cases in which the suspected criminals are white is a reminder of how the idea of intraracial crime is almost exclusively — and unfairly — brought up when black people are involved.
    Another line of commentary that’s predictable in media coverage and commentary surrounding violence involving black people has to do with black cultural pathology.
    Politicians and pundits are notorious for grasping for problems in African-American communities — especially fatherlessness — to explain the kind of violence that, when it happens in a white community, is treated as an isolated crime versus an indictment of an entire racial group’s way of life.
    The total absence around the Waco incident of analysis of struggles and shortfalls within white families and communities is a painful reminder of this.
    The “Why are they shooting up their own neighborhood?” question in that last tweet is a sarcastic reference to a common sentiment expressed after the Baltimore riots that followed Freddie Gray’s death, and the destructive elements of the mostly peaceful protests in Ferguson, Missouri, surrounding Michael Brown’s death. It’s another line of thinking that’s conspicuously absent in the television and social media commentary that’s surrounded the Waco shootout.
    You’ll also hear people lamenting that politicians, reporters, and commentators have largely refrained from calling the bike gang members “thugs.” There’s been widespread sensitivity around the racialized use of that term ever since it was deployed against slain black teen Trayvon Martin, who was killed by George Zimmerman in 2012.
    This issue came up again, more recently when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake used it to describe the young people who destroyed property when protesting Freddie Gray’s death. The fact that the bike gang members accused in this case haven’t been slapped with this label is an infuriating reminder of its racial undertones and the way it is so easily and disproportionately deployed against black people, either as an intentional code word of because of deep-seated stereotypes about race and criminality.
    The backdrop for the frustration: how black people are treated by the police
    To really understand the angst over the language and analysis surrounding what happened in Waco, you have to remember that there’s more going on here than just frustration with reports, cable news commentators, and Twitter reactions. […]
    But the key thing to understand is that the criticism here is not really of the coverage of what happened in Waco. It’s of the juxtaposition of what happened here with what happens when the people involved are of a different color. The message is not that the conversation about Waco should be overblown, hypercritical of an entire culture, or full of racial subtext. It’s despair over the sense that if the gang members were black, it almost certainly would be.

    It continues at the link. Really good examination of the differences in reporting and attitude.

    In Seattle, Man Fends Off Armed Robber By Telling Him: “I’m From St. Louis”.

    On this day 3 years ago, Maurice Donald Johnson was shot to death by 2 @BaltimorePolice in his mothers living room right before her eyes.

    Malcolm X was a loving man willing to do whatever necessary to free his people. Happy Birthday, Brother Malcolm.

    Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones to Reunite on Broadway in The Gin Game

    The last time Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones appeared on Broadway together was in 1966 in A Hand Is on the Gate, but this fall, the dynamic duo are reuniting. According to Variety, starting with previews Sept. 21 and opening Oct. 13, Tyson and Jones will star on Broadway in The Gin Game.
    The Gin Game tells the story of a man and a woman in a nursing home who strike up a friendship over a game of gin rummy. The play, which was written by D.L. Coburn, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 and originally starred Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.
    Although Jones and Tyson haven’t appeared on Broadway together since 1966, they’ve worked together throughout the years on various projects.
    In 2013 Tyson won a Tony for The Trip to Bountiful, and Jones most recently starred on Broadway in the revival of You Can’t Take It With You.

    Stopped by #VonDerritMyers memorial. Ask yourself: Why was he stopped walking around his own neighborhood? @deray

  19. rq says

    In the footsteps of Nike… Baltimore Boxing to honor Police during “Blood, Sweat & Tears” Card May 29! #boxing #boxing… http://tinyurl.com/o5ayu8w

    On 5/15, a white parent hit a black student in the face at MS 51 in Park Slope. Police & school staff will not address. (via @Combat_Jack) Apparently her face hit the parent’s hand by accident.

    ‘We Share Struggle’: Why rapper Freeway went to Baltimore

    This month, Philly rapper Freeway traveled to Baltimore to join the voices of protest united over the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old man who died after suffering a spinal-cord injury while in police custody. The National Stop the Killing Committee and the Justice League NYC brought Freeway as their spokesman for #BmoreYouthRise, a May 9 daylong event with various demonstrations.
    The 36-year-old rapper commemorated Gray’s life by placing his handprint on the memorial mural on Fulton Street near where police stopped Gray. He took part in a youth-oriented panel, embarked on a three-mile Peace Walk, and headlined the Our Moment for Our Movement concert and rally.

    Freeway also visited Gilmor Homes, where Gray lived, and spoke with Gray’s friends and family. At the basketball court where Gray used to hang out, Brandon Ross, Gray’s godbrother, told Freeway that because of the attention the area has received, the city put nets on the basketball rims for the first time in 15 years.
    For Freeway, it’s personal: In 2007, his cousin Raheem Pridgen, 27, was shot and killed by police. Freeway made it clear he is not anti-police. “It takes a special human being to police people. You have to be better than everybody else to tolerate certain things. You have to know how to act when you’re having a bad day and not want to take it out on people,” Freeway said.
    Going to Baltimore was his way of seeing the city beyond CNN. On the heels of the Philly is Baltimore protest, the “What We Do” rapper said he wanted to show solidarity for the city that so closely mirrors his own.

    More, in his own words, at the link.

    Prince in Baltimore

    Almost a month earlier to the date, 25 year old Freddie Gray was arrested by police, only to meet his death a week later due to neck and spine injuries sustained under police custody. Since then, Gray’s death has fueled more protests during a time of existing unrest, re-opening wounds that have barely scabbed over. Yet another black man loses his life due to police brutality, and the cry from many corners has become simply, “stop killing us.”
     
    During the Civil Rights movement, artists like Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte and James Brown lent their voices in service to the people. This past Sunday, Prince lent his voice and his presence to the people of Baltimore. His servitude was displayed in a 2. 5-hour set where he shared the stage generously with other artists such as Miguel, Estelle and Doug E Fresh.
     
    The mood in the arena was electric yet, reflective. “You don’t know what the past two weeks have been like here,” said a young waiter from Baltimore, visibly holding back tears that told more of the story than his words. In attendance were the families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. “To those who have lost loved ones, we are your servants tonight, we’re here for you, ” said Prince.
    […]

    Prince’s concert united people from a myriad of age groups and walks of life. The message of peace is an essential one and an ideal I hope will be obtained, though the journey to peace might continue to be paved with hardship, as McKesson says the protests will intensify over the summer. I ask McKesson if he is willing to die for this cause? “It’s not about being willing to die,” he says “it’s that I am unwilling to live in an America where my blackness equals death.

    Re: STL, City should have a surplus from last year, but expenses from the unrest of 2014 ($4-5m) ate that up. No reimbursement from the state.

  20. says

    From Raw Story–
    Tear down the ‘Blue Wall of Silence’: New York Dem destroys sheriff who blames police violence on blacks:

    David Clarke, the Milwaukee County sheriff, described “black-on-black crime” as the “elephant in the room” Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the rising tensions between police officers and African-Americans.

    “The conversation should be about transforming black underclass subculture behavior,” said Clarke, who frequently appears on Fox News. “The discussion must start with addressing the behavior of people who have no respect for authority, who fight with and try to disarm the police, who flee the police, and who engage in other flawed lifestyle choices.”

    “Bashing the police is the low-hanging fruit,” the sheriff added. “It is easier to talk about the rare killing of a black male by police because emotion can be exploited for political advantage.”

    Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) agreed that black-on-black crime was a problem – but he pointed out that 83 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other white people.

    “Is white-on-white violence also a problem that we should have a robust discussion about?” the lawmaker asked the sheriff.

    Clarke and Jeffries agreed that the rates of violence within ethnic groups is roughly equivalent, which the congressman said was likely due to segregated housing patterns in many cities.

    “It was mentioned that there was a cooperation issue in the black-on-black violence context – but I don’t think I’ve heard the phrase mentioned, ‘blue wall of silence,’” Jeffries said.

    “If we’re going to have a conversation about cooperation when someone crosses the line, seems to me to make sense that we also have to deal with what may be another elephant in the room, to use your term,” the lawmaker added.

    Jeffries next addressed the sheriff’s testimony complaining that police violence was addressed on emotional terms, using what he referred to as “false narratives” – including the slogans “hands up, don’t shoot,” “no justice, no peace” or “black lives matter.”

    He asked Clarke if the reaction to Eric Garner’s death, after he was choked to death by New York City Police officers using a banned restraining maneuver, was also a “false narrative.”

    “First of all, he wasn’t choked to death, not from the report that I had seen out of the grand jury testimony,” Clarke claimed. “Even from the medical examiner’s report, he wasn’t choked to death.”

    Jeffries interjected and pointed out that the medical examiner had ruled Garner’s death a homicide by asphyxiation.

    “In the ghetto, that’s called being choked to death,” Jeffries said.

    Clarke said the facts in that case were perhaps better left to discussion at another time.

    “My understanding is he died of a heart attack,” Clarke said, citing a column by the black conservative Thomas Sowell who accused police critics of “irresponsible self-indulgence” for trying to deprive officers of the right to use force as they see fit.

    “When law enforcement officers tell someone they’re under arrest and they can’t use force to execute that arrest, we don’t have the rule of law when it’s merely a suggestion that they’re going to jail or to put their hands behind their back,” Clarke continued.

    Jeffries told the sheriff his testimony blaming Garner for his own death was “outrageous.”

    “He was targeted by police officers for allegedly selling loose cigarettes — which is an administrative violation (and) for which he got the death penalty,” Jeffries said.

    He accused Clarke of making up his own facts when reality did not suit his point of view.

    “If we are going to have a responsible conversation, we’ve got to at least be able to agree on a common set of reasonable facts that all Americans can interpret – particularly in this instance, because they caught the whole thing on videotape,” the lawmaker said.

    CNNs ex-cop defends not calling white bikers thugs ‘this thing started with the black community’:
    (the black community is responsible for black victims of police brutality being called thugs? News to me.)

    Following a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas over the weekend, many noted that the media did not stereotype the suspects the same way that it had during coverage of the Baltimore riots, which were far less deadly.

    “This is about a culture that looks at blackness and says that it sounds like a certain thing, it looks like a certain thing,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained to a CNN panel on Tuesday.

    “I don’t know how you can make a comparison between Waco and Baltimore,” Houck complained. “Are these guys thugs? Yeah, they’re thugs… I use the word thug and I mean ‘bad guy’ when I use the word.”

    “I think the word was owned by rappers,” he continued. “They started coming out with songs and calling themselves thugs, and I think that’s how this whole thing started, with the black community and the young men calling themselves thugs. Alright? And I think that’s how that all started.”

    Blow argued that Houck’s etymology of the word thug was “patently inaccurate.”

    “That word has a long history, and whether or not a word is absorbed into a community in the same way people absorbed the n-word and sometimes gay people absorbed words that were historically used to bash them, and try to rub off the edges of them and absorb it into the culture, to make it less abrasive and hurtful,” Blow observed. “A lot of times, that is what is happening with the etymology of words.”

    But Blow said that the bigger concern was that the entire black community was treated as the problem after localized events in a way that the white community never was.

    “Everybody has got to stop and move on from here,” Houck recommended. “Forget the past. Move on.”

    “I don’t want to forget the past,” Blow shot back. “That’s not even a smart thing to say.”

    “Whatever happened a thousand years ago, stop! Let’s move from here,” Houck demanded, turning to Blow. “Come on, you’re a smart man.”

    “You’re smarter than what you sound like right now,” Blow quipped.

    ****

    rq, I have some links from DiversityInc coming up (if the darn page will load).

  21. Menyambal says

    The white guys at Waco were pretty much motive-free, too. There was nothing at stake except bragging rights as to which group was THE group of the territory – not money, not drugs, not control of votes, not actual power. It was just as much pointless colonialism as in that comment about the Princess of North Sudan. So, yeah, it was white guys acting white.

  22. rq says

    Tony
    I’m still posting links from two days ago. :)

    +++

    We’ve assem[bl]ed now, to protest re: the decision not to charge Officer Flannery for the murder of #VonderritMyers.

    Police. Downtown STL. #VonDerittMyers

    They are now saying that we must leave the area. And that being on the sidewalk is also unlawful. STL. (As people have noted, these sorts of things were already addressed in lawsuits back in 2014 autumn and end-of-summer…)

    Before the arrests, #STL Police @SLMPD gave protesters an order demanding they disperse and said they *could NOT* remain on the SIDEWALK!

    This Post-Dispatch reporter (@joelcurrier) was arrested by the police. & then just magically released. STL. Protestors remain in custody.

  23. rq says

    Actually, no, this is last night now, I think.

    And they literally assigned EVERY available black officer to today’s protest. There are more black officers than I’ve ever seen. STL.

    The new rule is that all citizens can only enter the courthouse one-by-one. America. STL.

    #STL police just arrested 2 female #Ferguson protesters who are calling out CircuitAtty #JenniferJoyce for not prosecuting killer cops!

    Call 314.622.4941 to demand that Jennifer Joyce come speak to protestors about her decision not to charge Ofc. Flannery. #VonderritMyers

    And Jennifer Joyce is saying that she will meet with two protestors only. And the protestors have declined. Either all, or none. STL.

    .@POTUS, I thought the DOJ said officers need to wear badges. Help me understand this sheriff in STL w/o a badge.

  24. rq says

    There are more officers right now on alert in STL than in Waco, Texas.

    The STL Municipal Court Building is officially on lockdown.

    Pics from #VonderritMyers protests in downtown #STL

    Here’s a happy: 45 Photos Of Black Graduates Guaranteed To Make You Say “YAAASS”

    The past year of police brutality, murders, marches, and riots have left many of us feeling numb. Here’s an extra helping of black excellence from the class of 2015 to help you feel again.

    Congratulations, graduates!
    @BuzzFeed @deray miss one that uplifts me everyday! Ethea Farahkhan earned her masters also.

    If you Google Map “nigga house,” this is what you’ll find. America.

  25. rq says

    Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade?

    The form arrived in an email attachment on the Friday after winter break.“What is your race?”it asked. And then, beneath that, a Census-style list: “African-American/Black,” “Asian/Pacific Islander,” “Latina/o,” “Multi-racial,” “White,”   and “Not sure.”
    The email, signed by the principal of Fieldston Lower School, urged parents to talk about these categories with their children at home because the next week, in school, the kids would have to check the box that fit them best. “I know there may be some nervous feelings about this program,” the email concluded, but “I am confident that once you hear more details about it … the value and importance of this work will become clear.” 
    The parents at Lower, as it’s called, are a bighearted, high-maintenance, high-achieving group. They are also, by the standards of the New York City private-school universe, exceedingly liberal — educators and social workers, as well as hedge-fund tycoons. They love the school, and trust it, mostly. But this communication seized their attention. “I was like, Wait. What?” remembers one mother. Another quizzed her 11-year-old daughter as they were driving. “We have to go in our race groups” was how the girl explained it. The mother hoped her daughter had misunderstood.
    […]

    Now the school was promising to do even more in the name of racial equity, offering a pioneering new curriculum designed to give its youngest students the tools they’d need to navigate their own futures — and to bolster Fieldston’s sense of itself as a standard-bearer in progressive education. The program, which was also put in place this school year at Ethical Culture, Fieldston’s other elementary school, would boost self-esteem and a sense of belonging among minority kids while combating the racism, subtle or otherwise, that can permeate historically white environments. It would foster interracial empathy by encouraging children to recognize differences without disrespect while teaching kids strategies, and the language, for navigating racial conflict. Efforts like this had been popping up around the country over the past decade in progressive private schools and public schools wrestling in more direct ways with the tangle of race and achievement. Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has developed an anti-bias curriculum that 16,000 teachers have downloaded since it became available in September. The Anti-Defamation League does training for kids and teachers in schools — 200 a year in Connecticut alone. And Welcoming Schools, connected with the Human Rights Campaign, helps train the staffs of elementary schools for this kind of learning, traveling last year to Boulder, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Arkansas. In Gallup, New Mexico, a fifth-grade class planned and staged a community arts crawl showcasing the theme “Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action.” In Greenville, Alabama, fourth-graders made picture books answering the question “How have people fought for what is right at different times in history?” and then read them aloud to the school’s second-graders.
    But Fieldston’s program would be bolder, more radical: It would be mandatory rather than voluntary, and built into the school day itself; it would compel participation from children of all races who would at first be separated into racial “affinity groups”; and it would start in the third grade, with 8-year-olds, an age when many of the kids have only an inchoate sense of what “racial identity” means. It would be a boundary-pushing experiment, in other words, in a place that seemed exceptionally hospitable to progressive experimentation — but also, undeniably, a privileged and racially anomalous bubble. Fieldston’s unusual identity gave it a better shot than most schools, perhaps, at making this work; and if it did work, its administrators thought, the impact might reach far beyond its cloister. […]
    Apprehension moved like the flu among certain factions of the parents. In heated conversations in parking lots and on playing fields over the next few months, they shared and amplified one another’s anxieties, invoking yellow stars, blacks-only water fountains, the Japanese internment — “Brought memories of the Soviet Union right away,” wrote one father on a parents’ email thread. The word segregation came up a lot. For many of the parents at Lower, this program violated the values they’d learned back in their own elementary schools a generation ago. You just don’t sort human beings by race.
    But objections were personal, too, and revealing. In a community, and an era, that prizes global identity as a modern elite ideal, the categories seemed confining, artificial: Why was the school forcing these children to define themselves and their families so narrowly? Does racial identity actually assert itself that early? Weren’t these kids way too young to be compelled to think of themselves in racial terms? Besides, what if introducing the problem of race fatally undermined the culture Fieldston had so carefully cultivated — couldn’t it backfire, creating tension between kids where none had existed before? And below the surface, suspicion: Wasn’t the community, full of die-hard liberals, too forward-thinking to need help? […]

    White parents who objected to the program felt discomfited, fearful that if they voiced their concerns, they would be tagged as racists. They wanted their kids to talk about race, they insisted. But, as with most white liberals, they seemed to prefer to conduct the conversation on an intellectual level, considering it as a problem of history, policy, or justice — the kind of conversation unfolding already in Fieldston’s mandatory ethics classes. The much more intimate, idiosyncratic, lived experience of race — that is a harder discussion to have, especially when it probes reflexive reactions to difference (fear, disgust, mistrust, anxiety, curiosity, eagerness, attraction, admiration) that are sometimes heated, irrational, and not always pleasant. These are feelings the average white Fieldston parent was raised not to mention. This same parent who sends her children to Lower because she values diversity tends not to dwell on the fact that she has few close friends of color; that her neighborhood is almost entirely white; that her nanny or housecleaner or doorman has brown skin. The program at Lower was designed, and is supported in large part, by people who have spent their lives on the other side of that well-meaning silence and can testify that it’s no way to thrive.
    On January 14, ten days before the new program was to launch, Burns, who is white, invited all the Lower parents to a meeting at Fieldston High School to meet Richards and air concerns. About 65 people showed up. After short introductory remarks by Burns, Richards began her presentation, clicking through PowerPoint slides.
    The meeting quickly grew tense. Parents took sides, and though the opponents were not divided, exactly, by race (the parent body is far too mixed for that), alliances for or against began to emerge. Antagonists interrupted Richards, asking to see more hard research on the benefits of racial separation and calling into question the qualifications of the 20-odd teachers and staff Richards had tapped to mediate the groups. By some accounts, Richards was shouted down. Others say she grew defensive and dismissive of parents’ concerns. “It was like, ‘Oh, you silly parents, you just don’t understand,’ ” said one mother who was there.
    A Jewish parent raised his hand, according to another parent who was there. He grew up in the South, he said, where Jews were seen not as “white” but as something categorically different. When he was a child, the Ku Klux Klan attempted to burn down his synagogue. To lump Jewish children together with other white children is to ignore centuries of history, he said.
    “When you walk in the room, I see you as white,” one person there remembers an African-American parent interjecting. “Your child needs to go in the white group.” Another parent remembers it this way: “You have the privilege of hiding behind your whiteness. And my child doesn’t.”
    […]
    The fourth affinity-group session met on April 15, a cool morning that held the wet beginnings of spring. The topic that day was racial perception and stereotypes: How do you see other people? How do other people see you? What assumptions do you make based on appearances? Behind closed doors, in classrooms along a long corridor, the children gathered in racial groups and mediators flashed a slide on a screen. “I see, I think, I wonder,” it said. Then children were shown a photograph of nine kids — racially diverse and, in some cases, racially ambiguous. Within each group, the kids were asked to describe what they saw in literal terms: skin color, hair color, and so on. They were prompted to consider the children in the picture beyond their initial impressions: to wonder freely. In the black group, the children wondered if they’d feel different if all the kids in the picture were black. In one of the white groups, the children were asked to go around in a circle and say what they wondered out loud.
    “I said, ‘I wonder if they’re adopted?,’ because I had to say something,” one fifth-grader (whose parents oppose the program) in a white group told me.
    “I get to be with people I can share my race with, and I don’t feel uncomfortable about it,” says one third-grader, in the black group, who tells me the only other times he’s surrounded exclusively by black people are when he’s at home or with his basketball team. “We talk about how it’s important to know what your race is. We talk about the difference between being prejudiced and being racist. So I can know when someone’s being racist to me, and I can help other people know that, too. I can say I’m proud of being black. I remember my friend saying that the affinity groups are racist, but they’re not. They put you in a group of what race you are — I don’t think that’s racist at all. We get to make jokes and stuff, and comments. When we’re talking, we get to draw, we get to laugh.”
    “It’s so fricking boring,” said a fifth-grader in the Asian group. “We do the same thing every week. The conversations we have are mostly about the tensions between whites and blacks, and never about Asians or Hispanic people. It annoys me sometimes that people are like, ‘Oh my God, people are so segregated.’ But we are never mentioned. It’s just frustrating, I would say.”
    The ambitions of the Fieldston program are large, and some aspects are better articulated by the school than others, but at base the school hopes to initiate what it calls “authentic” conversations about race, which researchers suggest may actually have been inhibited by liberal values for decades. Under the spell of color-blindness, previous generations have tended to avoid race as a subject, hushing their children when they refer to playground playmates as “brown,” believing that by not acknowledging race in public they were enacting a desire for equality for all. In fact, in the academic literature, “color-blindness” now refers to the reluctance to address race, not the ideal of casual intermingling. […]

    For white people, Singleton’s method means eventually coming to the understanding that they’re white — and, more particularly, to understand, on a gut level, what white privilege actually means to them. White people are raised to believe they have no race, that they are “normal.” Their whiteness becomes like water, or air — so pervasive as to be invisible. But a historically white school, which has long catered to white families, can’t say it wants diversity without dealing with the fact that its culture is white, educators like Singleton say. And this is something that makes white families uneasy, because to concede that you have the power is, in some way, to give it up. “There is a whole lot of pushback; white families are not sure they want these environments to be equitable. They don’t feel expert in chaperoning their kids through change because they’re living in a monoracial environment. They say they’re the ones who want to talk about race — well, good luck with that! You don’t even engage with race.”
    With her affinity-group program, Richards hopes to accomplish two things. First, she wants to support the kids of color, because they and their parents have told her they need the help. There are still too many incidents of “microaggressions” at her school: A girl puts her hands in another girl’s hair; a boy asks his Asian friend where he’s really from. A number of years ago, a white student in a fourth-grade biography unit delivered a presentation on Jackie Robinson while in blackface; more recently, a child who called Robinson his hero wanted to use blackface to dress up as him for Halloween only to be told no by his parents. Then again, an open dialogue is sure to produce some moments like that, especially at first; messing up, say the administrators at Fieldston, is part of the process. “You can’t just put kids in a room and think that the best of intentions are going to play out,” Richards says. “Best of intentions only get us a certain piece of the way.” But she asks opponents to consider this: If a portion of families say they want something from their school, wouldn’t it be good to give it to them instead of arguing that it’s not needed?
    Richards agrees with her opponents on one point. What sets her program apart from similar interventions at other schools is that it’s mandatory — as integral to the school day as gym. Everyone has to participate, even the white kids. When other schools have affinity groups, “they send the white kids to recess.” At this point, Richards laughs. True integration — the thing she calls “equity,” which she distinguishes from “equality” — doesn’t happen if only half the people are talking about it. “What I am suggesting is that we all have skin in the game. I’m suggesting that we all need to be involved in this conversation.” And if the parents will give her a chance, she says, they’ll see that she’s trying to improve the experience of school for everyone. “This is about academic excellence for me. It is not just about making people feel good about themselves.”
    It is absolutely not her intention, she says, to lay on 8-year-olds a burden about white privilege or white guilt. “They have done nothing — nothing,” she emphasizes. All she hopes to do is to get a bunch of white kids in a room to recognize that they’re white. And perhaps to ask themselves, if they’re ready for it, “Hey, what does that mean?”

    The article goes on with parental reactions, people’s experiences, and program development and application.

    Pregnant woman says Chicago cop punched her in belly and went on racist tirade for laughing at him

    A pregnant woman claims a Chicago police officer punched her in the stomach and went on a racist tirade after she laughed at him.
    Nicola Robinson said she was standing outside with some neighbors Friday evening when three officers ran past in pursuit of a suspected drug dealer, and she said they all laughed when the suspect got away, reported WFLD-TV.
    Robinson, who is eight months pregnant, said the plainclothes officer shoved her while she was holding her 1-year-old son and then punched her.
    “As I got ready to walk in my building, he punched me on my right side as hard as he can,” she said.
    Then the officer launched into a racist rant, the woman said.
    “After he punched me, he presumed to say, ‘You black b*tch, you better be glad I didn’t hit you hard enough to make you lose your f*cking baby,” Robinson said.
    Her sister witnessed the attack and the racist tirade – which she said shocked the other officers.
    “The other two officers who (were) with him were standing there, and they’re looking like, ‘What are you doing?’ — but I guess they didn’t want to say anything,” said Monique Dickerson.
    Robinson said the officer quickly changed his tune when she pointed out that nearby apartment buildings are equipped with security cameras.
    “Then that’s when the attitude about him started changing, and he got real quiet,” Robinson said. “You could tell in his face that he knew that, ‘Man I have f*cked — I have messed up.”
    Robinson said a building manager told her surveillance video clearly shows the officer punch her – sending her into premature labor – but the management company did not respond to media requests for comment.
    The pregnant woman spent five hours at an area hospital under observation before doctors cleared her to return home.
    Chicago police have launched an internal affairs investigation into the incident, calling the allegations “very disturbing.”

    All black lives matter: Suspect In Fatal Stabbing Of Philadelphia Transgender Woman Is Identified

    London Kiki Chanel, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was stabbed to death in North Philadelphia early Monday, the police department told BuzzFeed News.
    Raheam Felton, 31, “confessed to the murder of London Kiki Chanel” and is in custody, said Cameron Kline, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.
    Felton, who allegedly stabbed Chanel multiple times, is charged with possession of an instrument of crime and murder. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on June 3 but does not yet have a lawyer, Kline told BuzzFeed News.
    Chanel is the eighth transgender woman of color confirmed killed in the United States this year — a trend that anti-violence advocates have called an epidemic. And as in many of the cases, Chanel was misgendered in early reports.
    “There has been an immediate outcry from the community who knew her,” said Nellie Fitzpatrick, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs for the City of Philadelphia. “I was receiving reports from the community that the deceased was transgender and needed to be referred to appropriately as a woman with female pronouns.”

    NBC10 initially reported, based on interviews with Philadelphia police, that the victim was a “man” stabbed inside a vacant North Philadelphia home.
    “Her name was London Chanel,” one of the commenters on the article said. “Please correct the terrible reporting in this article immediately. Black trans women are already at extreme risk of violence, it doesn’t help to hide their murders by using the wrong names and genders in shoddy news coverage.”
    Fitzpatrick said NBC10 apologized and updated the article to use female pronouns after she contacted the television station. Police, meanwhile, told her “any information or briefings from police headquarters would reflect the proper gender identity.”

    Attorney General Lynch Delivers Remarks at a Community Policing Roundtable in Cincinnati

    Good afternoon.  Thank you all for being here.  It is a pleasure to join so many law enforcement officers, students and youth leaders, faith leaders and community officials as we discuss the work that is underway here in Cincinnati and across the country.  I’d like to thank Chief of Police [Jeffrey] Blackwell for welcoming me to Cincinnati today and for his exemplary leadership of the Cincinnati Police Department.  And I want to recognize our outstanding U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, Carter Stewart and Mayor [John] Cranley, for their help in putting together this important convening.
    The issue of trust between and among law enforcement officers and the communities we serve is the issue of our times.  It has come to the forefront of our national discussion and captured a great deal of media attention due to recent tragic events in New York, Ferguson, Baltimore and other cities.  Protest movements have emerged and people are speaking out.  But let’s be clear – this is not a new issue.  The people in this room have recognized and been working on these issues for years.  You have seen how the underlying issues of education, joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness impact the community overall and police-community relations in particular.
    As many of you know, my first trip as Attorney General, just a few weeks ago, was to Baltimore – a city that was, and is, in deep distress.  I met with a wide variety of individuals – from peaceful protestors who were anxious about the violence in their city, to the law enforcement officers who had worked 16 days without a break but were still focused only on the safety of their residents.  And even after the unrest, I was optimistic – because from everyone I met, I heard the same thing: “I love my city and I want to make it better.”  
    Of course, this issue of broken and damaged trust is not Baltimore’s alone – it exists in cities and communities across the nation.  But the hope that I saw in Baltimore – and the determination from residents and law enforcement officers to improve their city together – is present across the country as well.  It is here in Cincinnati.  There is no doubt that we face big challenges, but I believe that Americans are equal to the task.  And I want to do everything I can to help.

    More at the link.

    It has begun! Feds Exempt MRAPs from Prohibited Police Equipment Despite Admitting They’re “Militaristic in Nature”

    The interagency Law Enforcement Equipment Working Group (LEEWG), which was established by Obama under Executive Order 13688, purposely exempted MRAPs and other military vehicles from a list of equipment prohibited from police use.
    To explain the exemption, LEEWG described MRAPs as equipment “that could be seen as militaristic in nature yet also may have significant utility for law enforcement operations.”
    “This includes several types of armored vehicles, such as MRAP vehicles transferred via the [Pentagon’s] 1033 program and armored vehicles manufactured commercially,” the LEEWG report stated.
    LEEWG even suggested that it was okay for university police departments to use MRAPs as long as they have “policies” in place, such as painting “Emergency Rescue” on the side, as if that’s going to prevent abuse from happening.
    “The University of Texas System Police (UTSP) has a policy on Emergency Rescue Armored Personnel Vehicle (MRAP), which specifies that the ‘exclusive operational purpose’ of the MRAP is to enhance the physical protection of its occupants,” the LEEWG report said. “Accordingly, the policy requires that any MRAP vehicle display the words ‘Emergency Rescue,’ so that its purpose is clear to the community.”
    The editor-in-chief of a major law enforcement web site, Doug Wyllie of PoliceOne.com, thought it was strange that MRAPs were exempted.
    “Recall that the MRAP was purpose-built for the theater of war in Iraq and Afghanistan when our soldiers were being killed and maimed because the Humvees and M35/deuce-and-a-halfs were being shredded like wet cardboard,” he wrote. “The design of the MRAP is specific to answer the threat of an IED constructed from unexploded military ordinance.”
    Last year the Spokane Co., Wash., Sheriff’s Dept. came under fire after a deputy claimed their MRAP was needed to deal with the threat posed by “constitutionalists.”
    “I mean, we’ve got a lot of constitutionalists and a lot of people that stockpile weapons, lots of ammunition,” the deputy said. “They have weapons here locally.”
    Considering how much the Obama administration hates the Second Amendment, is it really that surprising that they would encourage police to use MRAPs?

    No caption necessary #VonDerittMyers #stl #BlackLivesMatter #ABanks #ftp

  26. rq says

    Yeh, I’ve picked up a lot of graduation photos, because let’s face it, they deserve to be acknowledged.

    +++

    At Judiciary Committee hearing on #policereform, witness blames #EricGarner for his own death → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUTUN7JDKsM&feature=youtu.be …

    I asked why PRESS were un-arrested. HIGH-RANKING SLMPD PO said “Press have different rights than [protesters]” #WRONG
    St Louis cops went Bat shyt crazy and jumped out of their cars waving guns at folks on the sidewalk. @CivilRights

    #BikerLivesMatter Cartoon, panel 1: “Do bikers lack family values? Or is heavy metal to blame?”; panel 2: harmless homebrewers to be frisked; panel 3: “Why do you dress like that? Why wear chaps unless you want the Bandidos to stab you in the face over meth?”; panel 4: “That’s thug attire! You want respect, wear something normal. Like a hoodie.”

    Yes queens RT @DiorCherie88: Make some damn noise for these new black doctors!!!

  27. rq says

    Protesters arrested at home of St. Louis prosecutor

    At least six protesters were taken into police custody Tuesday night as they staged a demonstration outside the home of Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce.
    The chanting protesters gathered at the home in the Holly Hills neighborhood shortly after 9 p.m.
    They were opposing the decision by Joyce’s office not to bring charges against a St. Louis police officer who fatally shot VonDerrit Myers Jr., 18, on Oct. 8.
    Joyce announced the decision not to pursue the charges on Monday.
    About 40 protesters joined the demonstration. Some were hit with pepper spray by officers who ordered them off the home’s lawn. They screamed, “Wake up, Jennifer!” and “No justice, no sleep!” Police had no advance notice of the protest.
    A few police officers arrived initially, and a couple dozen more officers arrived as the protesters chanted. Police told protesters to get out of the street and to be quiet. At one point, an officer drew a gun on a protester who was on the lawn.
    Police Chief Sam Dotson said at the scene that one of the protesters wiped pepper spray on him and that assault charges will be pursued against that person.
    Spray paint canisters fell from the bag of one protester who was arrested. “Certainly there was some intent to do something,” Dotson said. He pointed out that this was a residential neighborhood and police told protesters they could stay if they could be quiet, but they did not.
    Joyce was home at the time of the protest, in which some of the protesters also were on the porch and street in front of the house.

    This is a non violent protest. She wouldn’t come talk to us this morning. #VonDerittMyers parents deserve answers.

    At least four protesters attested outside @JenniferJoyceCA home in Holly Hills. Still lots of screaming.
    So, so, so bad! I’ve been sprayed 5 times so far in 30 min! Many arrests. My face burns so bad. #STL @ChiefSLMPD
    It’s abundantly clear the use of force this morning and evening is a tone setter. @SLMPD have played the first hand. Mace/arrests/guns

  28. rq says

    And apparently this happens when you put “university” instead of “house” . Google is so post-racial, yoozguyz.

    Host @donlemon and @sallykohn discussing/debating the definition of the word #thug

    Southern Rites: A Small Town’s Inability to Acknowledge Its Own Racism

    In 2009, photojournalist Gillian Laub published a series of photos documenting the high school proms in the tiny Georgia community of Montgomery County, which was remarkable because the proms were racially segregated. Though the students grew up together, played together, and went to Montgomery County High together, there had been two separate proms—one for white students, one for black students—since the high school was integrated in 1971. “It’s how it’s always been,” one student told the New York Times. “It’s just a tradition.”
    When the prom finally integrated in 2010, Laub returned to further document it, but instead she wound up uncovering a more profound, devastating story of how virulent underlying racism, “just tradition,” upended a closeknit but troubled community. She found “a more complicated story,” as she puts it in the subject of her excellent new documentary, Southern Rites, which carefully, significantly reports the murder of Justin Patterson, an unarmed black 22-year-old, by Norman Neesmith, a 62-year-old white man. And more complicated, it certainly was.
    Though Laub is ostensibly a photographer—a talent that emerges in the angles and light she captures—she’s got a journalist’s sensibility of reporting and a storyteller’s skill at teasing out the situation’s nuances. The night Patterson was killed, he and his younger brother were at Neesmith’s house visiting his daughter and her friends, a biracial teenager named Danielle born to his niece and who he’d been caring for from infancy. It was late at night; they brought weed. Justin’s brother, 18, had sex with another girl at the house, just 14. At some point, Neesmith was roused from sleep and discovered the boys in his home. There is some dispute over what happened next, but what they can agree on is that as the Patterson brothers tried to escape, Neesmith fired four shots from a .22 caliber gun. One hit Justin Patterson in the back. He died in a field, in his brother’s arms.
    […]

    Southern Rites is a powerful statement in the era of #blacklivesmatter, especially since Neesmith embodies a perfect example of how America’s foundational racism affects and clouds the views of literally everyone, even those who may think they do not harbor racial prejudice. Neesmith repeatedly insists he would have shot Patterson in the same situation even if he were white, and you can tell he really believes it. But of course that’s not necessarily true—he also invokes the vacant, pervasive, literally deadly specter/trope of the big, scary black man that persistently rears its head after shootings like this, from George Zimmerman to Darren Wilson Neesmith describes Patterson as muscular and athletic compared to Neesmith’s disability, with the capability of beating him in a fight. (That aspect was invoked in the court, too—his defense attorney, in an interview with Laub: “I don’t want to call him feeble, but…”)
    While Southern Rites hinges on the shooting, trial, and aftermath, its parallel stories help paint a complete portrait of the ways that racism, “just tradition,” affects the County. Keyke Burns, Patterson’s first love and prom date in Laub’s initial photo series, is a featured subject—as the trial plays out, her father runs a campaign to be Montgomery County’s first-ever black sheriff, with the implication that should he win, the area has a fighting chance for real, if incremental, change. Meanwhile, Patterson’s family and friends—including the young mother of his baby daughter—are fighting, hoping, and praying for justice for Justin, even printing that phrase on t-shirts embossed with his face, the memorial t-shirt that so many people across the country find themselves having to print. It’s these aspects that render Southern Rites all the more tragic, because they’re so relatable, so pervasive, and so “complicated,” as Laub prefaced it—not just inside a tiny Georgia county, population 8000, but in every county in America.

    We finished #RecallKnowles2015 in 3 days instead of 4 thanks to the hard work & turnout from the canvassers!

    Petition in support of the Move 9: Free the Move 9

    Statement from the group that just shut down the Queensboro Bridge & Midtown Tunnel, flags ablaze, for #MalcolmXDay:

  29. rq says

    Obama signs Cardin’s ‘Blue alert’ bill to protect police officers. Coming as close as this does on the heels of the reduced militarization of the police, I have a feeling there was some sort of pressure here.

    The measure is named for Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, the New York City police officers who were killed last year by a man with Maryland ties. Police say Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley killed the officers in December after shooting a former girlfriend in Owings Mills.

    The law, which Cardin introduced in 2010, creates a system similar to the Amber alerts used to locate abducted children. Baltimore County police said last year they tried to alert the New York City Police Department that Brinsley had pledged to kill officers in the area.
    “It’s important for us not only to honor their memory, it’s also important for us to make sure that we do everything we can to help ensure the safety of our police officers when they’re in the line of duty,” Obama said before signing the bill in the Oval Office.
    The blue alert system, he said, “prevents the possibility that other officers may be caught by surprise, and it ensures that appropriate steps can be taken as quickly as possible.”
    Twenty-two states — including Maryland — have created similar systems, according to Cardin’s office. The legislation was altered this year — adding credible threats as a possible cause for activating a blue alert — in response to the killing of Ramos and Liu. Previously the alert would have been activated by the death or injury of an officer.
    Cardin attended the bill signing, along with members of the officers’ families.
    “My hope is that law enforcement officers and their families can take comfort in knowing that with the enactment of the National Blue Alert, the infrastructure soon will be in place for all Americans to play an active role in keeping them — and neighborhoods nationwide — safe from harm,” Cardin said in a statement.

    But it always takes so frickin’ long to pass anything to do with education or black lives or…

    Now, I’ve been generally positive about your recent comments re: police violence, @POTUS. But this “Blue Alert” system is offensive.
    By signing this “Blue Alert” law, you made it clear that you stand firmly with those who not only wish us harm, but actually harm us.
    You’ve gotta give it to the National FOP for sneaking in a federal “Blue Alert” system as police kill people. Hate is organized in America.
    And why didn’t we hear about this “Blue Alert” legislation from the Congressional Black Caucus? Who was on watch on this one?

    Ohio Man Ricky Jackson, Exonerated After 39 Years in Prison, Sues Police

    Ricky Jackson, in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, names the city and at least eight former officers or their estates for his arrest and incarceration following a 1975 Cleveland-area slaying.

    “It was the misconduct by Cleveland police detectives and those working in concert with them that led to Mr. Jackson’s wrongful conviction,” according to the suit in U.S.District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
    Jackson was 18 when he was first locked up, and is now 58. With 39 years in prison, he’s believed to have served the longest time behind bars for someone wrongly incarcerated in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. He had been sentenced to life after Ohio declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1978 before reinstating it three years later.
    Jackson and two other co-defendants who were also wrongly convicted in the case were freed after a key witness, Edward Vernon, recanted his testimony two years ago claiming the trio shot and robbed money order salesman Harold Franks. Vernon, who was 12 at the time of the shooting, said he had been coerced by detectives.
    “His statement implicating Mr. Jackson was a complete fabrication created by the detectives,” the lawsuit alleges.
    The suit doesn’t specify an amount in monetary damages that Jackson is seeking, but requests a jury trial. He has already received about $1 million of a $2 million compensation award from the Ohio Court of Claims for his wrongful imprisonment.

    Three of the detectives and one sergeant named in Jackson’s lawsuit have died in the years since his arrest. A spokesman for the city of Cleveland told NBC News that officials aren’t commenting on pending litigation.

  30. rq says

    #BlackLivesMatter protest at 59th #NYC!

    Sort of an aside, Prosecutors will now assist St. Louis police at homicide scenes. Can I jsut say, the system within which I work has this element? And it is a big, big mistake. Don’t do it. Unless you have an excellent training program for prosecutors all lined up.

    Police and prosecutors will all converge on murder scenes in St. Louis. The prosecutors will observe the investigation, interview witnesses and connect with families of victims. The goal is to help solve more murders.
    In 2015, 64 people have been murdered in St. Louis, with 44 of those murders being unsolved.
    Maria Miller’s 21-year-old son Courtney Williams was shot to death in 2014. The college student’s murder is also unsolved.
    “I have to deal with that every day of my life,” Miller said. “Waking up and going to sleep is the hardest part.”
    It is a pain the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office is trying to prevent any other mothers from feeling.
    Mary Pat Carl is the lead homicide prosecutor for the city of St. Louis. She is heading the team that will now assist police at homicide scenes.
    “People out there know things about all of these homicides that are unsolved,” Carl Said.
    Carl added that being visible at the scenes from the start also helps prosecutors build trust with witnesses.
    “If we are there from the start then we begin to earn that trust with witnesses,” she said.
    FOX 2’s Anthony Kiekow learned about the new strategy after pressing the police chief about the number of unsolved murders earlier this month.

    Black people get killed accidentally. 3 Waco Bikers Mistakenly Let Out of Jail. That’s what happens to white people.

    The Drug War, Mass
    Incarceration and Race    , pdf report/infographic.

    Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’, just for fun.

    Searching for This Racist Phrase on Google Maps Takes You to the White House

    Google Maps may be the best software for getting around, but that doesn’t mean it’s troll-proof. On Tuesday, Activist Deray McKesson highlighted the racist result that turns up when you search for “nigga house” in Google Maps. 
    It takes you straight to the White House: 
    The result was confirmed when Mic searched for the phrase in an incognito window using Google Chrome. A red pin popped up, describing the location as the “iconic home of America’s president.” The result was still showing up during incognito searches as of press time.

    McKesson subsequently noted that he searched for the phrase after someone alerted him to the fact. “I typed it myself,” he tweeted. “Shocked.”
    Google made headlines on May 8 after it announced that public edits would no longer be allowed to its maps, after a number of incidents in which trolls added “fake edits,” like an Android urinating on an Apple logo and a pin with the phrase “Edwards Snow Den” on top of the White House. 
    It’s unclear how this latest act of vandalism made it into the mix. “Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused,” a spokesperson for Google told Mic in an email. “Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly.”

  31. rq says

    Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at the Colorado Lawyers Committee Annual Lunch

    Thank you to Constance Talmage, John Walsh and the Colorado Lawyers Committee for inviting me here today.  It’s an honor to speak with you today about the work of the Civil Rights Division, particularly our work to ensure that policing is done in accordance with the Constitution and to help local police departments and the communities they serve build trust where it has eroded.
    Eric Garner.  Michael Brown.  Tamir Rice.  John Crawford.  Walter Scott. Freddie Gray.
    These names and many others have become familiar to us under tragic circumstances in recent months.  Their deaths and those of other unarmed African American men and women in encounters with police officers, have provoked widespread responses across the country and have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.  In communities of color, in particular, the reaction has been stark and sobering. 
    In the seven months I have been at the Civil Rights Division, I have spent a lot of time with local leaders and community members in cities all across America, including with numerous mothers who have lost their children in officer-involved shootings.  The pain, anger, frustration—the lack of trust in the police—is real, and it is profound.  Again and again, people have told me that young people are losing faith in our justice system and view law enforcement as preying on them rather than protecting their loved ones.  They talk about how the police don’t value their rights, or indeed, their lives.  They talk about being tired of being viewed as criminals first, human beings second.
    The conversation in these rooms, however, is not about whether to have police or not but about what kind of policing communities want and deserve. 
    There is no question that we need police in our communities.  Police officers ensure the safety of our communities by patrolling neighborhoods, defending the rights of victims and deterring crime.  They are our first responders in many emergency situations.
    The overwhelming majority of the women and men who police our streets do their jobs with honor, pride and distinction.  Most of these individuals are driven to the police academy out of a commitment to public service and a desire to make an impact in their communities.  As the senseless and tragic assassinations of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu this spring, the shooting of two officers in Ferguson in March and the tragic injuries inflicted on officers in Baltimore a few weeks ago, remind us, officers do all of this at considerable risk to themselves.
    I am struck everywhere I go by the wide gap in empathy and common language to discuss these problems.  Because in the very same cities and rooms where I speak with folks in the community, I hear from law enforcement who emphasize their responsibility to enforce the law and how they are doing the best job they can.  They feel attacked and undervalued.  They talk about how the actions of a few bad actors have tarnished the whole profession.  They talk about the fact that department budgets have been slashed over the last several years, resulting in drastic cuts for community policing and neighborhood patrols.  They talk about how they are constantly making split second decisions and people don’t account for the thousands of times situations don’t escalate and how the daily stress of their jobs take a toll.
    But there is one certain commonality in all rooms I am in.  And that is that everyone agrees that we are confronting grave challenges when it comes to the erosion of trust between police and the communities they serve throughout the United States.  The level of mistrust and resentment is unsettling.  Some, including NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, call it a “crisis in American policing.”

    She goes on at the link, a good read.

    Arlington police officer responding to domestic dispute fatally shoots man. Don’t call for help, people of colour.

    The disturbance led Arlington officers to the Gates of Ballston complex, where around 11 a.m. they encountered the son in his residence, police said. One officer received a serious gash across his face, a second was Tasered, the mother suffered minor injuries, and Alfredo Rials-Torres, 54, was shot in the chest by police.

    Prosecutors may feel pressure to make decisions more quickly in police use-of-force cases

    Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty took nearly a year to present his first evidence to a grand jury after the November 2012 police shootings that left an unarmed Cleveland couple dead.
    By contrast, the state’s attorney for Baltimore brought criminal charges against six police officers on May 1 of this year, 12 days after a suspect died of injuries sustained following his arrest.
    Why the big difference in the time that it took two prosecutors to bring charges against police officers?
    Criminal justice experts contacted by Northeast Ohio Media Group said one likely factor is a heightened sensitivity and scrutiny following the August 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Missouri.
    The shooting of Brown ignited demonstrations across the nation and renewed interest in whether police officers in Ferguson and elsewhere are held accountable for their conduct.
    As a result, prosecutors will likely decide more quickly whether to bring criminal charges against officers, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
    “Under current conditions, I do expect these cases to move forward more rapidly,” Rosenfeld said. He cited the demonstrations following Brown’s death and the violent protests immediately following the death in Baltimore of Freddie Gray.
    And while Rosenfeld said the rioting might not have solely influenced the state’s attorney in Baltimore, he described the speed with which officers were charged as “extraordinary.”
    “It’s hard to believe it happened completely independent of public protest and pressure,” he said.
    Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Associate Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich said the heightened local and national interest in police use of force has put prosecutors on notice to “make a relatively reasonably prompt decision” about whether to charge officers.
    Nearly six months have elapsed since a Cleveland police officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside Cudell Recreation Center on West Boulevard, and the investigation is not complete. Some activists have protested the shooting and the fact that the investigation is ongoing, but the demonstrations have not risen to the level of Baltimore.
    “Maybe Tamir Rice, fortunately for Cleveland, happened early enough in this string of things to not generate that reaction,” said Michael Benza, a criminal law instructor at Case Western Reserve University’s law school.
    But Benza said the Tamir case has influenced future events.
    “Freddie Gray isn’t just Freddie Gray,” he said. “It’s a combination of all the other things that came before it, the match that lights the powder keg.”

    Why do America’s riots so precisely mirror each other, generation after generation after generation?

    As some 37,000 fans streamed into Camden Yards for the Orioles–Red Sox game on the last Saturday evening in April, things were getting out of hand in Baltimore. The peaceful protests of the day were spiraling into bitter confrontations. Outside the stadium and nearby, rocks were being hurled at police and through store windows. If you’d caught these fast-breaking developments online, you might have been tempted, as I was, to flip on CNN. Cable news may not have a reliable nose for news, but it can be counted on to bear witness whenever it smells blood. 
    I should have known better. This was the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., and the network was giving it four hours of undivided attention. Government potentates, media folk, and a modest bounty of show-business celebrities were busy posing on the Washington Hilton’s red carpet on their way to the ballroom. The news happening 40 miles up the road might as well have been in Kazakhstan. CNN didn’t cut away to on-the-ground coverage or offer the obligatory split screen. There were, however, frequent glimpses of the anchor Wolf Blitzer at a prime table down front.
    Yet, if you chose, as I did, to monitor these annual revels with one eye while following the Baltimore action on Twitter, you got both up-to-the-second snapshots of the latest urban battleground and a wide shot of the cultural chasm separating official Washington from modern America’s repeated eruptions of racial unrest. That chasm is nothing new. What made this particular instance poignant was the presence in the ballroom of our first African-American president, the Magic Negro who was somehow expected to relieve a nation founded and built on slavery from the toxic burdens of centuries of history.
    […]

    Performed before a sea of overwhelmingly white faces in black tie, this ventriloquistic routine almost came off as a minstrel act, a throwback to the Jim Crow era, when the very idea of a Barack Obama in the White House would have been unimaginable. Still, for all our real progress since then, the retro vibe remains apropos to our own time too. The comic premise that our first black president, six years in, must subcontract his anger to a surrogate in order to express what he really thinks is an exquisite, only slightly exaggerated distillation of his predicament, and ours. The routine gained a whole other layer of context from the anger simultaneously being vented on streets 40 miles away. Anyone watching who was old enough to have lived through the riots last time in both Baltimore and Washington had to be struck by what still hasn’t changed in the decades since. And had to wonder what, if anything, is going to change now, despite all the protestations of goodwill, bold action, and reform voiced by the nation’s political class since the killing of Freddie Gray. […]

    Baltimore’s own presumed inoculation against Armageddon was embodied by its young, recently elected mayor, Thomas L.J. D’Alesandro III, a Democrat in the FDR-JFK mold (and, as it happened, the older brother of the Democratic leader-to-be Nancy Pelosi); his predecessor, the Republican Theodore McKeldin, had also been a progressive popular with black voters. The city had the second-largest chapter of the NAACP (behind New York). In February 1968, the Baltimore Sun published an article, soon reprinted in Reader’s Digest, explaining why Baltimore had miraculously escaped the riots that had ravaged Newark and Detroit (along with Tampa, Atlanta, and Cincinnati, among others) during the long, hot summer of 1967. The answer? A new police commissioner had sent a signal that “someone in authority cares” by installing a black deputy to run an expanded, proactive community-relations department. “When the man wearing a police uniform is not automatically hated, then there is progress, there is hope,” the article concluded. “In Baltimore there is hope.” It was also in February 1968 that the much-awaited report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by LBJ after the 1967 riots — singled out Baltimore for rare optimism on the same grounds. In April, that hope was incinerated by an insurrection that spawned a thousand fires, left six dead, and required nearly 11,000 troops to suppress.
    In the aftermath, both cities’ old downtown commercial districts became ghost towns. (Baltimore’s still is.) Washington’s had started to fade well before 1968, the white exodus picking up steam after 1960, when the Census officially certified that the nation’s capital was also the nation’s first major black-majority city. After the riots, however, my father did something unexpected — and somewhat anomalous for a white small-businessman in a gutted American urban business district of that time. He shifted his anger from those who plundered his store to some of his fellow store owners who were either abandoning the city or insisting on more police as a cure-all. He soon beat a path to Walter Washington and before long was entwined with the city’s fledgling black leadership on a second career as a civic activist that would outlast our family’s century-old business (which he shut in 1987) by more than two decades. […]

    Before the riots, few whites had looked closely at how daily civic humiliations permeated the fabric of a city still segregated in everything but name. In Ten Blocks From the White House, a Washington Post volume published afterward, Ben W. Gilbert reconstructed the complacent pre-riot thinking. Washington would surely not be another Los Angeles, Newark, or Detroit, he wrote, because “many blacks had secure, well-paying government jobs, with pensions at retirement.” They wouldn’t riot, because “they had a real stake in the city,” and “to protect this stake, they would discourage others from misbehaving.” No doubt this is the kind of nonsense plantation owners told themselves on the eve of the Civil War.
    A parallel myopia had lulled progressive Baltimore into its own complacency. Forgotten in the 1968 pre-riot happy talk about the city’s embryonic efforts at community policing was a historical legacy that continued to define its racial divisions and economic inequities (and still does): In 1910, Baltimore had become the first American city to delineate the geographical boundaries of black and white neighborhoods, literally block by block, in a residential-segregation law. (The ordinance became the model for southern cities like Atlanta.) This strain of DNA in Baltimore’s history, like the crippling impact of Washington’s sub-democratic status, was of a piece with ingrained injustices in other riot-prone American cities. “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto,” said the Kerner Commission in 1968. “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The warning went unheeded. So did King’s own warning to Baltimore, delivered in person in a 1966 speech, that “thousands of work-starved men walk the streets every day in search for jobs that do not exist.” Only after the cities imploded would there be a reckoning — on paper, anyway. A report commissioned by the Quakers’ American Friends Committee on the 1968 Baltimore riots found that the black population was largely confined to decrepit neighborhoods where housing ordinances went unenforced, schools were inferior, police harassment was prolific, and jobs had vanished. Even the peaceable Quakers had to conclude that “when one accumulates a list of the complaints of Baltimoreans, one tends to wonder why the retaliation was not worse.”
    None of these conditions, or the anger they engendered, should have been news to white Americans, let alone the nation’s political leadership, in 1968, or 1967, or 1965, when the Watts riot in Los Angeles prefigured the rapid-fire explosions about to come. Race riots had long been a fixture in post-Reconstruction America. In the “Red Summer” of 1919, they broke out in 25 cities and towns, mainly fomented by white mobs carrying out lynchings and pogroms. Washington’s lasted four days and produced some 40 casualties.
    It was in 1935 in Harlem that the current template for modern urban riots was set — “a new disorder, in which abject living conditions, police action, and rumor ignited large-scale violence among blacks who believed themselves without effective means of redress,” as the Encyclopedia of American Race Riots codifies it. The 1935 Harlem riot was set off by the rumor that a policeman had killed a shoplifter, prompting black Harlemites to turn on the handiest symbols of white power, police officers and white-owned businesses. The post-King assassination riots excepted, most every major urban riot since then has been a variation on the same theme. “This is not new, and we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new,” Obama said after the Baltimore riots, speaking of the recurrent conflicts between police and poor black communities. Yet even now, 80 years after that Harlem precursor, we profess to be shocked all over again when this history so regularly repeats itself.
    Truly, the Kerner Commission report could be republished in 2015 with scant updating. On page 8 of the best-selling paperback edition (my copy is the 18th printing in 1968 alone) are stark bullet points enumerating the top-three causes of the 1967 riots that left 43 dead in Detroit and 26 dead in Newark:
    1. POLICE PRACTICES
    2. UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT
    3. INADEQUATE HOUSING
    Racism (euphemistically defined as “disrespectful white attitudes”) lagged behind, at No. 7, on this list. Imagine if America had mobilized to focus seriously on items one to three back then — all of them more tangible and potentially more malleable than stamping out bigotry — instead of letting them fester. [..]

    In the aftermath of the Baltimore riots of 2015, few questions are more haunting than those posed plaintively by the congressman Elijah Cummings at Freddie Gray’s funeral. Noting the profusion of cameras in the media circus at the New Shiloh Baptist Church, Cummings asked: “Did anyone recognize Freddie when he was alive? Did you see him?”
    Even after Gray was dead, many who should know better, including some who are paid to be informed, were ignorant of the history that presaged his death and fed the rampage that followed. Jon Stewart was right when he singled out Wolf Blitzer for scorn: No mainstream-media star’s behavior better exemplifies the mass amnesia that helps perpetuate our racial Groundhog Day. When he returned to anchoring once Washington’s prom weekend was over, Blitzer repeatedly demonstrated that he was as clueless about events in America’s recent, post–Travyon Martin past as he was of the long history preceding it. “Hard to believe this is going on in a major American city right now!” he exclaimed incredulously. “This is a scene that a lot of us never anticipated seeing in a city like Baltimore!” His use of the word “us” in that sentence — whether meant to stand for whites in his audience or the Washington media-political Establishment, of which he has long been an archetypal pillar — is one of the most revealing words said by anyone in hours of riot coverage, whether on CNN or elsewhere.
    Much of that coverage mindlessly pounded in the one unassailable sentiment shared across the political and racial spectrum: Nonviolent protest is positive, and rioting is both self-destructive and a crime that must be punished. The other consensus, among whites anyway, was that Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother caught on-camera slapping her errant hoodie-wearing 16-year-old son, was a beacon of hope, if not a panacea for all ghetto ills. Graham made the admiring rounds of The View, Anderson Cooper, and Charlie Rose. Jeb Bush declared that she had “a lot in common” with his own mother and commended the video as “a nice visual symbol for what needs to be restored.” Finally, a black historian, Stacey Patton, had had enough and raised the obvious question in a powerful essay in the Washington Post titled “Why Are We Celebrating the Beating of a Black Child?” Patton sympathized with Graham — what parent wouldn’t? — but then gave Graham’s white fan club some needed schooling on the history of “the public humiliation of black children” and the impotence of parental thrashings in keeping “black children safe from police, out of prisons, morgues and graves.”[…]

    The country can’t afford inertia. It’s a tinderbox awaiting the next spark. One could arrive in January 2017 should all three branches of Washington’s federal government end up in control of a political party so alienated from black Americans that it hasn’t drawn more than 11 percent of the African-American vote since 1996 and was down to 6 percent in the 2012 presidential race. This is the opposite of progress. Back in 1967, after Detroit cratered in despair and violence, the Republican governor of Michigan, George Romney, launched his presidential campaign with a tour of America’s troubled urban areas beyond his own state. “I think it’s important,” he said, for public officials to see “the horrible conditions which breed frustration, hatred, and revolt.” He went so far as to meet with Marion Barry, then a young civil-rights worker, in Washington, and the community organizer Saul Alinsky in Rochester, New York. By contrast, the only one among the horde of current Republican presidential contenders to feign interest in black America, Rand Paul, revealed his hollow cynicism when, at the height of the unrest, he joked with the radio host Laura Ingraham that he was glad his train didn’t stop in Baltimore. The story of the GOP’s current self-imposed apartheid is one that will not end well.
    There is much else to be anxious about. The young Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, who raised the expectations of many seeking justice by indicting six officers in Gray’s death, could crush those hopes if she fails to obtain convictions. In the summer of 2016, both parties will hold conventions in cities with large poor black populations whose police forces have been the subject of damning Department of Justice investigations like the one now beginning in Baltimore: The Republicans will party in Cleveland, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot while carrying a toy gun, and the Democrats in Philadelphia, where 26-year-old Brandon Tate-Brown met the same fate after committing the offense of driving without turning on his headlights. No one was charged in Tate-Brown’s death; the Rice investigation has been in slo-mo. The fact that both cities have black police chiefs means no more than it did in Baltimore. But let’s worry about 2016 later; Americans are fatalistic about the long hot months immediately at hand. After the Baltimore riots, a Wall Street Journal–NBC News poll found that in a country where no one agrees about anything, an extraordinary 96 percent of adults surveyed “said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer.” [..]

    “If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could,” President Obama said after Baltimore boiled over. “It’s just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant — and that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don’t just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped.” Obama wasn’t being angry, heaven forbid — just honest. But if a black president isn’t allowed to get angry about our society’s perennial failure to solve the problem, white people in Washington have no such constraints. If ever there was a time for those in power to stop fiddling on red carpets while America burns, surely it is now.

    Cops who shot #TamirRice are supposed to enter a plea in family’s civil case by today. They filed a motion to delay. That case seems to be all about the delays.

    Biker Clubs Instead of Thugs? This Is How Racism Works

    As incredible a picture as this all seems, now that the dust has settled from Sunday’s massacre (or not), there still seems to be something missing: Where is the wall-to-wall media coverage that has blanketed our televisions of late every time there is a group of black folk who even appear to be thinking about acting unruly? Where’s Don Lemon and Geraldo Rivera?
    Nine people were killed as part of this incident, and yet television, print and Web outlets alike displayed for this story a fraction of the interest that they had for every aspect of looting and unruliness in Baltimore just a few weeks ago—a time when the best clip of real, on-camera violence the media could muster up quickly turned into a debate on who should be mother of the year.
    Even as details about the bloody incident between the two biker gangs continue to trickle out, and as the coverage has slowly widened, there has been a calculated and deliberate difference between the way many mainstream media outlets have reported this story and the way other stories of late have been reported.
    In addition, reports have referred to both violent groups in the North Texas melee as “biker clubs” or “groups” and placed emphasis on their being involved in “organized crime.” This differs starkly from coverage of the “riots” in Baltimore.
    At best the contrast appears inconsistent, and at worst it borders on irresponsible. Language is important, and it shapes the way we perceive things, oftentimes as much as, if not more than, visuals. If young black faces in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore can draw the label “thug” while seeking an audience to express their frustrations with years of systemic oppression, then it only follows that this Texas group of violent offenders should not enjoy the luxury (read: privilege) of being sanitized in the media as “organized,” as if they are white-collar criminals.
    The myth of black criminalization is one that has far-reaching effects and can often have a lasting impact long after and far away from whatever incident(s) may have given rise to the original story.
    For anyone who is still confused, this is how racism works.

  32. rq says

    Here’s an upcoming thing. Was supposed to have been in on Monday already. I hope they’re not waiting for a pre-weekend day to maximize the fall-out… Leaders on both sides of Michael Brelo verdict urge for calm following announcement

    An attorney involved in a lawsuit against Michael Brelo and Cleveland for the death of Malissa Williams released a statement discouraging violence and property destruction after a criminal verdict against Brelo is read.
    David Malik represented Williams’ family in the lawsuit, which asked for compensatory and punitive damages as a result of the 64-car police chase that took place over 27 minutes and resulted in 137 shots being fired.
    The lawsuit said  both Williams and Timothy Russell, who were shot to death, “were unarmed during the entire pursuit” and claimed excessive force was used by the officers involved.
    Now the city awaits a decision from Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell on two charges of voluntary manslaughter filed against Michael Brelo, a Cleveland Police officer who jumped on the hood of the car Williams and Russell were inside and fired 15 shots.

    Here’s another on the white/black difference in media response: When The Gang-bangers Are White Guys

    If you thought violent biker gangs were a relic of the Altamont era, Sunday’s shootout at a Waco, Texas restaurant might have come as a shock. A long simmering beef between the Bandidos and Cossacks boiled over into gunfire. When police arrived at the scene, gang members shot at them, too, leaving nine bikers dead, 18 people injured, and 170 suspects in police custody. Over 100 weapons have been confiscated.
    The scale of this incident dwarfs a typical urban gang confrontation, says Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and an expert on gangs and guns. We talked to Pollack about why biker gang violence typically gets so little attention. He believes the Waco incident confounds our expectations regarding the race and geographic location of people who perpetrate crime, causing us to see biker gangs as more of a “curiosity” than a threat.

    Interview within.

    Grace Lee Boggs on Malcolm X: “He Was a Person Always Searching to Transform Himself”

    2008, the legendary Detroit-based activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs joined Democracy Now! for an extended interview. In this never-aired excerpt, Boggs, who will turn 100 in June, talks about how she knew Malcolm X and how he influenced her.

    Video, with transcript at the link, too.

    Someone is Stealing “Black Lives Matter” Signs From Churches and Homes

    When Reverend Mary Gene Boteler of Second Presbyterian Church first noticed that a small yard sign saying “Black Lives Matter” was missing from one of the church’s green spaces, she had several thoughts. The first was that someone in the neighborhood hadn’t agreed with the phrase’s political sentiment — “Black Lives Matter” has become an iconic message against police brutality, emblazoned on signs at marches around the country. The second was more optimistic — someone had stolen it in order to put it up in his own yard.
    But then she started hearing from other church leaders.
    “As I hear others having their signs stolen, it seems it may be a concerted effort for folks to drive through areas and pick up the signs,” she says. “A concerted effort by people to end the conversation.”
    The person who wrenched down the sign at First Congregational Church of St. Louis in Clayton had to put even more work into it — theirs was tethered to a metal readerboard on the corner of Wydown and University Lane in Clayton.
    “We do get mail complaining about the banner, saying ‘Black Lives Matter is not saying all lives matter, so it’s against Jesus,'” says Reverend Heather Arcovitch.
    The third church that’s been hit is First Unitarian Church of St. Louis on the corner of Waterman and Kingshighway. The signs began disappearing sometime last week.
    Within her mostly white congregation the banner has stirred mixed feelings, Arcovitch says. But the church was founded 150 years ago as an abolitionist organization, and she believes that displaying the sign and participating in protests in Ferguson continues that mission of inclusiveness.
    “This message is provocative for some white people. Members of the congregation will say, ‘Shouldn’t we say a more moderate message that opens conversations with people rather than turning people away?'” says Arcovitch. “We’re not aiming this message just at white people, we’re aiming this message at our black brothers and sisters… to know they have an ally in a white, affluent community. It’s really there more for that then it is for the white people.”
    Anecdotally, both ministers have also heard from congregants that “Black Lives Matter” signs are disappearing off the lawns of private residences.
    Arcovitch responded by putting another “Black Lives Matter” sign in front of the church, and writing “You Can Steal Our Banner But Black Lives Still Matter” on the readerboard. What she did not do is call the police.
    “I think that whoever stole the sign is a person in pain, too,” she says.
    Boteler — whose congregation is more racially mixed — hopes that the thefts backfire on whoever is trying to “end the conversation.”
    “Black lives still matter whether the signs are taken or not,” she says. “I hope the disappearance of the sign will be another wake up call for the community and be a reminder of the disappearance of so many black lives.”

    Malcolm X: Powerful Images From the EBONY Archives (He had a birthday recently, which is why he’s been showing up a lot.) Just a lot of photos.

    @deray @Dreamdefenders #BlackSpring is Boston

  33. rq says

    Cleveland Cop Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Will Be Investigated Someday. Maybe. I’m tellin ya, that case, delay delay delay. I think they’re scared.

    Being reassigned to desk duty must keep a cop awfully busy. That’s the only explanation we can think of for why Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice dead on Nov. 22, 2014, still hasn’t been interviewed by investigators from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department. He probably has a lot of filing to do. You know how that sort of work can pile up, especially if you’re burdened by the knowledge that you killed a child who was holding a toy gun. At least we’d like to think he’s burdened, but that could just be us being optimists.
    Mother Jones reports that despite multiple attempts by investigators to interview them, neither Loehmann nor Frank Garmback, who drove the police car to within a few feet of Rice before Loehmann shot him, have not yet been interviewed. You might think that would be something of a priority. Still, the Sheriff’s Department did at least hold a press conference last week, in which Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney said that the investigators had reviewed “thousands of pages of documents, and conducted numerous search warrants and interviews with witnesses.” Just not, it seems, from the two officers who were involved in the shooting. Not that it’s too surprising Loehmann may be reluctant to talk to investigators, since they might ask him embarrassing questions, like why on earth are you a cop in the first place, you incompetent idiot?

    And the Wonkette goes on.

    Funny. All the critics of #BlackLivesMatter say the problem is education. But when it comes time to fund education, they choose more police. Yes, funny.

    NYC right now: #BlackLivesMatter activists have shut down the Queensboro Bridge for #MalcolmXDay.

    Interlude: Alfonso Ribeiro Set as New Host of ABC’s ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’. Didn’t even know that show was still a thing.

    Video spotlights Freddie Gray at Baker and Mount streets

    On the morning of April 12, Michelle Gross woke up to screaming. Gross, known as “mom,” in West Baltimore’s Gilmor Homes area, left her home to find Freddie Gray — someone she called “son” — being dragged into a police van.
    As police drove away with Gray, she gave her phone to a neighbor who wanted to call 911 and report the incident. But soon, Gross and the neighbor were headed to the corner of Mount and Baker streets, where the van had stopped.
    There, the neighbor shot cell phone video that provides a close look at Gray and police actions that have been criticized by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. That video, combined with the account of Gross and her neighbor, provide the most detailed public account of the van stop — a key moment in Gray’s fatal encounter with police.

    The video shows Gray halfway out of the van, his stomach flat on the floor, and his legs hanging off the back. He does not move as four officers stand over him and place shackles around his ankles.
    In her first interview about the incident, Gross, 58, said she was shocked at the turn of events that led to Gray’s death from a spinal injury. “I thought his leg was just broke and that he was just going to the police station and we would hear him that afternoon,” she said recently, as tears streamed down her cheeks.
    Most of the video of Gray was taken of the arrest at Mount and Presbury Streets. Less is known about what happened a block away, when the van stopped at Baker Street and he was shackled.
    That was a key moment, according to Mosby. Charging documents filed against six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and transport state: “Following transport from Baker Street, Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside of the [Baltimore Police Department] wagon.”

    Mosby also said officers violated department policy by not securing Gray with a seatbelt and not providing medical care when he requested it. Charging documents state that officers placed Gray in the van head first and on his stomach before transporting him around West Baltimore.
    According to Mosby, Lt. Brian Rice directed the police van to stop at Mount and Baker.
    Police said Gray was acting “irate.” Rice and two other officers took him out of the van and placed flex-cuffs on his wrists and metal shackles on his ankles.
    Cell phone video and surveillance footage reviewed by The Baltimore Sun shed more light on what took place during the stop. […]

    The video shot by Gross’ neighbor is distorted, and shows just a few seconds at the back of the van. As officers restrain Gray, the video shows another officer pull up in a patrol car, get out and walk toward the van. (The neighbor did not allow his name to be published because he feared retaliation by police, but Gross allowed The Sun to copy the video from her phone.)

    At this point on the cell phone video, Gross yells to Gray, “You all right?” No response is detectable from the recording and Gross said she didn’t hear Gray respond. Her neighbor yells, “Porter, can we get a supervisor up here please?” He said he was yelling at officer William Porter, who would be one of the six charged in the case.
    The neighbor said Porter motioned to Rice, identifying him as the supervisor. On the video, the neighbor says, “Can we get someone else out here? This is not cool. This is not cool. Do you hear me?” The man’s shouts are heard on the phone, but not the officers’ responses.
    The man said that Rice and other officers moved toward him, blocking his view of the van. They didn’t ask him to stop recording, but Rice took out his Taser and threatened to use it if he didn’t leave, the man said.
    Gross is then heard telling her neighbor, “Let’s walk away.” After that, both of them left.

    It’s disgusting.

    Two via Mano, one only tangentially related but you can probably guess why: Social media puts police under scrutiny;
    Is this a new tactic to get money and publicity?

    And via Tashiliciously Shriked in the Thunderdome, 5 Helpful Answers To Society’s Most Uncomfortable Questions, a really excellent read on general privilege and discrimination and how the world works.

    That there article up there on Freddie Gray, that’s just wow.

  34. anteprepro says

    Black people, mostly students, non-violently protesting? Crack down on them in full military gear, and then chastise them for rioting and being violent thugs when they damage cars and buildings, talking about them venomously with constant demonization and handwringing.

    White people, in biker gangs, about to have a violent turf war? Watch lackadaisically while not intervening or preparing at all, and then just nonchalantly arrest them after nine people die, while making sure to only talk about the whole affair in detached terms.

  36. rq says

    OOOooooh, moderation after all! See previous comment soon for a new article on Freddie Gray in Baltimore – they got video from one of the interim stops.

    +++

    A few more photos from the protest for VonDerrit Myers:
    ST. LOUIS PD: Has maced, pulled guns on and arrested peaceful protesters for #VonderritMyers Including family members @TefPoe @KWRose.
    So there were 8 arrested tonight. They have only let the white man out. America.
    Standing on sidewalk & told cop “You need to give us a direction to disperse before using chemical weapons.” Then…
    Jason Flanery went in for the kill shot knowing #VonderritMyers was down because he “had to take care of this.”
    STL police documented VonDerrit Myers Jr. protest coffins left at home of circuit attorney tonight. -@LBPhoto1
    Police used mace to disperse a protest at STL circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce’s home tonight. – @LBPhoto1

  37. rq says

    When racial epithets become inconvenient

    Essentially, the play is about two First Nations kids living in Calgary, who come into possession of a horse with mysterious powers to heal their depressed father. It’s an Indigenous adaptation of the Irish Gypsy tale Tir na N’Og and is being promoted as a play that deals with the problem of racism. And as the old Aboriginal saying goes, you can’t play golf without whacking a few balls.
    In a sequence where the children try to raise money to feed the horse by busking and begging on a street corner, several passersby refer to them as “dirty Indians” and “squaws.”  Those particular terms have elicited some negative response, in particular from Mona Stonefish, a grandparent in southwestern Ontario, who sent a letter to the Windsor Star complaining of the language. She has also filed a complaint with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), which is responsible for arranging the tour of Ontario schools, and with the Chiefs of Ontario. More importantly to me, as the writer of the script, she has petitioned the ETFO and  Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, for the removal of the offending words. 
    This is the third province-wide tour of the play. There are 20 southern communities on the current tour. It was staged in 33 northern communities in 2010. ETFO president Sam Hammond has pointed out that the play is accompanied by professional development workshops created in consultation with Aboriginal leaders to guide teachers and students in discussions about issues the play raises. This is the first time a formal complaint of this nature has been made.  […]

    The sequence of the play in question was written to show the thin veneer that exists between a healthy society and a racist one. These things happen, and I agree, it is a tragedy that it has to appear in a play for young audiences. I am loathed to be critical of those who may be offended because for many the term “squaw” still brings back a myriad of unpleasant and emotionally-damaging memories. The term should and does raise concerns among most natives who care anything about their culture and people.
    But I do not believe eliminating the words from my play or any play will solve the problem. This was exactly the same argument used to justify the exclusion of the n-word from recent editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a few years ago. 
    But getting rid of words is very seldom effective in getting rid of racism. Racism needs to be confronted head-on, looked directly in the eyes, and kicked in the groin. Issues like this should be explored in the classroom, not eliminated from plays and literature. That would be like watching 1950’s television again: more pleasant but unreal.
    In the context of the play, the exchange is presented in such a flippant, and at the same time, unpleasant manner, that it is obvious to the children watching that the behaviour is not to be emulated. […]

    Many words, once considered obscene, have now been reclaimed by those same segments of the population the words used to offend.  They’ve all been embraced with varying degrees of comfort.  There is a movement, however small, by some native women to reapporpriate the word squaw. There is a school of thought that the word comes from the Ojibway/Algonquin word “kwe” meaning woman, and over the years has come to mean something derogatory. 
    Many geographical locations have been renamed.  No more Squaw River or Squaw Mountain, and I think that is great. Word is still out on the city of Squamish though. And let’s not forget the recent silliness when Canadian fashion designers Desquared2 released their new line of clothing with strong aboriginal influences.  For some reason known only to those who are so cool and so hip, they decided to call the fashion line “Dsquaw.”  
    In years past, native people out west were frequently referred to as “prairie niggers.” However, I don’t think there is any movement eager to reclaim that term. It’s a complex issue, for sure. 

    For some happy feels: Student returns to school with kidney donated by teacher.

    CNN’s ex-cop defends not calling white bikers ‘thugs’: ‘This thing started with the black community’ – OH MY GAWDS HE’S BLAMING WHITE CRIME ON BLACK PEOPLE.

    CNN law enforcement analyst Harry Houck asserted this week that the black community was to blame after pundits had referred to black rioters as “thugs” but had usually refused to use the same terminology for white criminals.
    Following a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas over the weekend, many noted that the media did not stereotype the suspects the same way that it had during coverage of the Baltimore riots, which were far less deadly.
    “This is about a culture that looks at blackness and says that it sounds like a certain thing, it looks like a certain thing,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained to a CNN panel on Tuesday.
    “I don’t know how you can make a comparison between Waco and Baltimore,” Houck complained. “Are these guys thugs? Yeah, they’re thugs… I use the word thug and I mean ‘bad guy’ when I use the word.”
    “I think the word was owned by rappers,” he continued. “They started coming out with songs and calling themselves thugs, and I think that’s how this whole thing started, with the black community and the young men calling themselves thugs. Alright? And I think that’s how that all started.”
    Blow argued that Houck’s etymology of the word thug was “patently inaccurate.”
    “That word has a long history, and whether or not a word is absorbed into a community in the same way people absorbed the n-word and sometimes gay people absorbed words that were historically used to bash them, and try to rub off the edges of them and absorb it into the culture, to make it less abrasive and hurtful,” Blow observed. “A lot of times, that is what is happening with the etymology of words.”
    But Blow said that the bigger concern was that the entire black community was treated as the problem after localized events in a way that the white community never was.
    “Everybody has got to stop and move on from here,” Houck recommended. “Forget the past. Move on.”
    “I don’t want to forget the past,” Blow shot back. “That’s not even a smart thing to say.”
    “Whatever happened a thousand years ago, stop! Let’s move from here,” Houck demanded, turning to Blow. “Come on, you’re a smart man.”
    “You’re smarter than what you sound like right now,” Blow quipped.

    There are 2 actions in #Baltimore today, being led by the Family of #FreddieGray and #TyroneWest. #BaltimoreUprising

    Fox News Slams Jay Z And Beyonce’s #BlackLivesMatter Support… Because Fox News

    While most of us were giving Jay Z and Beyonce their due kudos for their contributions to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Fox News was doing just the opposite. This past weekend, writer and organizer dream hampton took to Twitter to reveal that The Carters have donated “tens of thousands” of dollars toward bail money for protesters as well as other needs. But leave it to Fox & Friends Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade to find room for shade.
    “We know that they’ve been supportive of the administration, over four million dollars donated over the course of time. So in the case of Ferguson, if you like it, then I guess you bring the bail for it,” Hasselbeck said, making a play off of Beyonce’s “Put A Ring On It.”
    Steve Doocy adding in a jab for good measure, referring to the recent unrest in Baltimore as “lawlessness.”
    “The lawlessness in Baltimore that we saw, and the people who got out, can thank Jay Z and Beyonce now,” he said.

    Well, this is interesting. Jason Flanery’s DNA matched saliva recovered from a 2008 burglary. #VonderritMyers Which, incidentally, can mean nothing, but it can also reflect an officer’s careless attitude towards his work (after all, DNA contamination is a real thing and something most Pds try to avoid as much as possible).

  38. rq says

    When racial epithets become inconvenient

    Essentially, the play is about two First Nations kids living in Calgary, who come into possession of a horse with mysterious powers to heal their depressed father. It’s an Indigenous adaptation of the Irish Gypsy tale Tir na N’Og and is being promoted as a play that deals with the problem of racism. And as the old Aboriginal saying goes, you can’t play golf without whacking a few balls.
    In a sequence where the children try to raise money to feed the horse by busking and begging on a street corner, several passersby refer to them as “dirty Indians” and “squaws.”  Those particular terms have elicited some negative response, in particular from Mona Stonefish, a grandparent in southwestern Ontario, who sent a letter to the Windsor Star complaining of the language. She has also filed a complaint with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), which is responsible for arranging the tour of Ontario schools, and with the Chiefs of Ontario. More importantly to me, as the writer of the script, she has petitioned the ETFO and  Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, for the removal of the offending words. 
    This is the third province-wide tour of the play. There are 20 southern communities on the current tour. It was staged in 33 northern communities in 2010. ETFO president Sam Hammond has pointed out that the play is accompanied by professional development workshops created in consultation with Aboriginal leaders to guide teachers and students in discussions about issues the play raises. This is the first time a formal complaint of this nature has been made.  […]

    The sequence of the play in question was written to show the thin veneer that exists between a healthy society and a racist one. These things happen, and I agree, it is a tragedy that it has to appear in a play for young audiences. I am loathed to be critical of those who may be offended because for many the term “squaw” still brings back a myriad of unpleasant and emotionally-damaging memories. The term should and does raise concerns among most natives who care anything about their culture and people.
    But I do not believe eliminating the words from my play or any play will solve the problem. This was exactly the same argument used to justify the exclusion of the n-word from recent editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a few years ago. 
    But getting rid of words is very seldom effective in getting rid of racism. Racism needs to be confronted head-on, looked directly in the eyes, and kicked in the groin. Issues like this should be explored in the classroom, not eliminated from plays and literature. That would be like watching 1950’s television again: more pleasant but unreal.
    In the context of the play, the exchange is presented in such a flippant, and at the same time, unpleasant manner, that it is obvious to the children watching that the behaviour is not to be emulated. […]

    Many words, once considered obscene, have now been reclaimed by those same segments of the population the words used to offend.  They’ve all been embraced with varying degrees of comfort.  There is a movement, however small, by some native women to reapporpriate the word squaw. There is a school of thought that the word comes from the Ojibway/Algonquin word “kwe” meaning woman, and over the years has come to mean something derogatory. 
    Many geographical locations have been renamed.  No more Squaw River or Squaw Mountain, and I think that is great. Word is still out on the city of Squamish though. And let’s not forget the recent silliness when Canadian fashion designers Desquared2 released their new line of clothing with strong aboriginal influences.  For some reason known only to those who are so cool and so hip, they decided to call the fashion line “Dsquaw.”  
    In years past, native people out west were frequently referred to as “prairie n*gg*rs.” However, I don’t think there is any movement eager to reclaim that term. It’s a complex issue, for sure. 

    For some happy feels: Student returns to school with kidney donated by teacher.

    CNN’s ex-cop defends not calling white bikers ‘thugs’: ‘This thing started with the black community’ – OH MY GAWDS HE’S BLAMING WHITE CRIME ON BLACK PEOPLE.

    CNN law enforcement analyst Harry Houck asserted this week that the black community was to blame after pundits had referred to black rioters as “thugs” but had usually refused to use the same terminology for white criminals.
    Following a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas over the weekend, many noted that the media did not stereotype the suspects the same way that it had during coverage of the Baltimore riots, which were far less deadly.
    “This is about a culture that looks at blackness and says that it sounds like a certain thing, it looks like a certain thing,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained to a CNN panel on Tuesday.
    “I don’t know how you can make a comparison between Waco and Baltimore,” Houck complained. “Are these guys thugs? Yeah, they’re thugs… I use the word thug and I mean ‘bad guy’ when I use the word.”
    “I think the word was owned by rappers,” he continued. “They started coming out with songs and calling themselves thugs, and I think that’s how this whole thing started, with the black community and the young men calling themselves thugs. Alright? And I think that’s how that all started.”
    Blow argued that Houck’s etymology of the word thug was “patently inaccurate.”
    “That word has a long history, and whether or not a word is absorbed into a community in the same way people absorbed the n-word and sometimes gay people absorbed words that were historically used to bash them, and try to rub off the edges of them and absorb it into the culture, to make it less abrasive and hurtful,” Blow observed. “A lot of times, that is what is happening with the etymology of words.”
    But Blow said that the bigger concern was that the entire black community was treated as the problem after localized events in a way that the white community never was.
    “Everybody has got to stop and move on from here,” Houck recommended. “Forget the past. Move on.”
    “I don’t want to forget the past,” Blow shot back. “That’s not even a smart thing to say.”
    “Whatever happened a thousand years ago, stop! Let’s move from here,” Houck demanded, turning to Blow. “Come on, you’re a smart man.”
    “You’re smarter than what you sound like right now,” Blow quipped.

    There are 2 actions in #Baltimore today, being led by the Family of #FreddieGray and #TyroneWest. #BaltimoreUprising

    Fox News Slams Jay Z And Beyonce’s #BlackLivesMatter Support… Because Fox News

    While most of us were giving Jay Z and Beyonce their due kudos for their contributions to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Fox News was doing just the opposite. This past weekend, writer and organizer dream hampton took to Twitter to reveal that The Carters have donated “tens of thousands” of dollars toward bail money for protesters as well as other needs. But leave it to Fox & Friends Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade to find room for shade.
    “We know that they’ve been supportive of the administration, over four million dollars donated over the course of time. So in the case of Ferguson, if you like it, then I guess you bring the bail for it,” Hasselbeck said, making a play off of Beyonce’s “Put A Ring On It.”
    Steve Doocy adding in a jab for good measure, referring to the recent unrest in Baltimore as “lawlessness.”
    “The lawlessness in Baltimore that we saw, and the people who got out, can thank Jay Z and Beyonce now,” he said.

    Well, this is interesting. Jason Flanery’s DNA matched saliva recovered from a 2008 burglary. #VonderritMyers Which, incidentally, can mean nothing, but it can also reflect an officer’s careless attitude towards his work (after all, DNA contamination is a real thing and something most Pds try to avoid as much as possible).

  39. rq says

    Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
    We are all caught up now! :D

    More later.
    As always.

  40. rq says

    *ahem* ‘Cept for this one here.

    Malcolm X said it best “I want to be remembered as someone that was sincere, even if I made mistakes, they were in sincerity…”

    Mike Brown would have been 19yo today. #Happybirthdaymikebrown. May he rest knowing the impact he’s had on our lives.

    Brelo. Oh. (via @clevelanddotcom) Cleveland cartoon with poster “Don’t overreact like Brelo did”.

    So the 400+ killings of unarmed by police isn’t worthy of an alert? #BlueAlert @POTUS @WhiteHouse

    White America’s Waco insanity: The shocking realities it ignores about racism & violence, another piece on white privilege.

    White people, even well-meaning and thoughtful ones, have the privilege of looking at deadly acts of mass violence of this sort as isolated local incidents, particular to one community. They do not look at such incidents as indicative of anything having to do with race or racism. But everything from the difference in law enforcement response to media response tells us what we need to know about how white privilege allows acts of violence by white people to be judged by entirely different standards than those of any other group. If a Black motorcycle gang had engaged in a shootout in a parking lot, any honest white person will admit that the conversation would have sounded incredibly different.
    Frequently in conversations that I have observed or participated in with white people about race, the claim is levied that it is Black people “who make everything about race.” But this incident in Waco gives lie to that claim. It turns out that when white privilege is in clear operation, white people are invested in making sure that we don’t see race in operation. Charles Mills, a philosopher of race, has a term which I think applies here: epistemology of white ignorance. By this means, he means that white people have created a whole way of knowing the world that both demands and allows that they remain oblivious to the operations of white supremacy, that white people remain “intent on denying what is before them.” Thus even though three gangs have now attacked each other in broad daylight and killed or injured 27 people, there is no nagging, gnawing sense of fear, no social anxiety about what the world is coming to, no anger at the thugs who made it unsafe for American families to go about their regular daily activities without fear of being clipped by a stray bullet, no posturing from law enforcement about the necessity of using military weapons to put down the lawless band of criminals that turned a parking lot into a war zone in broad daylight. More than that, there is no sense of white shame, no hanging of the head over the members of their race that have been out in the world representing everything that is wrong with America.
    That kind of intra-racial shame is reserved primarily for Black people.
    Most white citizens will insist that this was just an isolated incident, even though the gangs were already under surveillance for consistent participation in criminal activity. And this studied ignorance, this sense in which people could look at this set of incidents and simply refuse to see all the ways in which white privilege is at play — namely that no worse than arrest befell any the men who showed up hours later with weapons, looking for a fight — returns me to the words of Malcolm X. For many Americans, this is just good ole American fun, sort of like playing Cowboys-and-Indians in real life. As Malcolm reminded us, “whites idolize fighters.” So while I’m sure many Americans are appalled at the senseless loss of life, there is also the sense that this is just “those wild Texans” doing the kind of thing they do.
    White Americans might also deny the attempt to “lump them in” with this unsavory element. But the point is that being seen as an individual is a privilege. Not having to interrogate the ways in which white violence is always viewed as exceptional rather than regular and quotidian is white privilege. White people can distance themselves from their violent racial counterparts because there is no sense that what these “bikers” did down in Texas is related to anything racial. White Americans routinely ask Black Americans to chastise the “lower” elements of our race, while refusing to do the same in instances like this. Yes, white people will denounce these crimes, but they won’t shake a finger at these bikers for making the race look bad. It won’t even occur to them why Black people would view such incidents as racialized.
    Such analyses are patently unacceptable. And they are possible because white bodies, even those engaged in horrendously violent and reckless acts, are not viewed as “criminal.” Yes, some police officers referred to the acts of these killers in Waco as criminal acts and them as criminals, but in popular discourse, these men have not been criminalized. Criminalization is a process that exists separate and apart from the acts one has committed. It’s why street protestors in Baltimore are referred to as violent thugs for burning buildings, but murderers in Waco get called “bikers.” And if thug is the new n-word (and I’m not sure that’s precise), then “biker” is the new “honky” or “cracker,” which is to say that while the term is used derisively and can communicate distaste, it does not have the devastating social effects or demand the same level of state engagement to suppress such “biker-ish” activity as we demand to suppress the activities of alleged “thugs” and “criminals.”
    How we talk about and understand the problem of violence is actually critical to our ability to make any progress on solving the problem of racism in this country. We have turned the word “criminal” into a social category that acts a site of cultural refuse, where we can toss all of our anger, hatred, and resentment, on a group of people, disproportionately people of color, for abhorrent acts that they commit against us and the state. We get to view them as less than human and treat them as such, while acting as though our indignation is pure, righteous, and without hypocrisy. None of this is true.

  41. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Waco Police Department spokesman Sgt. Patrick Swanton described the massive shootout as the worst crime scene, the most violent crime scene, that [he has] ever been involved in

    leads me to question the length of his residence in Waco.

    On February 28, 1993, a shootout occurred in which six Branch Davidians and four agents of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms died. After 50 days, on April 19, 1993, a standoff between FBI agents and Branch Davidians ended in a fire that destroyed their compound, referred to as Mt. Carmel, near Waco. Seventy-four people, including leader David Koresh, died in the blaze. This event became known as the Waco siege.

  42. laurentweppe says

    Isn’t it nice to know that biker gangs are more integrated and diverse than many atheist organizations?

    Perhaps it’s time for you to start the atheist version of the Hell’s Angels: you already have the beard.

  43. says

    Number of Latino, Black High School grads increases as dropout factories decline:

    The national high school graduation rate reached a record high of 81.4 percent, according to the 2015 report “Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic.”

    The report is by Civic Enterprises, Everyone Graduates Center at the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University in partnership with America’s Promise Alliance and Alliance for Excellent Education.

    GradNation, created by America’s Promise Alliance, was launched in 2010 to focus individuals, communities and organizations on decreasing dropout rates.

    The campaign has a goal of raising the national average on-time high school graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020. This means the graduating class of 2020 will need to have 310,000 more graduated students than the class of 2013.

    The report states the U.S. is on track to reach that goal. However, there’s still work to do.

    Latinos, the fastest growing population of students, have made the greatest gains in the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR) reporting era, improving 4.2 percentage points from 2011 to 2013. Black students experienced significant improvement as well, rising 3.7 percentage points from 67 percent in 2011 to 70.7 percent in 2013.

    The report points out that a reason for the increasing graduation rates for Latinos and Blacks is a decline in “dropout factories,” which is a name for high schools with low graduation rates:

    There are now fewer than 1,200 of these schools nationwide and 1.5 million fewer students attending them, and the number of African American and Hispanic/Latino students in these schools has dropped below 20 and 15 percent, respectively.

    The following 10 states increased their graduation rates by four percentage points or more from 2011-2013 (listed in order of significant gains): Nevada, Alabama, New Mexico, Utah, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, and California.

    California, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina are among those with the largest enrollments in the country, helping to drive the nation’s gain.

    The authors attribute the progress to a “constellation of leadership, reforms, and multi-sector efforts at state, district, and school levels.” And with focus and concerted effort, every part of the country can experience increased graduation rates.

    This effort is vastly needed in Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia and Florida, which still have relatively low graduation rates (70 to 78 percent) and must accelerate their pace of progress to reach 90 percent.

    “Worrisome for the nation” is the third-quarter performance of New York, Illinois, Washington and Arizona. Combined, the states educate about 15 percent of the nation’s high school students.

    The report indicates states that educate more than 40 percent of Black students — California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Ohio — have recently experienced significant declines in the graduation rates of Blacks, or have graduation rates in 60 percentages. The recent progress in high school graduation rates of Black students will stall, unless there are significant improvements in these states.

    ____

    President Obama’s Tweets receive racist responses yet he breaks world record:

    President Barack Obama sent the first tweet of the official Twitter account @POTUS on Monday, which simultaneously broke a Guinness World Record and elicited racist responses.

    […]

    According to White House Deputy Director of Online Engagement for the Office of Digital Strategy Alex Wall’s blog post, @POTUS tweets will come exclusively from President Obama. The Twitter account was created for the President to communicate directly with the public.

    Wall writes, “President Obama is committed to making his Administration the most open and participatory in history, and @POTUS will give Americans a new venue to engage on the issues that matter most to them.”

    Guinness World Records states on its website that on Monday night President Obama “shattered the record for fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter” after the new account reached the figure in less than five hours. The account now has more than 2 million followers.

    However, within 10 minutes of his first tweet, multiple racist Twitter users began replying to him using the N-word. There are still users active accounts using the language; and users who post violent images of the President.

    Even outside of social media, blatant disrespect for Mr. and Mrs. Obama has been evident throughout their time living in the White House. In July, Former Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview “there’s a racial animus” toward the Obama administration. For example, last May in New Hampshire, then Wolfeboro Police Commissioner Bob Copeland eventually resigned after calling the President the N-word.

    “I believe I did use the N-word in reference to the current occupant of the White House,” Copeland wrote in an email to his fellow commissioners. “For this, I do not apologize—he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.”

    This month, in her commencement speech to Tuskegee University graduates, Mrs. Obama discussed “the chatter, the name calling, the doubting” she endured as a Black woman during her husband’s 2008 White House campaign.

    The hateful language about the President did not begin with the new @POTUS account. Anyone who uses Twitter avidly has most likely witnessed hateful language or harassment communicated in 140 characters or less under a claim of free speech.

    As millions of Twitter users continue to generate traffic for the platform, isn’t it time for an enhanced method to deal with abusive trolling?

    The truth is Twitter, which quickly created an animated diagram to show the rapid rate in which the President’s account gained followers from all over the world, is slow at stopping trolling.

    In February, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote an internal memo to his employees about harassment and abuse that exists on Twitter, a company that had an all white male board of directors until adding Marjorie Scardino in 2013.

    The memo, obtained by The Verge, addressed a question regarding an article written by Lindy West describing her horrible cyberbullying experience on the platform.

    Costolo took responsibility for the harassment and abuse caused by trolls:

    We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It’s nobody else’s fault but mine, and it’s embarrassing. We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them. Everybody on the leadership team knows this is vital.

    Twitter, your users interested in productive discourse deserve more, including the current President and future Presidents who will utilize the @POTUS account. President Obama sent two additional tweets on Monday. One tweet was a response to President Bill Clinton’s question, “Does that username stay with the office?” Obama wrote, “The handle comes with the house.”

    ____

    New MLB hire shows just how much of a joke diversity is to baseball:

    On Sunday, May 17th the Miami Marlins baseball franchise made a curious choice to replace their manager, Mike Redmond. Rather than working with the current “Selig Rule” to review multiple diverse candidates for the role, the Marlins went with their general manager, Dan Jennings, another white guy, bringing the overall diversity of MLB’s manager population to dismal levels.

    On April 14th, 1999, then-Commissioner Bud Selig of Major League Baseball instituted the rule designed to improve hiring practices for underrepresented personnel in some of the highest profile management positions. After it was put in place, there was a brief period of positive change, which resulted in 10 manager positions being filled by persons of color in 2009.

    However, the consequences for not following the Selig Rule no longer seem to be in place. When Craig Counsell, a former player and special assistant to the Brewers was hired as manager, Major League Baseball gave notice to their teams, according to Yahoo Sports:

    His hire prompted MLB to send out a memo reminding teams to consider minority candidates … which was promptly ignored upon the next managerial opening.

    When time came to hire the new Marlins manager, Yahoo Sports explained that the Miami franchise opted to take the unorthodox plan of hiring someone inexperienced and already an employee rather than doing the legwork of searching for a replacement:

    Jennings last coached 30 years ago, at a high school in Mobile, Ala. His professional playing experience is limited to having been signed as a pitcher by the New York Yankees out of a tryout camp. He did not, by appearances, actually throw a professional pitch for the Yankees.

    Baseball has been talking up a good game when it comes to desiring diversity in its customers, management and senior executive ranks to mirror the admittedly diverse ranks of players. Even though current Commissioner Manfred recently made some noise about doing more Latin America outreach, the lack of representation among its management and top leadership ranks among teams, or the MLB front office itself, is embarrassing for a sport that prides so much of itself on the legacy of Jackie Robinson.

    In the most recent Race and Gender Report Card, researched by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, Major League Baseball has shown a downward trend in terms of its hiring practices for the fourth consecutive year:

    The 2015 Major League Baseball season began with two managers of color, a decrease from five in 2014. The number of managers of color had been decreasing since the 2009 season, which started with 10 people of color and equaled the all-time record set in 2002 .

    The two managers of color are Fredi Gonzalez, Cuban-born manager of the Atlanta Braves; and Lloyd McLendon, manager of the Seattle Mariners. Frustratingly, sitting next to Jennings when his hiring was announced was one of a handful of team executives who is also a person of color, Mike Hill, the only non-white president and CEO of an MLB team.

    “I’d tell the clubs, ‘You’re hurting yourself when you’re just recycling these guys; you’re limiting yourself,’” Bud Selig said to his clubs when implementing his rule. “I believed we have such a great opportunity to do good and constructive work. I’m just asking people to be fair.”

    In response to that optimistic notion, Yahoo Sports spelled out the future of the Selig Rule.

    “MLB did nothing about it. If the league insists on keeping the Selig Rule in place, it must start enforcing it or run the risk of further alienating minorities who wonder when – not if – their ascent will stagnate,” wrote Jeff Passan of Yahoo. “The glass ceiling is real, and until baseball gives the Selig Rule some teeth and ends the farce, too many good baseball men will bang their heads unnecessarily.”

    ****
    Tangentially related to that last link-
    I’m not a sports fan and pay little attention to anything in the sports world. That said, since I work at a restaurant with owners and managers that are big on sports, I occasionally pay attention to a game or two (for a very short time). A few weeks ago, I began to notice that multiple basketball teams and football teams were heavy on African-American players while the same couldn’t be said of baseball or hockey teams (at least those that I’d noticed-so obviously I could be completely wrong). I asked a fellow employee-a black guy who is heavily into sports-his opinion on that. He told me that for inner city black people, basketball and football are accessible sports, whereas baseball and hockey are not.
    Not sure where I’m going with this, but it was (I think) an interesting observation on my part and answer on his part.

  44. says

    slithey tove @39:

    leads me to question the length of his residence in Waco

    Re-read what he said:

    the worst crime scene, the most violent crime scene, that [he has] ever been involved in

    The most violent crime scene he had ever been involved in.
    He wasn’t speaking about the most violent crime scene he’d ever heard of.

  45. Saad says

    PZ, #1

    Isn’t it nice to know that biker gangs are more integrated and diverse than many atheist organizations?

    About the same amount of women though.

  46. says

    The comments on the thug-free article (link in OP) are best avoided. It doesn’t seem to matter at all what crimes white folk commit, they are just never, ever as bad as those unpredictably violent non-white people.

  48. Pteryxx says

    I’ve also seen news coverage interviewing “former” biker gang members who talked about how biker gang members are upstanding members of the community with families and real day jobs. Some of them are even ex-cops. *pukes*

  51. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @ 42:
    Tony, correct. I did read that bit and reworded my original to try to compensate. Not quite, though, apparently. The point I tried, inadequately, to make, was to not just “what he ever heard of”, but the inconsistency of being a policeman and not being involved in the Waco siege. But then, I fail there too. The siege was the FBI involvement, not local LEOs. So, I remain corrected.

  52. JScarry says

    I suspect that when we know more about this incident, that we will find that all of the dead were shot by cops. This is exactly like police shootings of minorities. The militarization of police forces has changed the nature of policing from protecting citizens to treating citizens as enemy combatants. We’ve seen this before in Ferguson and Baltimore. Instead of being peace keepers the police are instigators of violence.

  53. frog says

    robertbaden@47: If a Hispanic/Latin@ person “looks white,” they’re counted white in face-to-face interactions in our racist culture (assuming they have an American accent, of course). That’s why demographic questions often specify “White (non-Hispanic).”

    It’s about how a person is seen when walking around in the world. A person who “looks white” will be treated better by shopkeepers, police, etc etc in face-to-face situations. This has nothing to do with the Hispanic person as an individual. It’s purely external. All things being otherwise equal, a pale skinned man with the last name Rodriguez is safer interacting with the police than a dark skinned man with the last name Johnson.

  54. qwints says

    I get the point that white people have the privilege not to be judged by the actions of these bikers, but I just don’t understand the people arguing that police didn’t take the violence by the motorcycle gangs seriously. They tried to shut down the bike night pre-emptively, surrounded the place with SWAT teams and shot some number of bikers dead without any attempt to use non-lethal force. They then arrested everybody at the scene and charged them all with organized crime linked with capital murder and set bail at $1,000,000 each. They’ve revoked the bar owner’s license to operate. I’ve got family in waco and they’re terrified by people on motorcycles.

  55. rq says

    JScarry
    Read up on it. The police did not instigate this one. This is not the same as Ferguson or Baltimore.
    If it were, the National Guard would be in Waco, there would be a state of emergency, and a curfew in effect.
    This was not over-militarized police (for once), this was a massacre among biker gangs where the police did not exercise their availability of military equipment. Which, if you look at it that way, is kind of nice…

  56. rq says

    qwints

    shot some number of bikers dead without any attempt to use non-lethal force

    This has yet to be confirmed. Via Lynna in the Lounge, the local sheriff says the evidence on that isn’t actually in yet, though it’s being reported as fact. (Chances are it’s true, that at least a few were shot by police, though I don’t believe that all of them were.)

    They then arrested everybody at the scene and charged them all with organized crime linked with capital murder and set bail at $1,000,000 each.

    Good. Sounds appropriate.

    They’ve revoked the bar owner’s license to operate.

    Not so good. Not really the bar’s responsibility, except I think they’re taking issue with the fact that the bar wouldn’t let police in beforehand.
    Also, who’s arguing that the police didn’t take the violence seriously? I don’t think anyone has argued that – what has been argued is how different and overblown the response would have been, were the bikers all (or at least, mostly) visibly black. Nine people dead and over a hundred injured, plus 170 arrested, I think the police are taking it pretty seriously indeed (esp. with rumours of more bikers coming to Waco).

  57. stevenjohnson2 says

    Sorry if I’m repetitive, being in too much of a hurry to read all the comments. But I have to emphasize that a major, perhaps the most important reason, for the less violent reaction of the police in Waco was because they were afraid to shoot it out with that many armed opponents. I like crimes shows more than the next person, but the portrait of police as brave and heroic people is an entertaining fiction.

  58. rq says

    Tony @43 re: Obama’s tweets
    Huh, maybe Twitter will get its act somehow together and do something more about that online harassment now. :P

  59. rq says

    stevenjohnson2

    the portrait of police as brave and heroic people is an entertaining fiction

    Well, I’ve figured that out already – they sure are often frightened of unarmed black people. Frightened enough to shoot them, if you see what I mean.
    Wonder why?
    (But yeah, you’re right, I’d be scared of hundreds of armed white bikers, too.)

  60. says

    Almost every single on of them sport a beard. I can’t see how that’s just a coincidence.
    Watch out for people with beards!

  61. Pteryxx says

    current news speaking to a Waco officer: They’ve recovered over 1,000 weapons from the scene, guns hidden between bags of flour and in bags of chips, guns hidden in the plumbing and toilets, but remember most biker enthusiasts don’t carry this kind of weaponry and these are criminals!

    …Actually this is Texas. Don’t gun enthusiasts *want* everybody to carry at least one gun, let alone ten per person? Or does it only count if they wear all 10 of their guns openly? *headdesk*

    Also a county outside Fort Worth cancelled a Memorial Day biker rally. What happened to #NotAllBikers there? NBCDFW

    Law enforcement officers plan to close a road leading to a planned motorcycle club rally in Palo Pinto County this weekend “for public safety reasons,” Palo Pinto Sheriff Ira Mercer said Tuesday.

    “They’ve had their rallies here on Memorial Day weekend for years,” Mercer said.

    The rallies are held on 23 acres in the town of Mingus, located about 65 miles west of Fort Worth. The land is owned by Cossacks Motorcycle Club Inc., according to public tax records.

    Mercer said police and deputies plan to close Parsons Road, which is the only street leading to the property.

  62. gog says

    @rq #4

    This is kind of neat, though I’m not sure how well it works: Tyler the Creator trolls racists by appropriating their symbols for his new gay pride tee

    Does this mean I can finally get a tattoo of a Valknut and not feel like a neo-Nazi?

  63. says

    I’ve always considered myself to be passing as white, rather than being white, It’s a matter of how others perceive me, rather than how I perceive myself.
    My mother, on the other hand, wanted to be perceived as white. But she was the darkest in her family. Plus she had epicanthal folds in her eyes, among other non white facial features. Few people considered her as white.
    There is more than just skin color involved with those of us who have pre columbian ancestery. Facial features also come into play.
    What gives people the right to decide what someone else is, rather than ask them?

  65. Matrim says

    I will say, I did see at least one white federal agent/former Hell’s Angel call biker gangs “thugs” after acknowledging that it has been used as a racially charged term. So…yay?

  66. says

    robertbaden @63:

    What gives people the right to decide what someone else is, rather than ask them?

    People don’t have that right, but it doesn’t change the fact that people do group others according to skin color.

  67. says

    Actually, Obama’s new military equipment transfer ban won’t change much at all:

    The change of policy will have minimal impact on the Pentagon’s notorious 1033 Program, which was widely scrutinized after the police response to unrest in Ferguson, MO. last summer, Michelle McCaskill, spokesperson for the Pentagon agency that runs the program, told Fusion.

    The move was applauded by groups that had been calling for change to the program for years.

    “Most of the stuff that is now listed as prohibited is not provided by us in the first place. For instance, we don’t provide ammunition, we don’t provide .50-caliber weapons or anything higher than .50-cal. We don’t provide camouflage uniforms,” McCaskill said.

    The 1033 Program has transferred nearly $4.5 billion of military equipment to over 8,000 local and state police departments since it was started in 1990, according to the Pentagon. Most of the material has been deemed as excess by the Pentagon, meaning it is too old or obsolete for military use.

    What Obama’s announcement does prohibit is the transferring of tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft or vehicles of any kind, firearms and ammunition of .50-caliber or above, grenade launchers, bayonets, and camouflage uniforms from the Department of Defense to local or state police.

    “The vehicles that we provide, if they’re aircrafts, or any vessel — they don’t have weapons on them. We demilitarize those vehicles and aircraft before transferring them to law enforcement,” McCaskill said.

    Out of the equipment now listed as prohibited to transfer, only bayonets, grenade launchers and track armored vehicles are actually offered by the 1033 program. But, McCaskill said, “we haven’t provided any of those for a few years now.”

    Another Pentagon spokesperson told Fusion that track armored vehicles have not been offered through the program since 2011.

    The ban on these items, which are “militaristic in nature,” was put in place because their misuse or overuse could “significantly undermine community trust and may encourage tactics and behaviors that are inconsistent with the premise of civilian law enforcement,” reads Obama’s executive order.

    But pistols, rifles, scopes, body armor and other tactical gear will still be offered to local police departments through the program.

    Even the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), which have at times been controversially obtained by tiny police departments in rural America, will still be offered.

  68. happyrabo says

    I’ve read that a significant number of the 192 people arrested for organized crime are not members of criminal gangs, but were present at the restaurant for a regularly-scheduled monthly meeting about legal issues and bills of interest to motorcyclists. In other words, political advocacy. Those people had nothing to do with the fight, are not gang members, and were simply caught up in an indiscriminate dragnet.

  70. rq says

    happyrabo
    170 have been arrested, not 192.

    a regularly-scheduled monthly meeting about legal issues and bills of interest to motorcyclists

    Sure. It was just an indiscriminate dragnet, because killing 9 people was internal business, not something where the police should remotely have been involved.
    Do you have any facts?

    +++

    CBC on the shooting. Can I highlight one thing?

    A dispute over a parking space or a gang member’s foot being run over may have sparked the brawl that ended with a gunfight between bikers and nearly two dozen police who had taken positions outside the restaurant in anticipation of violence.

    I’m sorry, nearly two dozen police officers?
    Remind me again, how many National Guard were sent to Ferguson? Baltimore? In preparation of all that unrest and bloodshed?

  71. says

    They do charity work! What more do you need??

    The Taliban also does charity work. Even ISIS does some charity work. As do cartels in South America. As do some notable white collar criminals in the USA. It is standard procedure to use some of your ill-gotten gains, (whether from drug sales, or pyramid schemes, or jihad) to earn goodwill from local populations by doing some charity work.

  72. happyrabo says

    Tony @69:

    Here’s one link:
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-texas-biker-brawl-20150520-story.html

    I help run the largest non-criminal motorcycle club in Minnesota. We do have meetings about laws that impact motorcyclists. We frequently rub shoulders with members of criminal clubs, because there’s only so many places that motorcyclists are welcome. We just stay out of their way and try not to provoke them, but if a bunch of them showed up and started fighting with each other at some place we were meeting, all we could do is keep our heads down and try to get out of there.

    Katie Rhoten’s story is plausible to me. I could easily have been one of the people arrested if I lived in Texas.

  73. says

    Cross posted from the [Lounge]: Did the cops shoot bikers in Waco? The report that they shot four bikers has been repeatedly debunked, or at least described as premature.

    When that report came out, the autopsies had not been done. The Police Chief in Waco said in an interview that he saw that information being repeated as fact when it was, in fact, not reliable.

    We will know later if the cops shot bikers. We do not know that now. Police officers may have shot bikers, and maybe not.

    […] CNN reported that four of the dead bikers were shot by police.

    But at a news briefing Monday evening, Swanton said that information “has not been verified by us, it has not been verified by autopsies or medical results as well.”
    “The autopsies have not been completed and that information may very likely be incorrect,” Swanton said. “It is not coming from me or the Waco Police Department.” […]

    CNN jumped the gun.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/18/waco-shootout-police-involvement/27530257/

  74. says

    happyrabo @72:
    Thanks for the link.

    ****
    Here’s one from The Associated Press about Theron Rhoten:

    Katie Rhoten told The Associated Press that her husband, a mechanic from Austin, called her from jail and said that he and two other members of a motorcycle club called Vise Grip ducked and ran for cover amid the violence that also left 18 injured.

    The three were arrested along with about 170 others at the scene and are each being held on $1 million bonds.

    Officers took into custody all sorts of “nonviolent, noncriminal people,” Katie Rhoten said.

    “He’s good to his family,” she said. “He doesn’t drink; he doesn’t do drugs; he doesn’t party. He’s just got a passion for motorcycles.”

    It’s not clear how long the bikers will remain in custody. They have all been charged with engaging in organized crime.

    “Unless they try to make some other arrangement to move them through it more quickly, it could be weeks and possibly months” before the jailed bikers have bond-reduction hearings, said William Smith, an attorney who has met with several of the inmates.

    It’s also unclear whether the McLennan County district attorney will require outside help to prosecute all those arrested Sunday.

    District Attorney Abel Reyna brought in prosecutor John Bradley for appeals in a capital murder case in 2014. Bradley was voted out of office as the Williamson County district attorney after opposing the exoneration of Michael Morton, who was imprisoned for 24 years for a murder he didn’t commit before DNA testing cleared him.

    McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara and Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton declined to comment Tuesday on allegations that innocent bikers were arrested.

    The eight members of Theron Rhoten’s group, the Vise Grip Club, specialize in building and riding vintage and antique motorcycles, particularly pre-1970 Harley Davidson big twin choppers, according to spokesman Brian Buscemi.

    Police have said five biker gangs from across Texas had gathered at the restaurant on Sunday, in part to settle differences over turf.

    Buscemi disputed that claim, saying groups had planned to discuss laws protecting motorcycle riders at the meeting, which he said has been going on bimonthly for 18 years.

    “Yes, there was a problem at this scene, and it was absolutely horrific, but there just also happened to be a significant amount of people there who had nothing to do with it,” Buscemi told the AP.

    Jimmy Graves, who described himself as an ambassador for the gang known as the Bandidos, said his group had no intention of engaging in a scuffle.

    But he acknowledged that differences with other groups, such as the Cossacks, have been “simmering and brewing.”

    The U.S. Justice Department said in a report on outlaw motorcycle gangs that the Bandidos “constitute a growing criminal threat” in a report on outlaw motorcycle gangs. The report said the group is involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and in the production and distribution of methamphetamine.

    Another biker named Johnny Snyder also said he was at the restaurant for a scheduled meeting to talk about legislative issues.

    Snyder, a long-haul trucker, declined to describe what he saw inside the restaurant, saying he was only concerned with “not getting shot.”

    He is vice president of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club in Waco, a group that Snyder says does charity events and family gatherings and is not a criminal gang.

    I hope that any of the bikers who are innocent are cleared of any wrongdoing and set free as soon as possible.

  75. says

    Ok, this one makes me scratch and shake my head at the same time-
    White House pops up on Google Maps in N-word search:

    Just last month Google Maps had to scramble to eliminate an image that showed an Android robot peeing on the Apple logo. Now it’s got an even worse problem: remedying an issue that brings up the White House when certain racial slurs are punched in, the Washington Post reports. Head over to Maps, zoom all the way out to the global mode, and type in different variations of the N-word next to “house” or “king,” and President Obama’s abode shows up as one of the top two or three choices. Although White House results were still showing up as of the time of this post, a Google rep tells the Guardian, “Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused. Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly.”

    A Twitter user notes that results can differ depending on location, the Huffington Post reports. As Google tries to figure out how this happened—the company has a vetted contributor pool in addition to regular staff, the Herald Recorder has previously noted—it has temporarily suspended the software users can tap into to make map edits, CNET reports; the company expects to give an update on that status by May 27. “We are temporarily disabling editing on Map Maker starting today while we continue to work towards making the moderation system more robust,” a product manager says, per the Post. (Google got busted late last year for showing a woman’s cleavage in Street View mode.)

  76. rq says

    Tony
    And if you google ‘nigga university’, you get a result, too. (I believe it was Howard U (see first link, comment 28, can’t access it at work.)

  77. Okidemia says

    robertbaden @63:

    What gives people the right to decide what someone else is, rather than ask them?

    I know this wording was not meant to be malevolent, but did you ever think about what people think of being asked this all the time?
    It’s really annoying in the end, really annoying I tell you. I can bet within 5 minutes when someone I just met is going to ask me about origins or make an hypothetical statement about it. I think my predictions are right about 98% of the time.

    Do you ask people about their sexual orientation? Why not let people state anything they wish about themselves, and not care about what they don’t?

  78. says

    Okidemia @77:

    I know this wording was not meant to be malevolent, but did you ever think about what people think of being asked this all the time?

    I’ve been asked “what are you” (or some variation of that question) so many times I can’t count. It’s almost always at work and inevitably comes from a guest (sometimes a fellow employee). I’m mixed race (my gravatar is an image of me) and I guess people are trying to figure out which one of their mental boxes I fit in. I usually respond with “white, black, American Indian, pacific-islander, scandinavian, and japanese”, which probably makes it *more* difficult for them to understand what box to put me in. Personally, I’m not annoyed by the question (though I probably should be) but this is just me and I can totally understand the annoyance others feel being asked this question.

  80. says

    Tony!@43, the thing about pro hockey is that the player pool is dominated by Canadians and Europeans from places like the Czech Republic and Russia. In Canada’s case non-white players have tended to face the same kind of problems with racism within hockey culture as they do in the more general culture. Representation of minority groups is getting a bit better, probably helped along by the prominence of players like Jarome Iginla and P.K. Suban, along with efforts by hockey organisations to deal with diversity issues, but hockey still lags behind other sports, and racist incidents persist.

  82. says

    You are a wh*re, Pennsylvania GOP staffer finally fired after years of hateful tweets:

    Pennsylvania state representative Rich Irvin (R-Huntingdon) fired staffer Derek Greene this week, responding to public outrage surrounding dozens of racist and sexist statements the employee made over the last several years, the Centre Daily Times reports.

    On Monday, a Pennsylvania biology professor named Steve Miskin launched a petition on Change.org calling for Greene to be fired; it quickly garnered hundreds of signatures. In pleading his case against the Republican political operative, Miskin aired his grievances in the form of since-deleted tweets, authored by Greene, disparaging women, LGBTQ communities, black people, and Asian Americans.

    Using the now defunct Twitter handle @BIGD1434, Greene made the following observations, which originated between 2012 and 2015, and remained online for public consumption until this week:

    If this dumb blonde doesn’t shut up I am going to strangle her. #NoJoke

    Hahaha [pictorial of Sandra Fluke with Caption “This Cum Dumpster Requires so much birth control it must be subsized”]

    Haha so true!! [picture of a couple with the caption that reads: “When girls say: Don’t judge me by past”, we know 2 things. 1) You used to be a wh*re. 2) You still are

    Katie Couric is engaged again!! Congrats! YOU ARE A WH*RE!

    More cops are killed each year than African Americans killed by cops. #Fact

    @RevJJackson has hurt the black community more than the KKK

    @RevJJackson are you kidding me!? Racism is dead in America and you hurt the black community everyday!

    This is why I hate asians

    My teacher is Asian and I want to kill myself when he talks

    Note: I’m not certain if wh*re is among those terms that trip the filter, so those * in the quoted section are my doing.

  83. happyrabo says

    Tony @74:

    I hope that any of the bikers who are innocent are cleared of any wrongdoing and set free as soon as possible.

    Likewise, I hope that all of the bikers who are guilty are convicted and spend a very long time in prison not giving the rest of us a bad name.

  84. Okidemia says

    Tony! @78

    Personally, I’m not annoyed by the question

    Yep, this is indeed more complex than “just asking”. I’m only bothered when people are transpiring out unsecurity, which is when there’s something wrong about the way they ask. When they struggle to find the way.

    When it’s all natural, which also happens, I don’t really mind.

    The thing is if they really want me into a box, it’s best it’s not already filled with prejudice garbage.

    The thing is also that as a complete outlier in the way, it also often follows with comments about the mailman, about mom, and you ‘should’ keep smiling politely. (as a kid).

  85. robro says

    I’m sure it’s just an editorial goof up, but shouldn’t the description be more like, “…scores of men and two women.”

  86. says

    Someone called Jack Thomp wrote three times the same comment under the article linked in OP. It looks like bogus statistics from some rehashed argument (racists are in their arguments generally about as creative as creationists). But I can’t help in being interested in rebuttal to that crap. If anyone has a link to rebuttal to that crap I would appreciate it. Of course I will continue to search on my own.

  87. rq says

    Hm. Re: my @70, I think I’m going to stick to putting up links with less discussion.
    Apparently I suck at my own facts. :P

  88. Okidemia says

    Tony! @78
    Plus I think it is way less inquisitive to ask in the USA, where population is admixing and with almost everybody having their share of diverse ancestry, compared to Old World where the question implies that you’re excluded and getting prejudice stickers.

  89. rq says

    Charly
    re: that comment
    For the first bit,

    There are an estimated 1.5 million Black men in prison and another 3.5 million on probation.

    A quick look at wiki stats on incarceration by race debunks that rather large number, e.g.

    (841,000 black males and 64,800 black females out of a total of 2,096,300 males and 201,200 females)

    and

    non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population

    (from 2009), which also addresses the second sentence.
    Just getting those things wrong makes me disinclined to follow up on the remaining statistics, plus right now I don’t have the energy. I don’t have any good links off-hand, but if you look through the previous iterations of this thread, I know there have been (long) articles on the horrific rate of incarceration of black people, how criminalization of their behaviour starts early and often, and the racial aspects of the criminal justice system that add to the skewed statistics.
    I’m not sure about the source the commenter ‘cites’ at the end (searched through the online New York Times archive from that date (April 22 2005), with nary a usable result – though I’m just assuming that’s what the ‘citation’ stands for). The rape hoax is probably this one (TW!).
    This article also seems heavily biased against black people in general, but some of the numbers on crime and rape quoted are completely different from the commenter’s, with sources (though how reliable – I can’t say), though they’re all dated (1980s and 1990). So… does that help for starters?

  91. Okidemia says

    Tony! @90

    And it’s one that I’ve found to be directed only at people of color.

    Hum, I’ve always thought it (“where are you from?”) was a genuine question in the USA, one I could have answered something like “Pennsylvania”…
    Sometimes it’s good to be a migrant: you don’t get all the rhetoric subtleties implied by the ongoing discussion.

    But now that you point it out, I think it’s true, it’s mostly a question coming from white people. (I think I didn’t get the pattern, because it’s also often somewhat part of a starting discussion “migrant with migrant”).

  92. Grewgills says

    @Okidemia and Tony!
    That is a pretty frequent question here in Hawai’i, but the answers tend to be more like Tony’s. Then again every ethnicity here is minority and the second largest is mixed, often with several different ethnicities. The questions come from most everyone and are followed by a round of comparative listings of ethnicity, so the question is less charged here. When I lived in Alabama that was a question that was most often asked by whites of anyone that didn’t look white and have a southern accent.

  93. militantagnostic says

    More cops are killed each year than African Americans killed by cops. #Fact

    In my experience it can be safely assumed that any statement followed by “Fact!” is false.

    Even if it is true it doesn’t follow that more cops are killed by African Americans than African Americans are killed by cops, since some cops are killed by whites and Hispanics. As phrased the statement carries the hidden implication that all cops killed are killed by African Americans.

  94. madscientist says

    I’m just surprised the NRA aren’t all over the news telling everyone how things would never have been that bad if only everyone had a gun.

  95. rq says

    madscientist
    Well, pretty much everyone did have a gun – so imagine how much worse it would have been if nobody had had a gun!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    +++

    The on-going saga of real-estate development in north St Louis, that insists on kicking people out of their homes rather than rehabilitating the properties. A Look at Paul McKee’s “Legacy” Properties – beautiful houses, in need of repair.

    So what happens to all the houses? What happens to all of those “legacy” properties that Paul McKee was going to incorporate into his gargantuan redevelopment plan, NorthSide Regeneration? Only the most Pollyannish of observers would believe that the complete rebuilding of several square miles of North St. Louis will still happen in the way McKee has described. There’s enough reason to be angry about that failure. But this author is also angry that still surviving out of this debacle is the strongly held belief of many metropolitan St. Louisans that the area within NorthSide’s redevelopment plan was (and is) a complete wasteland. While the area was struggling, without a doubt it can now be shown, with photographic evidence, that McKee’s failed plan has left St. Louis Place and other Near Northside neighborhoods in worse condition than when he found them. Below are some examples, but keep in mind this is nowhere near exhaustive documentation of the damage done:

    James Clemens House

    The Clemens Mansion was not in terrible condition—until McKee bought the property under one of his shell companies. Since that time, the house has deteriorated substantially, seeing a severe collapse of one of the roof timbers of the accompanying chapel, which knocked a hole in the wall of the second floor in 2008. Since then, McKee put in a half-hearted attempt at renovation, removing much of the upper story of the chapel, exposing the entire structure to the elements. Meanwhile, the original house has suffered theft of valuable cast iron elements from the front porch, as well as important classical cornices from interior doorways. Luckily, some of the front porch has been preserved in storage, but the house itself is now exposed that much more to the ravages of rain and neglect.

    1937 Montgomery

    Probably no one famous, or even remotely related to someone famous, ever lived in this multi-family on the 1900 of Montgomery. Once kept company by dozens of other housing units just on the one block, 1937 had only four or five other houses left to call neighbors. Occupied as late as the last 10 years, the building was purchased by a McKee shell company and left to rot. But it never got a chance to fall down by its own accord—it was instead savaged by brick thieves, who left the damaged building in a severe and dangerous state of half-collapse for months. On top of that, McKee has not paid property taxes on the now-vacant lot for 2013 and 2014. This author is not claiming this stretch of Montgomery was in perfect condition, but now there is nothing left. At one point, there were the bones of what could have become a revitalized block.

    1501 Palm

    So out of touch with the reality of real revitalization efforts in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood, McKee bought this house without realizing that rehabbing and other redevelopment were already occurring on the same block, with dozens of other houses being reconstructed or built new in the surrounding area. McKee, when confronted by the fact that wide-scale clearance of Old North was impossible, promised to sell the properties in the neighborhood. To this day, he still has not followed through on that promise. And considering he hasn’t paid taxes on the once-beautiful house that has now almost collapsed under his ownership, one would think he would be interested in raising some money to save the rest of his plan. Apparently not.

    Crown Square

    Meanwhile, many buildings fortunate enough not to have been purchased by McKee are going the opposite direction in condition. Less than a decade ago, the buildings along the Fourteenth Street Mall sat in similar condition as many of McKee’s properties today. But something else happened. The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group invested millions into the buildings, fixed them up, while simultaneously showing that there’s real hope for North St. Louis. Now if McKee would just do the right thing and get out of everybody else’s way.

    54 years ago today, I was beaten along w/ several Freedom Riders as we attempted to enter the Montgomery bus station. (May 20)

    Tomorrow is the national call to action for Black women murdered due to police violence. And we have something special planned!
    If you are located in the STL area & have any little *black* girls that wouldn’t mind being photographed please contact us.
    But tomorrow? We are definitely shutting it down for the women! Details coming soon.
    Last time they held a march for women, few people showed up and they got a lot of hate for it. Let’s hope it goes better this time!!!!

    Can you tell me about Damo? An interview with @EthosIII [link] by @_MamaSims | #DamoDay is #May20 – tasered twice in the head by Chicago PD. Deceased.

  96. rq says

    Oh hey look who gets to be the face of the Waco biker gang arrestees. Retired detective among scores busted in Waco Twin Peaks biker gang shootout as kin defend some members as ‘nonviolent, noncriminal’

    Martin Lewis, 62, retired in 2004 from the San Antonio Police Department after 32 years on the force, according to KSAT-TV. Lewis, along with scores of other bikers from at least five different gangs, were at Twin Peaks, dubbed a “breastaurant” for its bikini-topped waitresses, during a midday meetup when shooting broke out following an altercation in the Central Texas Marketplace parking lot.

    Nine people, members of the Cossacks and Bandidos motorcycle clubs, were killed, while 18 others were injured and 170 bikers were busted on charges of engaging in organized crime.

    In Facebook pictures, Lewis wore badges supporting the Bandidos on his leather vest. […]

    Other lawyers say they think charges will dropped or reduced for several of those arrested because of the strain put on the local court system. The docket was already filled this week ahead of the new cases introduced in the aftermath of the shooting, according to USA Today.

    As long as they drop charges for those not actually involved in the shooting, that’s all fine and good.

    Protest Over Decision Not To Prosecute Police In Vonderrit Myers Case

    Protesters took to the to the streets of downtown St. Louis Tuesday morning over the Circuit Attorney’s decision not to charge an officer for the October shooting death of Vonderrit Myers. There were about 40 demonstrators near the intersection of 10th and Market. Police met with protesters on the scene.

    The Circuit Attorney’s officer released the results of their investigation into the shooting on Monday. Investigators found that Myers shot at the officer therefore deadly force was justified.

    Demonstrators have dispersed from the scene. The protest in front of the Courts building lasted for about two hours.

    That’s from the daytime protest, which happened before the one at Joyce’s house.

    Okay, prepare for some cute. Disruptive cute, but still cute! Steph Curry’s Daughter, Riley Curry, Steals The Spotlight During Post-Game Press Conference. And now Steph Curry is getting hate for this (see here and here), probably from the same people who go on about absent black fathers.
    Yes, it’s probably tough to hold a press conference with a child present, but it’s tough to answer questions when it’s your child up there. But you know what? It’s also awesome that people can manage to bring their kids to work and not hide them away. Especially, especially, a black father. I wish the haters would shut up, because I think it’s a beautiful interview. Go Riley! (Oh, and interestingly, Steph’s dad used to take him to work when he was a cute little kid, too – so I’m thinking I really like that family’s attitude towards work and family, not that my opinion really matters.)

    Removing the #MikeBrown memorial on Mike’s 19th birthday continues a trend in #Ferguson of lacking sensitivity or humanity to black people. Yep, that happened. More on that in a bit, currently in tweets.

  97. rq says

    Here’s how that went:
    Mike Brown Sr said he just got word that the memorial will now be moved at Canfield around 12p. @ksdknews #ferguson;
    Knowles said the Brown family and #Ferguson have agreed to move the memorial to a permanent site. @ksdknews Okay, but they (the mayor, spec.) are aware of what happened to the Michael Brown memorial tree and plaque, right?
    [residents removing the memorial]
    #MikeBrown memorial items arrive at the Urban League, for storage.
    The removal of #MikeBrown’s memorial is a form of state violence & erasure. It’s an example of how little Black lives are valued. Well, there will be a plaque (next comment) and Knowles says they will repave a portion of Canfield by request of the family. Still.

    tbc

  98. rq says

    Mike Brown changed my life. I would give it all back if you could be here to celebrate your birthday. I will fight for you always. Not the only similar sentiment out there on his birthday.
    The dash between the dates of #MikeBrown’s birth and death represents his life. That’s what matters most. Life. Such a short little dash, most times. Antonio French also linked to this poem: The Dash – A Poem by Linda Ellis

    I read of a man who stood to speak
    At the funeral of a friend

    He referred to the dates on her tombstone
    From the beginning to the end

    He noted that first came her date of her birth
    And spoke the following date with tears,

    But he said what mattered most of all
    Was the dash between those years

    For that dash represents all the time
    That she spent alive on earth.

    And now only those who loved her
    Know what that little line is worth.

    For it matters not how much we own;
    The cars, the house, the cash,

    What matters is how we live and love
    And how we spend our dash.

    So think about this long and hard.
    Are there things you’d like to change?

    More of it at the link.

    Anyway, then this, later that same evening:
    We knew you were going to do this. Urban League;
    Told y’all Urban League wasn’t about the movement. Look what I found in the dumpster. Storage, indeed.
    So what did residents do? Canfield residents earlier 2night rebuild Michael Brown memorial @search4swag @southards_3 @deray @MissJupiter1957

  99. rq says

    Relatedly, Update: @TefPoe, @TDUBBOHMYGOD, @chicanapoet1, and Marcellus are still in jail in STL City.
    @deray @TefPoe @TDUBBOHMYGOD @chicanapoet1 I bet they are keeping them until AFTER they take down the #mikebrown memorial….just a thought Interesting thought.

    this is a perfect example of what it’s like talking to ignorant white people about race issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg2hj4lX1IM&feature=youtu.be …

    They just called the #WacoShooting “just an old fashioned shootout” in our school news @deray Traditional values, hey??

    We shouldn’t forget the mothers who have been killed by police as well.

  100. rq says

    Where are the fathers? This Texas senator blamed Baltimore uprising on absentee dads but goes silent on Waco bloodbath

    In his home state, nine people were just slaughtered in a bloodbath. Over 1,000 weapons were recovered. Families were endangered, and it was the biggest single incident of murder in Waco since the Branch Davidian compound burned down.

    Texas’ own U.S. senator, John Cornyn, though, hasn’t mentioned anything about the Waco incident on his Twitter stream. He’s tweeted about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising, but he has been radio silent on the massacre in his own state.

    What makes this doubly troubling is that he had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, on May 8, to tweet to the world that he blamed the unrest in Baltimore on absentee fathers. […]

    Excuse me?

    Are you saying that the police officers who killed Freddie Gray had absentee fathers? Because no protests or uprisings were taking place until they severed a man’s spine and crushed his voice box.

    And tell us, Senator, why are you not tweeting about the state of fatherhood concerning the nine men gunned down in your state?

    Why are you not blaming absentee fathers for the fact that more weapons were found on those perpetrators than have been confiscated from every American protest combined in the past year?

    How do you know who the hell does or doesn’t have a father in Baltimore, and what role that plays in anything?

    You have some damn nerve thinking you can blame anything in Baltimore on absentee fathers while ignoring the horror in your own state.

    Shame on you, man. Shame on you.

    Finished the official Freddie Gray mural at the intersection where he was illegally arrested. Mount St & Presbury.

    “Incarcerating 2 million people is a sign of American failure, not of American success.” — @Sifill_LDF ’87 @NAACP_LDF #NYU2015

    Moving up Mount St. now.

    One month after his death, exposing the lies of the Baltimore Police in the murder of Freddie Gray

    Last month we exposed many of the ugly lies about Freddie Gray being spread by conservatives—ranging from the lie that he broke his neck jumping from a window while evading police to the lie that he had a spinal surgery in the weeks before he was killed stemming from a car accident.

    It’s now been one month since 25-year-old Freddie Gray died because of critical injuries he suffered while in police custody. Six officers having been charged in his murder. And many facts continue to emerge, including a video that was just released showing one of the many stops made while Freddie was in the van. […]

    LIE: The arrest of Freddie Gray was lawful.

    TRUTH: Everything about the arrest of Gray was unlawful.

    Sadly, we will never fully understand what happened on April 12, because Gray never spoke another word again after he emerged from the police van that day and died one week later from his injuries.

    The police claim, in their own timeline, that they chased and subdued Gray (and another unnamed man), but never gave any legal reason for doing so other than making eye contact with them.

    The Baltimore police commissioner, Anthony Batts, has already said clearly that “there is no law against running.” What law, then, did Gray break to be pursued and arrested in the first place? It is not legal to simply look at a man and assume it must be a criminal.

    Furthermore, while police claim that Gray was carrying an illegal knife at the time of his arrest, two facts about this need to be clarified:

    1. The police themselves claimed to have found the knife after they hadchased, caught and cuffed him.

    In charging documents, prosecutors say three officers were on patrol near Gilmor Homes when Gray spotted them and began to run.

    Prosecutors say the officers chased Gray and soon caught him. They say the officers held him down, handcuffed him, and found the knife.

    The officers “substantially found a knife clipped to the inside of his pants pocket,” prosecutors wrote in the documents. “The blade of the knife was folded into the handle. The knife was not a switchblade and is lawful under Maryland law.”

    2. While officers contend that the knife was indeed a switchblade, Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby and her team said strongly that it isn’t. Either way, the illegal pursuit and arrest took place before they found the knife. […]

    LIE: Police leaked to The Washington Post that the man arrested and placed in the van behind a separate partition was a 38-year-old under protective order who claimed Gray was deliberately trying to injure himself in the van. They also claimed they couldn’t reveal his identity.

    TRUTH: Not only did the police blatantly lie about the identity of this man, who turned out to be 22-year-old Donta Allen, he openly came out to blast the lies in several interviews after the fact. Here he flat-out denies that he ever claimed Gray was intentionally trying to injure himself and says that he never heard him say anything. Furthermore, you must remember that police already stated in their reports to the prosecutor that Gray was completely unresponsive BEFORE this man was loaded into the van. This was a deliberate misinformation attempt.

    There’s a huge debunking of the police arrest report and the released police timeline in between there. Please read.

    Beyond Bruce Jenner: 7 Black Trans Voices to Follow

    In case you missed it, Diane Sawyer conducted a “landmark” interview with Bruce Jenner, Olympian and reality star, sharing his* trans journey. The interview triggered a variety of reactions and responses. Noting the general lack of trans awareness in popular LGBT conversations, Black trans folk (like Black Queer folk) are too often erased from the narrative. Even Bruce’s courage must be contextualized in a system that prefers affluence, whiteness, and conservatism; all things of which Bruce has full access.

    More importantly, we should take this time to raise up Black trans voices who are already doing a work of visibility online. As cis** folks, it is important to take a seat and listen to Black trans people’s narratives, struggles, and celebrations. Trans visibility is growing and we should tune our ears to our people doing this work! The Blavity team took some time to curate a list of 7 Black Trans leaders to connect with.
    1. Ahya Simone (@idee_fixe_):
    2. Hunter Ashley Lourdes (@HunterLourdes)
    3. Tiq Milan (@themrmilan)
    4. Janet Mock (@janetmock)
    5. Kortney Ziegler (@fakerapper)
    6. Katrina Goodlett (@TweetTrina4Lyfe)
    7. Laverne Cox (@LaverneCox)

    And remember, these are only 7 of many worth following.

  101. rq says

    House panel advances bill that contains body camera funding. Small progress.

    The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday advanced a $51.4 billion bill containing funding for a program that would provide law enforcement agencies with body cameras.

    The bill, which funds the Justice and Commerce departments, as well as science agencies, includes $50 million for a Community Policing Initiative. Of that amount, $15 million would be intended for body cameras. That’s much less than the $50 million the White House requested from Congress for body cameras for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

    Republicans pointed to spending constraints in the 2011 Budget Control Act that limit discretionary funding.

    “Because of that cap, we’ve been forced to prioritize,” said Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) during the panel’s markup.

    Republicans said they prioritized funding for law enforcement, counterterrorism programs and cybersecurity.

    While the bill for fiscal 2016 provides $1.3 billion more than the current level, it would be $661 million less than President Obama’s request.

    Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) offered an amendment that would breach the bill’s funding cap by boosting resources for law enforcement and crime prevention efforts.

    But Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) pointed out that the amendment, which provided no way to offset its costs, would kill the bill at the committee level.

    “It’s an opportunity for us to make a point,” Fattah said, about the need for relieving sequester budget ceilings that are set to return in October.

    “That’s our point exactly,” he said. “We think that the cap stands in the way of us moving toward a more perfect union.”

    Under the bill, the Justice Department would receive $852 million more than the 2015 level, while the Commerce Department would get about $250 million less than it currently does. […]

    Donovan said he appreciated the funding for community policing in the wake of widespread protests and riots related to officer conduct.

    “However, compared to the President’s Budget, the Subcommittee bill fails to adequately fund all of the elements necessary to fully support law enforcement and improve relations between communities and police,” Donovan said.

    Ala. Reading Intervention Stands Test of Time. Can it be, that education (proper, supported education) has a positive effect on people?

    Diane Daniel’s classroom here at Southside Primary School is a steady hum of productive activity.

    Some of her kindergartners are playing word games on computers; others are chatting as they complete an exercise on the reading rug, and a handful are busily writing, some already using full sentences that incorporate words about trains—”engine,” “passenger”—that Ms. Daniel has hung up on one of her corkboards.

    And sadly, I am not registered, so I am unable to keep reading, but maybe some of y’all out there can!

    Oh, good question! In the Rush to Aid Baltimore’s ‘Minority-Owned Businesses,’ Will Black Businesses Be Left Out?

    Prominent black conservative political activist Ali Akbar couldn’t contain his right-side-of-things glee. Just moments after a random reporter’s tweet described Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s dismay at the loss of more than 200 “minority-owned” local businesses in the Baltimore unrest, Akbar grabbed the Twitter mic in a May 3 burst of awkward black outreach.

    “So terrible. Thank you for speaking out and standing with black-owned businesses, @LarryHogan.”

    The problem, though, is that Hogan wasn’t talking about black-owned businesses.

    Not only has this stirred slight confusion in Charm City, but it also raises key questions about which businesses were destroyed or damaged, and whether those receiving help truly represent the interests and complexion of the folks who live in Baltimore.

    Multiple news reports highlighted the quickness with which corner-store conglomerate CVS is rebuilding two gutted West Baltimore locations, as if the spots were already dynamic oases of economic prosperity. Sure, that’s great: for CVS. But few ask why these neighborhoods appear dangerously reliant on big, corporate convenience stores in the first place, as both primary grocery source and job hub. There are no questions as to the lack of black-owned businesses beyond barbershops, hair salons and churches. And no aggressive action on what’s being done to empower and finally revive a Baltimore corridor that once flourished during back-in-the-segregated-day black economic booms between the 1940s and 1960s.

    Such questions also drape a dark cloud of mystery over the highly abused term “minority-owned.” Local, state and federal politicians have long used the phrase as a misleading characterization of their outreach efforts in economically mangled and mostly urban black communities.

    But a “minority-owned business” is not what it seems—the term rarely means “black-owned business,” even though embarrassed government officials and companies escaping regulatory ire have long reached for it like comfort food when race issues explode. In the case of West Baltimore, it’s not entirely clear that when the Maryland governor’s office and the federal Small Business Administration announced disaster-relief assistance to unrest-rattled businesses, that they also meant they’d be lending a helping hand to black businesses. […]

    Still, the Maryland data available (pdf) show a questionable picture of investment in black businesses proportional to the size of the Free State’s black population. Black businesses in the state received 20.7 percent of the state’s $2.1 billion investment in MBEs, but 83 percent of those were all subcontractors—which means they were largely attached to white-owned businesses receiving the bulk of “prime” contracts. The state’s population is 33 percent black.

    There’s no clarity on what levels of investment there will be in West Baltimore’s black businesses—we’re not even clear, from the get, on how many black businesses there are in that area and which they are. Census Bureau figures only examine Baltimore as a whole. We do know that African-American-owned enterprises make up nearly 35 percent of all city businesses. But while that might sound good compared with other major cities, it’s actually not, considering that Charm City is 63 percent black.

    In passionate and sometimes expletive-filled reflections, Baltimore Black Business Directory publisher and city native Henru-Ka Anu describes the entire situation and the government officials responding to it as being “full of s–t.”

    “The area we’re talking about, those thoroughfares go right through the heart of Baltimore’s black community,” Anu tells The Root. “It’s all been neglected up to this day. There is no real white community there, obviously. And Asians own more of the businesses than African Americans, especially food and cosmetic stores.”

    Anu argues that both state and local officials have not created the sort of infrastructure to support black business in Baltimore. That Black Chamber of Commerce? “Defunct,” says Anu, who was once very active with it. “CVS represents corporate exploitation of those communities—and not just in Baltimore. And the governor and the SBA are using stats to make duplicitous statements about ‘minority-owned’ businesses because, in reality, white women are the largest recipients of minority-business investments.”

    Former Washington, D.C., Councilman Kevin Chavous agrees that cities and states “can’t make hollow promises when engaging small and black businesses.”

    “You can’t just say you’re giving them opportunities, you have to help these businesses make the connection,” he says. Chavous points out the larger challenge of fewer black businesses having the requisite skill sets, credit or knowledge to secure loans from government agencies. He says that governments should “encourage bigger businesses to mentor smaller enterprises” and, in an effort to target black-business development, should use classifications similar to what D.C. termed “local, small, disadvantaged businesses.” […]

    Propping up black businesses in distressed black neighborhoods would make sense, right? Ground zero of the unrest, Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, is 97 percent black and perpetually impoverished. Match that with a 2007 Gazelle Index survey of 350 black CEOs finding that over 65 percent of black-owned business employees were black—which means that black businesses are already natural engines of economic growth for their communities.

    But as a zero-percent-interest micro-loan effort was channeled into Baltimore businesses damaged in the recent unrest, it zoomed in on Asian and Hispanic small businesses, most described as family-owned and most not likely to hire from Sandtown’s highly unemployed and highly available labor pool.

    A photo showing mostly Asians in a crowded conference room of affected small-business proprietors tells the story, a grim sign that West Baltimore’s day-after-unrest recovery won’t be hitting any of its black residents anytime soon.

    This does not mean that those Asian-owned or other minority-owned business don’t deserve support and assistance. They do. It’s just that those most directly of the community are, once again, left out.

    Gov. Cuomo gives ultimatum for passing justice reforms

    Since criminal justice reforms didn’t make it into the state budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is giving the state legislature an ultimatum: either pass my proposals or I’ll make changes on my own.

    In an open letter to the legislature, Cuomo urged its members to pass the legislative package that he proposed during his joint budget/State of the State address in January or he will put reforms in place.

    The letter notes the frayed relations between police and communities of color after the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Freddy Gray in Baltimore.

    “The fundamental problem is the erosion of trust and respect between the police and communities of color,” Cuomo wrote. “This breach manifested itself in the Eric Garner case, and similar cases in New York, in creating the perception of a conflict of interest between district attorneys and victims of police violence.”

    “Under my proposal, the district attorneys are given the benefit of the doubt and are not superseded until a reason exists that suggests bias or wrongdoing. Thus, I would initially leave such cases to the district attorneys to present to a grand jury.”

    The governor has proposed that in cases in which an unarmed civilian dies in police custody and a grand jury doesn’t indict an officer involved but there is reason to suspect bias on the part of the prosecutor, Cuomo will appoint an independent monitor to review the case and report back to him. If he determines there was error or wrongdoing in handling the case, he can appoint a special prosecutor to reconvene a second grand jury to reconsider new charges.

    Cuomo also proposes increasing transparency of the secretive grand jury process and requiring that in those cases the public be told which charges the prosecutor asked the grand jury to consider. […]

    The governor states in his letter that if the legislature doesn’t take up his proposal, he will use his executive power to automatically appoint a special prosecutor in all cases of a death of a civilian in police custody.

    “While I do not believe this would be the best outcome, I believe it would be better than the status quo,” Cuomo wrote.

    The governor’s independent monitor proposal is one part of a multi-pronged criminal justice reform package that he outlined along with the state budget in January.

    Included is a proposal that allows DAs to issue a grand jury report or a letter of fact in those cases when an unarmed civilian dies and the case is not presented to the grand jury or the grand jury doesn’t indict. Currently, a judge must allow the release of that information.

    State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-North Shore) have proposed bills that do just that in seeking more transparency in cases like that of Eric Garner.

    Hey, remember Walter Scott?* After Walter Scott shooting, South Carolina protesters make slow progress

    Six weeks after a police officer shot and killed Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man, protesters are demanding changes in the city’s police department. Although officials initially acted quickly to arrest the officer, progress on some residents’ demands — including greater civilian oversight of law enforcement — has slowed to a slog worthy of the low-country wetlands.

    In contrast, local and state leaders have moved quickly on proposals to increase the use of police body cameras, which can provide definitive records of police-civilian encounters.

    On April 7, the day video footage emerged of North Charleston police officer Michael T. Slager shooting Scott in the back as he tried to run away after a routine traffic stop, the South Carolina state legislature was in recess. Twin bills in the House and Senate mandating body-worn cameras for every law enforcement officer in the state had been stalled for months in subcommittees, with few sponsors. The bills were introduced shortly after President Barack Obama requested $263 million to help fund body camera purchases and training nationwide, and they seemed destined to fizzle out quietly in the heavily Republican Palmetto State.

    The video changed everything. Slager was arrested on a murder charge the same day The Charleston Post and Courier published the video on its website, and the next day North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey announced that the city would order enough body cameras to outfit every officer on the street. And when lawmakers returned to the statehouse April 14, the push for a statewide body camera mandate rapidly gained momentum.

    Last week the House voted unanimously to pass a body camera bill, with amendments awaiting approval by the state Senate. State Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Democratic lawmaker from Charleston County, has been quick to seize the political momentum at protest events in North Charleston, including a recent rally marking one month since Scott’s death.

    “A year and a half ago, when I first started this idea, this mission fell on deaf ears,” he said. “I can only hope and pray that these great men, these great women, that they hold us accountable in the state of South Carolina.”

    He added, “You now have the attention of the governor and everybody else in the General Assembly. You also have the attention of the world.”

    But for better or worse, the world isn’t watching North Charleston anymore. Only local media covered the one-month rally, which included about 30 community members. And since the arrest of Slager and the purchase of the body cameras, little else has changed in North Charleston as a result of protest actions. […]

    Black Lives Matter’s Charleston chapter made its demands known early and often, sometimes with a megaphone in front of City Hall. Its members asked the North Charleston City Council to call a public meeting to discuss the possibility of a civilian oversight committee, and Summey countered by offering to meet with them behind closed doors. The group refused, insisting that any conversations must be held in public.

    Some city leaders have expressed resistance to the idea of an unelected board overseeing the police department, particularly if that board is granted subpoena powers. City Councilman Bobby Jameson said any proposal for a citizen oversight committee would likely have to come from Summey, who has held his office since 1994. “Since this is such a volatile situation, I don’t think any City Council member would do it,” Jameson said. “We’d probably do it through the mayor as a unity, not as an individual council member.”

    Until that happens, the protesters aren’t going away. At the one-month rally, a coalition of neighborhood organizations, religious leaders, labor organizers and longtime activist groups voiced their support for a common agenda. Their demands included equal access to education and other opportunities for all North Charleston residents, transparency in city government, an end to racial profiling and police brutality and “independent, community-based oversight and accountability over the police department.”

    Muhiyidin d’Baha, an organizer with the Charleston Black Lives Matter chapter, said his group will continue to protest. “All along, our strategy was to negotiate, demonstrate and resist. That hasn’t gone anywhere,” he said. “We have the same strategy. It’s just that now we have more political and social capital behind it.”

    Aside from a small group of protesters who recently shut down traffic on a major bridge in neighboring Charleston, the response to the Walter Scott shooting has been much quieter than the mass marches and riots after recent police shootings of black men in other U.S. cities. But Kenneth Riley, the president of the local International Longshoremen’s Association chapter, mentioned at the one-month rally that the tone could shift.

    “This community is very trusting and very patient. Don’t take that patience for granted,” he said. “Look around this country at what is happening and what hasn’t happened in Charleston. Don’t take the patience for granted.”

    * You may laugh, but recently, in conversation with Husband, he was asking ‘What’s up with the police killing that black guy in America again?’ and I started to explain, but about half-way through, noting his somewhat confused expression, I had to stop and ask, ‘Which one are you talking about?’ Yeah. Not a laughing matter, actually.

    A student at Portland High School is uncomfortable with #BlackLivesMatter He/she vandalized our board. @deray

  102. rq says

    Because not funding education isn’t enough. Dundalk lawmakers: Close Baltimore Community High School. Yep, must be the school’s fault.

    Following the brutal beating of a Dundalk man, local lawmakers are asking for the closure of a Baltimore City alternative high school where students allegedly involved in the attack attend.

    In a letter sent to city school officials on Tuesday, Dundalk representatives asked for an immediate closure of the Baltimore Community High School. City school officials have said that the school, which is an alternative high school, is already scheduled to close in 2017.

    But that’s not soon enough for the Dundalk lawmakers, who wrote, “We request expeditious closing of this school for the good of the students and the Harborview Community in Dundalk.”

    The letter was signed by Baltimore County Councilman Todd Crandell, state Sen. Johnny Ray Salling, Del. Robin Grammer, Del. Bob Long and Del. Ric Metzgar, who are all Republicans representing Dundalk.

    On April 22, Dundalk resident Richard Fletcher, 61, intervened in a fight between girls outside his home on 45th Street. The group of teens turned on him and beat him so badly he ended up in the hospital with a brain bleed, nasal fracture, orbital fracture and possible broken ribs, according to charging documents filed in court by Baltimore County Police.

    Seven young people have been charged in the attack, with several facing charges of attempted first-degree murder. The school’s principal has acknowledged that students were involved in the attack. The school is located just over the city line from where the attack occurred.

    School officials helped police review cell phone and surveillance video of the attack to identify the students who were allegedly involved.

    Since the April 22 attack, county police increased patrols at dismissal time, when students leave the school to walk to MTA bus stops. The MTA has moved one of the stops closer to the school.

    But the Dundalk lawmakers believe the city police and school officials “have shown little commitment to solving this systemic issue.”

    Neighbors have complained that students leaving school have long been disruptive in the neighborhood, blocking traffic by walking in the middle of the street, littering and fighting.

    “Recent arrests and increased police presence has only served to heighten tensions and further increase the danger to both students and residents,” the lawmakers wrote. “Perhaps at no time in the past decade have things become more dangerous than they are right now.”

    And the way to resolve this systemic issue, of course, is to close down the school and move the unwanted population to some other corner of the city, to languish there. #NIMBY

    Why Are White Gang Members Destroying Their Own Community? Just going to quote the final paragraph:

    So here we have established criminal networks with a history of well-armed brutality endangering their neighborhoods. Surely all Americans should be concerned about the role these mainly white gangs play in the disintegration of the nation’s white communities and the scourge of white-on-white crime. Surely all of this will be discussed on cable news panels and talk radio over the coming days. Surely.

    Foundational Love

    Back in the days of cassette tapes, my love for underground and varied hip hop sounds crossed paths with a song titled “The Foundation” by one of my favorite artists of the time: Xzibit.

    The word foundation has two primary definitions: the first being the lowest load bearing part of a structure; the second, an underlying basis or principal for something. If my journey through manhood had a soundtrack, this would be the first track in the fatherhood part. The song is Xzibit’s life lessons gathered to that point and laid out for his son. I found it to be touching and insightful in ways that rap (especially in its current iteration) often is not, but always has the potential to be. There are some lyrics that speak ill of women and don’t reflect how I feel you should conduct yourself as a man, but overall, what was achieved was a display of affection and presence.

    Given a recently re-published 2013 Center for Disease Control (CDC) report that demonstrates “by most measures, black fathers are just as involved with their children as other dads in similar living situations—or more so,” I wanted to share some of my ideas on why there is a perpetuated myth of black father absenteeism. The song had some pretty great lines and I will use those to guide my thinking.

    Really neat, relatively rarely seen, literary/poetry analysis of the song’s lyrics, as applied to the author’s life. Includes statistics on parenting. Conclusion:

    The narrative should be that the absentee fathers of the world need to step forward and manage their responsibilities to the families they have created, but blackness is an easy target for criticism. Though it seems it is the black man often seen dancing on television shows when a paternity test deems they are not the father, the contrived narrative that black men are absent from the lives of their children is a fallacy cooked up by the wishful thinking of an oppressive system.

    All this said, we must be mindful that the old adage still applies, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Devolving the black father’s role to that of Deadbeat Dad further elevates the widespread misconception that the black fathers role in the home isn’t important.

    The black family is a source of power; black mothers and black fathers have an equal share in the development of that power because we all understand that familial power is a child’s foundation.

    Illinois Judge Calls Police Killing of Rekia Boyd “Beyond Reckless” But Acquits Cop on Technicality. This was infuriating. Still is.

    Rekia Boyd was 22 years old when she was killed in 2012 by an off-duty Chicago police detective. Dante Servin fired several shots over his shoulder into a group of people Boyd was standing with near his home, striking her in the back of her head. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, marking the first time in 15 years a Chicago police officer was charged for a fatal shooting. But last month, in a dramatic dismissal, Judge Dennis Porter acquitted Servin on a legal fine point. While speaking from the bench, Porter suggested prosecutors should have actually charged Servin with murder. “The act of intentionally firing a gun at some person or persons on the street is an act that is so dangerous it is beyond reckless; it is intentional, and the crime, if there be any, is first-degree murder,” he said. We speak to Rekia Boyd’s brother, Martinez Sutton.

    Interview with her brother, plus a transcript, at the link.

    Isolated Incidents, a cartoon showing disparity in treatment of black people committing crimes and white people committing crimes. There also seems to be a disparity in scale.

  103. rq says

    Alderman Antonio French seeks special committee with broad power to investigate police shootings

    French, who gained notoriety for activism following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, is expected to introduce the resolution on Thursday morning before the full board of aldermen.

    The committee would be separate from a recently approved civilian oversight board. It would only apply to officer involved shootings between January 2014 and December 2015. The push comes two days after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced Officer Jason Flanery wouldn’t face criminal charges for the shooting death of VonDerrit Myers on Oct. 8.

    “It is in the best interest of the citizens and taxpayers of the city of St. Louis for the Board of Aldermen to be proactive in seeking to better the policies and practices of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and restore any trust that has been damaged between our police department and our citizens,” French wrote.

    The Board of Aldermen can create special committees and empower it with its own subpoena power. The committee would be made up of aldermen.

    Florida Tea Partier kicked off county board for blaming black unemployment on laziness. I suppose it’s encouraging that most of these people caught with racism on their hands are suffering some sort of consequences. Though one wonders if it’s because they got caught, or because of the racism.

    On Tuesday afternoon, Florida’s Marion County Developmental Industrial Board voted unanimously to oust member Marcel “Butch” Verrando after he posted disparaging remarks about black people on Facebook.

    Verrando’s term would have ended in November, but his separation from the board is “effective immediately,” WCJB reports.

    On Tuesday morning, Verrando wrote the following observation on the Marion County Political Forum’s public Facebook page: “Black unemployment percentage is exceeded only by Native Americans and in 2012 they had the highest unemployment rate, education is way a head of hispanic so why can’t they get a job? My experience was that the only time a black guy applied for work it was because they were on probation and HAD to have a real job.”

    Verrando follows his grammatically unconventional observation with a link to analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which offers no data supporting the assertion that black people only seek employment when they are on probation.

    Losing his volunteer board position has not discouraged Verrando from going back to the Marion County Political Forum’s Facebook page and getting in arguments with commenters. Below, a screenshot of Verrando defending the very words that got him in trouble in the first place, as well as the argument that “the black community should start policing itself instead of looking for people to accuse of false crimes as an excuse for unsocial behavior:” […]

    Several hours ago, a member of the forum named Stan Hanson posted on the following essay on the group’s Facebook page, lamenting that public figures “have to be much more politically correct in [their] communications” than they used to be. Today’s leaders, Hanson says, are constrained by “government imposed political/social correctness,” which is why he no longer serves on any community boards. “I… now have complete freedom of speech in expressing my opinions,” Hanson writes.

    Hanson, a retired executive with Proctor & Gamble, further criticizes the media for “surfing Facebook groups to discover comments of citizens to write about,” a research tactic he finds indicative of the “demise of professional investigative reporting.”

    It was just released that the Cleveland PD charged Tamir rice with “aggravated menacing” & “inducing panic.” America. See attached report.
    I am beyond words for this one. Beyond. All.

    Here’s an article on that, because someone did find the words: Cleveland police charged 12-year-old Tamir Rice with ‘aggravated menacing’ and ‘inducing panic’

    Recently obtained documents from the Cleveland Police Department, displayed below, show that Tamir Rice was being charged with the outrageous crimes of “aggravated menacing” and “inducing panic.”

    Dear police: We give those crimes back to you. All across the United States, you have induced panic and served as aggravating menaces and have gotten away with these crimes for far too long.

    How dare you charge this young brother with these crimes. He was no menace, but a sixth-grade boy, and the only reason you or anyone else panicked was because of his brown skin. Here are eight white people who pointed real guns at real people and lived to tell the story.

    The bogus charges for Tamir are below.

    A few words, at least.

    Yesterday, STL Metro PD Chief Dotson dragged Elizabeth Vega (@chicanapoet1) prior to arresting her. America. What a fine example, the police chief.

    On the Occasion of His Birthday, the Michael Brown Jr. Memorial is Removed from Canfield

    This afternoon, Michael Brown Sr. — the father of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. — snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, walked to the spot in the middle of Canfield Drive where his son was shot and killed, and began to scoop stuffed animals and other trinkets into a black garbage bag.

    “It’s time for the city to heal,” he said moments before he began. “I need to heal.”

    It seemed like a cruel task — performed in the rain, in near silence — but he was the only one who could do it. Imagine if a crew of Ferguson city workers attempted to remove the memorial. It would be an act of sacrilege.

    But even with the family’s blessing, there was turmoil. A young man neighbors identified as the head of the block’s copwatch program walked by repeatedly shouting that those involved in the cleanup should be ashamed. He didn’t care it was done with the blessing of the Brown family.

    “Happy birthday, Mike Brown!” he yelled sarcastically.

    Today would have been Brown Jr.’s nineteenth birthday.

    As the layers of stuffed animals were peeled back from a lamp post, the slightly sweet stench of rot and mildew filled the air.

    Cal Brown, Michael Jr.’s stepmother, said that watching the memorial come down was “weird” but conceded that it was time.

    “It’s unfair to the tenants here to leave it,” said Cal’s mother, Pearlie Gordon. “This is the best way to do it, it memory of him.”

    Earlier in the day, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles announced at a press conference with the Browns that a plaque would be installed on Canfield in memory of the slain teenager, and a dove placed beside it. The plaque was supposed to be installed today as well, but the steady downpour scuttled those plans.

    A little while after the cleanup began, Brown Sr. left briefly to bring the plaque and the dove so people could see them:

    No word yet on the items being found in a dumpster while supposedly brought for storage.

  104. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    School nurse verbally abuses, threatens, and physically assaults an 11 year old student, including the use of a racial slur, and gets a 2 day suspension. As the child’s mother rightly pointed out, had the situation been reversed, her son would have been locked up on the spot.

  105. mickll says

    So…you can be a shaved head, broken nosed, covered in jailhouse tattoos with a record as long as your arm, anger management issues with a history of and a propensity for violence and NOT be a thug-provided you’re not Hispanic or African American?

    America is a strange place!

  106. rq says

    So as always, protestors are accused of doing things for the money. Recently taht conversation came to light in reference to MORE, a group ostensibly collecting funds on behalf of protestors.
    Here’s more to the story:
    So, I’ve been talking to people on the ground and there is a controversy about protesters being paid to protest. They aren’t.
    This form was used to “prove” this conspiracy that protesters were paid.
    I’ve confirmed this is an expense form for M.O.R.E.
    That “proof” is in fact an expense sheet for a not-for-profit that has collected donations for materials.
    What kind of materials, you might ask? Sometimes gas masks, sometimes t-shirts and when it’s freezing outside, sometimes extra gloves.
    So, where did “cut the check” come from? Simple, the money was solicited on the behalf of helping protesters with these expenses.
    tbc

  107. rq says

    The money got tied up in red tape and it lingered in the umbrella account.

    “Cut the check” was a way of saying cut the red tape.
    I have known about this for a while and done some research for the protesters. They were at first unaware the money was solicited.
    The end of this little tale is if you donated for Ferguson protesters through these organizations, the first checks were distributed. (Yay!)
    My final thought on this is take a close look at people that were so willing to denigrate people who have risked their lives. That would be those hating on protestors for being social justice warriors and getting something out of it, rather than struggling by in poverty.

    Video: WATCH: MIKE BROWN WOULD HAVE BEEN 19 TODAY

    Last November, D’bi Young received an unexpected phone call. Its repercussions would be tremendously profound.

    The caller was the Jamaican-Canadian dub poet’s friend and one-time collaborator, Wade Hudson, a photographer/director who’d previously shot Young for the cover of the comic book Shemurenga: Black Supah Shero, for which Young supplied the title character’s physical look. This time, though, Hudson didn’t have animated book pages on his mind. He brought up the nationally publicized death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who’d been gunned down by white police officer Darren Wilson three months earlier, on August 9, in Ferguson, Missouri.

    Hudson had just heard an original violin composition from acclaimed musician Andrew Forde, arranged in direct response to Brown’s passing. Hudson wanted Young to help him turn Forde’s music into a post-Ferguson call-to-arms of some sort, though he wasn’t sure what it should be exactly. He left that up to Young.

    “I was stunned at the request,” says Young, “not because I found it strange but because I had spent the last few days ruminating on the events surrounding Ferguson and on the ongoing murder of black men, thinking to myself that I really should write something, say something.” The mother of two little boys, Young had been struggling with how to address the tragedy. “Up until that point I was unable to write anything about what was going on,” she recalls. “I couldn’t put all that I was feeling into words. I couldn’t organize my thoughts.”

    Once Forde’s music started playing, however, the inspiration rapidly surfaced. “About five seconds into it, I began to see and hear names of our dead behind us,” says Young. “The more I listened, the more intense this roll call in my body and in my head became. I couldn’t make out the names specifically but I heard them loudly and I knew they were names of people murdered by police. I began to weep.”

    Those tears eventually led to “In Whose Name?,” an emotionally devastating video directed by Hudson and featuring both Young and Forde—he’s playing that aforementioned violin track, and she’s reciting the names of multiple innocent black men whose lives, like Michael Brown’s, were ended prematurely and wrongfully. It’s a beautiful piece of work, steadily building in its visceral impact as Young’s commanding voice salutes a seemingly endless number of deceased black men, each name being exclaimed with more vigor than the last.

    Young’s pain radiates through the screen. “I wanted this video to be a moving portrait,” says Hudson. “I chose to frame it almost identically to how I would shoot D’bi’s portrait. There’s a level of discomfort being that close to someone’s face and I wanted that to aid the message being delivered by forcing the viewer to stand uncomfortably close to the subject and confront the reality of the situation.” As “In Whose Name” progresses, its tension rises. “We wanted to end at the peak of intensity because we see this as an escalating issue and didn’t feel comfortable with it coming to resolution or a decrescendo,” says Hudson.

    Today, May 20, marks what would have been Michael Brown’s 19th birthday, and we couldn’t think of a better way to honor his memory than by premiering “In Whose Name?” which you can watch above. And below, Hudson and Young reflect on how they channeled their grief into nearly three minutes’ worth of crushing visual and sonic power.

    More at the link, it’s powerful, that video.

    Chaperone At Park Slope Middle School Punched 13-Year-Old During Choral Recital, Mom Says

    A parent chaperone punched a seventh-grade girl during a choral concert at MS 51 in Park Slope on Friday night, and school administrators let the woman leave without calling the police, the girl’s mother claims. The 13-year-old was backstage with a group of 40-50 students around 7 p.m., and was waiting to perform in the final night of the three-day spring choral recital. She opened her mouth to spit out some gum, and the chaperone, Roberta Woelfling, came over from across the room, scolded her about sticking her tongue out, walked away, then came back and punched her in the mouth, according to her mother, Petal Joseph.

    Joseph is upset about the alleged assault, but she is just as upset about what happened next. Her daughter ran to an assistant principal and told her what happened, and the assistant principal and security guards let Woelfling leave the building, didn’t notify Joseph, and sent the girl back onstage to perform. From the audience, Joseph said she saw “my child’s demeanor had completely changed from when she was on stage the first time,” and that the girl was “physically shaken.” (A statement written by the assistant principal that night and provided by Joseph also describes the girl as “visibly shaken.”) But Joseph says she didn’t know what happened until the performance ended and her daughter came to her, unaccompanied, and asked, “Mom, did they tell you what happened?”

    The girl gave a statement to the assistant principal that night, writing, “I want [Woelfling] to get arrested and get charged and go to jail for what she did to me.”

    Joseph went to the police the next morning, by which time her daughter’s lip had swelled, but she said officers told her they were reluctant to file assault charges because there was no serious injury. School administrators didn’t meet with Joseph and Woelfling until Monday morning.

    “I can’t even believe this whole situation has happened, and I can’t believe the whole story that this woman was allowed to concoct, the hours that she had to think about what she did,” Joseph said. “And it’s really upsetting that I sat in that audience for two hours and was unaware that something had happened to my child.”

    Woelfling, an architect, denies punching the girl. She said that she did tell her that it’s disrespectful to stick her tongue out, and flicked the back of her fingers in the direction of the gum, but that the girl “turned at that exact moment, so my two fingers touched her face.”

    “It wasn’t a hit and a beat. It was an accident,” Woelfling said. “It wasn’t intended to touch her mouth, her gum, her tongue. It was something that has been blown out of proportion.”

    Woelfling faulted Joseph for “ramping it up” and stressed that she is the opposite of a child abuser.

    “I’m the type of parent that volunteers for everything. Nobody wanted to volunteers for this,” she said. “It’s a tough gig trying to keep kids in line.”

    “This is not the kind of person I am”. So, if it had been a black parent, accidentally striking a white child…? Any bets?

  108. Pierce R. Butler says

    Attention, FTB movers ‘n’ shakers: Please give rq her own blog!

    Thank you.

  109. Okidemia says

    Grewgills @92

    The questions come from most everyone and are followed by a round of comparative listings of ethnicity, so the question is less charged here.

    Out of genuine curiosity: do you have any idea what purpose ‘this’ is serving? I mean, I can get at a generally traditional “I’m the son/daughter of… and my lineage is…” that most societies seems to have cherished. Here it would be rather generous/inclusive to extend in all ancestry lines cross generations (at least up to grands). But what does this performance possibly offer to the ongoing social interaction?

    Clearly in western societies, the “origin question” is aimed at forseeking the divide already apparent from general outlook, and it often feels like ‘are you on a side that involved historical war or current political/religious tense against us’?

  110. rq says

    Batts: Police having trouble policing West Baltimore

    Police are struggling to stop violence in West Baltimore, where officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while doing basic police work since the death of Freddie Gray, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said Wednesday.

    The Western District, the site of Gray’s arrest and the epicenter of the protests and rioting that followed his death, has seen the majority of the city’s recent shootings and homicides, which are coming faster than they have in eight years.

    In response, Batts said, police are taking measures to re-establish relationships with West Baltimore neighborhoods still angry over Gray’s death April 19, Batts said.

    Police have sent in commanders from other districts with experience and contacts in West Baltimore. Backup officers are being sent to routine calls to help protect officers.

    “Officers tell me and their supervisors, any time they pull up to respond to a call, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them,” Batts said. “We have to send in multiple units just to do basic police work, which says we have to work on community engagement.” [oh noooeeees] […]

    “It makes it very difficult to follow up on violence that takes place there,” he said. “Clearly, they’re not holding back. They’re getting to those locations and getting surrounded. You have many citizens with hand-held cameras that they’re sticking in the faces of officers, an inch off the officer’s face.”

    Batts said police do not want to cause a “bigger issue” by sending in backup, but they want to “make sure the officers are safe and citizens are safe.”

    That description of events did not sit well with Deray McKesson, a community activist and organizer prominent on social media.

    “What Batts is doing is trying to use fear to take the focus away from the intense violence that the police have inflicted on the communities of Baltimore as long as any of us can remember,” he said. “What Batts is worried about is that people are more aware and more willing to hold police accountable in the Western District.”

    McKesson said West Baltimore residents unified during protests over Gray’s death, finding out they share common experiences in dealings with police. They no longer feel isolated and powerless against a police force that McKesson said has routinely abused African-Americans.

    “It’s a scary day in America when a chief of police says people are watching us and we can’t do our jobs,” he said. […]

    Batts said his interactions with residents have confirmed for him that Baltimore’s problems go beyond alleged police mistreatment. Residents want neighborhood health centers to help them deal with diabetes, job training and recruitment programs, more recreation centers and a return of the Police Athletic Leagues for youth.

    Batts said parents want a “safe zone” for their children. He said he doesn’t have funding to restart sports leagues, but he is considering putting officers in parks and recreation centers to interact with kids.

    McKesson said the city needs to address “structural inequity.” He brought up the same needs Batts said he has heard from community members: more recreation centers and sports leagues.

    Deputy Commissioner Kevin Davis said police training academies need to start teaching officers how to say hello, just as it teaches officers the basics of policing.

    “We have to engage in a better way with our community,” he said.

    The Baltimore FOP (@FOP3) has hired Clapp Communications PR firm. #BaltimoreUprising Who’s paying for it?

    Commissioner Batts estimates responding to protests and the unrest cost $12 million. Yeah, who’s paying for it?

    How Public Universities Shortchange Poor And Minority Students

    In the pursuit of prestige, revenue, and rankings, more public universities have turned to dangling merit-based scholarships to attract more out-of-state students, according to a report by the New America Foundation released earlier this week. The result: shortchanging both poor students, who are less likely to receive such aid, and students in the states the universities are funded to serve.

    Public colleges once devoted the biggest chunk of their financial aid money, some 34%, to students in the bottom income quartile, giving just 16% to the wealthiest students, the report says. That has now shifted dramatically: Financial aid at public colleges now goes equally to the top and bottom quartile of students, with wealthy students receiving 23% of financial aid. The poorest students now receive only 25%.

    The push toward funneling aid to privileged out-of-state students reflects a change in the nature of public higher education. “By bringing in more and more wealthy nonresident students, these colleges are increasingly becoming bastions of privilege,” the report says.

    Schools that provide merit aid, it found, tend to enroll far more students from out of state, who typically pick up more merit-based scholarships than in-state students. They also tend to enroll fewer poor students — and charge those poor students more money.

    A separate report this week by the left-leaning think tank Demos suggests that black students may also be disproportionately impacted by such policies.

    At public colleges, more than any other schools, the rising tide of student debt has disproportionately burdened students of color, the report said. The gap between black and white student borrowing at four-year public schools is more pronounced than at private and for-profit schools. An estimated 81% of black students at public colleges borrow for their bachelor’s degrees, compared to 63% of white students, a gap of 18 percentage points. At private universities, that gap is 12 percentage points.

    A few numbers more at the link.

    Re: Steph Curry and his daughter: I proudly take my kids to work, the only thing I can offer as a father is myself RT @deray: Steph. Riley. Joy.

    #SayHerName #NotOneMore

  111. rq says

    Powerful art coming out of this movement. This is a play about racial profiling by @adenrav from #AlbanyHigh @deray

    Just a few names, more later.
    #MiriamCarey. Murdered by secret service. Dozens of bullets unloaded into her car. Her newborn still in. #SayHerName
    #ShellyFrey. Shot by police while in a car. Left to lie in the car for 8 hours after. No medics called. #SayHerName
    #MichelleCusseaux: Michelle was killed by officer who was threatened by the “look” on her face. #SayHerName

    National Day of Action For Black Women and Girls: #JusticeforRekia #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter

    Recent events across the country have demonstrated that police murders, sexual assault and harassment continue with impunity. The fight for justice for families devastated by police who murder their loved ones is hard fought. As we struggle to fight for justice for loved ones like Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and Rashod McIntosh, we cannot forget, and must fight fiercely for Mya Hall, Aiyana Jones, and Rekia Boyd. The police harass, abuse, murder and do not discriminate based on gender or sexuality.

    All #BlackLivesMatter, and that means we uplift and fight for lasting justice for the families of victims of police violence.

    We’ve joined Ferguson Action and Black Lives Matter to put out a national call for actions to end state violence against All Black Women and Girls.

    Click on your city to find out info on the May 21st “National Day of Action to End State Violence Against All Black Women and Girls.” Email us at [email protected] to add your action to the list.

  112. rq says

    Powerful Women on the front lines taking charge :::: #Baltimore

    #Oakland’s ready for #SayHerName day for Black women and girls. Spotted at Oscar Grant Plaza #BlackSpring @deray

    Another interview with Rekia Boyd’s brother, may even be the same as previous: Illinois Judge Calls Police Killing of Rekia Boyd “Beyond Reckless” But Acquits Cop on Technicality.

    Interlude: Music! Singer Akon Makes Progress With African Solar Power Venture

    Senegalese-American RnB singer Akon may be best known for his string of platinum-selling records, but the Missouri-born artist is also becoming a rising star in the movement to bring electricity to rural Africa.

    Visiting New York this week for the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All e4all summit, Akon and his two co-founders of Akon Lighting Africa, Samba Bathily and Thione Niang, took time out of their manic schedule to talk to WSJ Frontiers about their mission to bring solar power to rural Africa.

    Launched in February 2014, ALA’s aim is simply to “bring electricity to African villages by a clean and affordable solar energy solution.” The company uses a micro-lending model to provide solar-powered micro-grids and street lighting systems.

    Akon’s venture joins a relatively crowded field of entrepreneurs and investors—and governments—looking to establish off-grid solar projects across the continent. One characteristic that differentiates ALA, though, is its growth rate.

    Just over a year since launching, the company has operations in 11 nations, including Guinea Conakry, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Benin and Sierra Leone.

    One key trigger for that rapid growth, Akon says, is that the company funds initial projects itself as a way to demonstrate the technology and the benefits to potential buyers. According to the company, the average investment per village is $75,000 and the firm has invested almost $400 million in total so far.

    “We invest our own money to get things started,” Akon says. “We go in, plead our case to the country, put up pilots with our own dollars using sophisticated equipment and we make sure we do the installation right. It shows people that we’re not coming in to pull money out of the country, we’re there to provide jobs for the locals and to enable them to feed their families.”

    In Guinea Conakry, for example, Akon says the company is employing 5,000 people to install its systems. […]

    Akon and his partners position themselves as social entrepreneurs but there is no doubting the company’s focus on profitability. Asked which organization’s model he most respects, he chooses Coca Cola KO -0.44%. “They’ve conquered the world—but they’re sustainable,” he says. And his focus on rural Africa is founded in his belief that the market for electricity there is both substantial and “less competitive, less confrontational and less political” than in urban areas.

    There is also no question that ALA’s mission to install solar systems in areas that have minimal established infrastructure can be challenging. “In any emerging market there will be a lot of difficulties—the countries are not necessarily stable and infrastructure isn’t there, but if you understand that, it’s not difficult,” Akon says.

    “The hardest part is getting people to believe.”

    Back to Tamir Rice for a moment, Police wanted to charge 12-year-old Tamir Rice with ‘aggravated menacing’ and ‘inducing panic’

    Recently obtained documents from the Cleveland Police Department, displayed below, show that Tamir Rice was going to be charged with the outrageous crimes of “aggravated menacing” and “inducing panic.”

    Dear police: We give those crimes back to you. All across the United States, you have induced panic and served as aggravating menaces and have gotten away with these crimes for far too long.

    How dare you ever consider charging this young brother with these crimes. He was no menace, but a sixth-grade boy, and the only reason you or anyone else panicked was because of his brown skin. Here are eight white people who pointed real guns at real people and lived to tell the story.

    The bogus criminal report for Tamir is below.

    Notice the following 3 points.

    1. They list 3 victims of Tamir Rice:

    a. The State of Ohio
    b. Officer Loehmann (who shot & killed Tamir)
    c. Officer Garmback (who drove the vehicle)

    This is essential. They are not claiming Tamir was a menace or induced panic to other people in the park, but to the officers. ABSURD.

    2. At the end of the report, notice that they say this complaint was “abated by death”.

    3. Notice the officer who shot and killed Tamir claims to have had minor injuries.

    An updated version of the article posted above, with additional words.

    Michael Brown Memorial Removed. I find that a very, very sad thing.

    A memorial to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was cleared away Thursday night, amid preparations to replace the makeshift monument with a permanent plaque. The announcement was made by Mayor James Knowles III and Michael Brown Sr. on what would have been the teenager’s 19th birthday, nine months after the fatal police shooting. Officials had said the site’s stuffed toys and flowers were a safety hazard.

  113. opposablethumbs says

    I just saw some photos of the permanent memorial (plaque and dove set into the pavement).
    It’s good that there’s a marker that will withstand anything the weather and ordinary wear and tear can do. (Hope there’s no need ever for it to withstand anything else, such as vandalism perpetrated by actual thugs).

  114. rq says

    @deray Montgomery county MD “man dies after Taser shock” can anyone check this out for details #AllLivesMatter

    The True Crime: Atlanta Public Schools after the Cheating Scandal

    Amidst the national media maelstrom surrounding the case, the most common argument has been that as a result of their cheating, the educators harmed the children. Judge Baxter said, “I think there were hundreds, thousands of children who were harmed in this city…This was not a victimless crime.”

    Yet the idea that purity in a massive testing regime will ensure quality education and success for all children is simply untrue. Quality education comes when we fund our schools, train our teachers, and implement teaching methods that instill a passion for learning. The high-stakes testing model directly counters these very educational methods that we know work best.

    Teachers do not have enough time to cover and practice new concepts, even when our students clearly don’t understand the material. We are forced to push forward to make sure we cover every standard before test time, at any cost. The best unit I taught this year was on South African apartheid. We spent three weeks analyzing historical documents, photographs, and conducting interactive activities. The deeper we dug, the more they wanted to learn. I watched my students become passionate and enthusiastic about history and learning. They still talk about that unit, six months later. And yet, weeks on apartheid meant less time to cover other required material, less time to prepare them for the test. Teaching my students in an effective manner that inspired and awakened them to history will most likely hurt their test scores.

    As the year progressed, we rushed to cover everything mandated by the state of Georgia. In order to do this, I was unable to replicate the very teaching style that made the apartheid unit so effective – in depth, prolonged study. I am required to teach too much in too little time so students can “pass” the test, which results in teaching a lot of things not very well. In public schools across America, including in my own classroom, teachers are consciously implementing teaching techniques that we know do not work in the long run.

    Within a high-stakes testing culture, it doesn’t matter what level the kids began the school year. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been off their medication for weeks because a mother lost her job. It doesn’t matter if they are homeless, or don’t have a parent at home to help them with homework. It doesn’t matter how hard they’ve tried throughout the year; even all the progress they’ve made doesn’t matter. Their passions, their creativity, their imaginations – all meaningless. The only thing that counts is a test score.

    Good schools consider the whole child, not just her or his performance on a single test. At my school, we do value test scores. But we also value the entirety of students’ work through the year, their content knowledge, and their social and-emotional needs. We know that when a student is so terrified about standardized tests that she vomits on her exam, she’s probably not going to accurately demonstrate her skills. […]

    In fact, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Georgia has cut the education budget over $8.3 billion since 2003. In 2002 we were 26th in the nation in spending per student and by 2012 we were 35th. And at the same time, the rate of low-income students rapidly climbed. The percentage of low-income students rose from 44.2% in 2002 to 62.4% in 2015. Instead of providing these students the support and smaller class sizes they need, budget cuts require schools to do the exact opposite while still expecting them to meet testing benchmarks.

    In other words, the very interventions needed to give children a fighting chance are being slashed from beneath them. Isn’t that the true crime?

    Please support black women today by honoring those slain by police For that purpose, @MillennialAU has a rally planned in #STL at 530 today

    Update: Rumor that Tamir Rice was charged with a crime is false, @CityofCleveland says. The document circulated is an incident report from the day, not a charging document. Oh.

    When Chicago cops shoot , a look at police shootings in the city.

    Fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans have become all too familiar nationally since officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. In November, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was holding a toy gun, was slain by a police officer outside a recreation center in Cleveland. In April, Walter Scott, 50, was killed by a police officer who shot him five times as he was fleeing after a traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina.

    Seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald was armed when Chicago police shot him fatally last October on Pulaski Road near 40th Street. McDonald, a ward of the state, was holding a knife and acted erratically when police arrived. He was shot 16 times, with all the bullets fired by only one of the six officers present. The shooting was captured by a police cruiser’s dashboard camera. Federal and state prosecutors are investigating the killing, and the video has yet to be released publicly, but last month the City Council voted to pay McDonald’s family $5 million to preempt a lawsuit.

    The shooting of Cedrick Chatman happened before any of these police shootings—and, like most such shootings, it made headlines immediately after it occurred, and then quickly disappeared from the public eye.

    Chatman is one of 118 people to have been shot fatally by Chicago police since 2008. Since 1986, more than 1,600 people have been struck by bullets fired by Chicago police officers—an average of more than one person a week. It’s hard to know how those figures compare nationally, because law enforcement agencies aren’t required to report data to the FBI on their use of deadly force. […]

    The expert, Emanuel Kapelsohn, has been a firearms and use of force instructor for 35 years. In February he visited the scene of the shooting with Fry, Toth, and the city’s lead lawyer on the case, Tiffany Harris. Kapelsohn has also reviewed the videos and some still-frame photos made from one of the videos. In his report he says one still-frame photo shows Chatman “with his head and body rotated to the right, partially back toward Officers Fry and Toth . . . consistent with Officer Fry’s account of what he observed that caused him to fire.”

    Coffman says the city’s lawyers have yet to provide the plaintiff’s lawyers with that photo, and that he doubts it shows what Kapelsohn claims it does.

    Coffman also says the videos show a woman in a black car just around the corner on Jeffery, waiting for the light to change when the shots were fired—and that a police photo taken after the shooting depicts what appears to be a bullet hole in her passenger door. He says one of the videos captures the startled reaction of two youths walking on the sidewalk on Jeffery, approaching the corner; they immediately flee in the opposite direction, apparently upon hearing the gunshots. They nearly walked into Fry’s line of fire, Coffman says.

    In Kapelsohn’s report he quotes from a landmark 1989 Supreme Court ruling, Graham v. Connor, in which the court observed that “police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” Kapelsohn points out that Graham also held that an officer may use deadly force “when he reasonably believes his life or the life of another innocent person is in danger”—and that his “reasonable belief” should be judged from the perspective of an officer at the scene “rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

    Kapelsohn maintains that it was reasonable for Fry and Toth to assume that the carjacking Chatman was fleeing from had been committed with a weapon; according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 74 percent of carjackings are.

    He notes that the dark gray iPhone box Chatman was carrying is the color and size of many small handguns, and that suspects have been shot while holding “cell phones, pagers, black wallets, black or shiny metallic items . . . or other innocent objects” in shootings that have been deemed justified.

    An officer who believes a suspect has a gun doesn’t have to wait—and shouldn’t—until the gun is pointed at him before he fires, Kapelsohn writes, because a gun pointed “well away” from an officer “can be brought to bear on the officer and fired in a quarter of a second or less.”

    Fry was asked in his deposition if Chatman turned his head when he made his “slight movement” to the right. The officer didn’t recall him doing so. Chatman “rotated mostly his torso,” Fry said. It was a “subtle turn.” But because Chatman had in his hand what Fry assumed was a gun, “I was in fear of Officer Toth’s life. I was in fear of my own life. And any pedestrians in the area, I was in fear of their life as well.”

    And so he did not wait: “I plant both of my feet and I take a firing position with my weapon.” […]

    IPRA investigates misconduct complaints against officers as well as officer-involved shootings. Its predecessor, the Office of Professional Standards, was a unit of the Chicago Police Department that answered to the superintendent. In 2007, after police officers were caught on videotape perpetrating two barroom beatings, critics charged they were emboldened by the fact that OPS rarely found police officers guilty of misconduct. OPS also ruled almost invariably that officer-involved shootings were justified. Mayor Richard M. Daley responded to the criticism from the barroom beatings by creating IPRA, an agency independent of the police department. But many of IPRA’s investigators were former OPS investigators, and like OPS, IPRA has found almost all officer-involved shootings to have been proper.

    In his 11 and a half years as a police officer, Fry has had 16 misconduct complaints lodged against him, most of them accusing him of excessive force. None of these complaints have been sustained. He’s also been sued five times not counting the Chatman suit. The city settled all five suits, at least four of them with a payment to the plaintiff.

    It’s hard to know what to make of this record. When a complaint isn’t sustained, it doesn’t necessarily mean the charge was untrue; it means, according to IPRA, that there was “insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the allegation.” On the other hand, an allegation is only that. Likewise with lawsuits against police officers: they’re allegations, and a cash settlement paid by the city is not an admission of guilt; it’s often a calculation that settling will be cheaper than continued litigation. […]

    Until 2010 the Chicago Police Department conducted “roundtables” after officer-involved shootings. The proceedings were neither taped nor recorded by a court reporter. Police commanders and lieutenants, an assistant state’s attorney, and an investigator from OPS or IPRA heard from the detectives investigating the shooting, from the officer or officers involved, and sometimes from other witnesses, after which the department reassured the public that the officer’s use of deadly force had been scrutinized and, nearly always, found to have been within department policy.

    If the victim of a shooting had a criminal record, his rap sheet was distributed to everyone at the roundtable. If the officer who’d shot him had a checkered history of misconduct complaints, suspensions, or even shootings, the roundtable participants would not be apprised of it. In a deposition in a civil suit in 2005, Michael Chasen, then deputy chief of detectives, was asked a hypothetical: If a shooting officer had shot eight other people in the eight weeks before the roundtable, would the roundtable participants be informed? No, Chasen said—because that information was “not germane.”

    It’s not completely clear why the CPD stopped holding roundtables in 2010, but it seems related to a larger dispute between the FOP and IPRA regarding how soon, and under what circumstances, officers involved in shootings had to give statements to IPRA about the shootings. In a hearing on that matter in December 2010, an FOP officer testified that the union and the department agreed that the roundtable “had outlived its usefulness.” […]

    Some police shootings are “lawful but awful,” Ilana Rosenzweig said—they’re legally justifiable, because the officer had a reasonable fear of death or serious injury, but they could’ve been avoided.

    Rosenzweig was working as a lawyer for the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review when Mayor Daley picked her to be IPRA’s first chief administrator in July 2007. She led the agency until May 2013, when she moved with her family to Singapore. She told me she came to Chicago believing it was important not only to determine whether police shootings were justified, but also to study them holistically. Perhaps changes in training, policy, or supervision would reduce their incidence. She’d sat on a panel in LA that reviewed hundreds of police shootings for that purpose. Most major law enforcement agencies have such panels, she said. But Chicago did not, she learned when she arrived. If OPS found a shooting to be within policy, “the investigation was simply closed and filed away,” she told me. “No one in the CPD command structure, outside OPS, saw it.”

    At Rosenzweig’s prompting, the department created a “Force Analysis Panel” in ’09, when Jody Weis was superintendent. Beginning that March, supervisors in several CPD divisions were briefed by IPRA on police shooting cases the agency had closed, to consider larger lessons.

    After its promising beginning, however, CPD had convened the panel only once in 2011 and once in ’12, Rosenzweig noted in 2012, in her final annual report for IPRA. Some members of the department, she told me, “felt, ‘What can you learn from IPRA? We’re the cops, they’re not.’ ” She said she sensed that FAP had lost support from the “higher ranks” within CPD. She’d heard that the current superintendent, Garry McCarthy, is briefed by detectives after some shootings, but there’s now “no formal systemic review, and in at least several instances the briefing was based on information that was revealed to be incomplete or inaccurate through IPRA’s further investigation.”

    Rosenzweig allowed that IPRA had found officer-involved shootings to be out of policy in only “a handful” of cases while she was here. (The agency conducted 272 officer-involved shooting investigations from September 2007 through the end of 2012.) She wasn’t sure that officers had been disciplined even in those few cases, noting that they had several avenues for appeal. The agency was “chronically understaffed,” she said, and it was “difficult to do thorough investigations with the level of resources we had.”

    That made the work of a body such as FAP all the more important, she said. “There are some officers who have a bad intent, and the role of any accountability system should be to identify such officers and remove them from the force. But the vast majority of officers don’t go out there intending to do something wrong. They just need better training and supervision.”

    ​I called CPD’s news affairs to ask why FAP had been disbanded. The spokesperson I talked with had never heard of it. She later responded in an e-mail that, “The only information I was able to obtain was that there currently is no Force Analysis Panel.” […]

    Besides contesting that Cedrick’s death was wrongful, the city’s lawyers also dispute that it represents much of a pecuniary loss. The lawyers have retained an economist who has analyzed the “alleged economic damages” and found them to be minimal. If the death is judged to have been wrongful, that will be an issue in assessing damages.

    “Studies have shown that individuals raised in situations similar to Cedrick Chatman’s tend to have less economic mobility,” the economist, Dwight Steward, wrote in his report. Steward considered the earnings support that Linda could have expected from Cedrick, and the earnings he might have contributed to his estate. The projected economic damages ranged from $46,377 to $375,028. ​​But Steward emphasized that Cedrick likely would have earned “only a fraction” of that, given what his background suggested about his future. Pointing to Cedrick’s 14 juvenile arrests, Steward noted that, “Social science research shows that individuals who have run-ins with the law will experience lower earnings and earnings growth.” Cedrick’s father’s history of incarceration and lack of involvement in Cedrick’s life helped create a “fractured family support structure” that also was likely to limit his earnings potential. The high school Cedrick was attending, Hyde Park Academy, had a subpar graduation rate, and that, combined with Cedrick’s low grades and history of juvenile detention, made it doubtful that he would have graduated high school—further reducing his economic prospects, Steward observed.

    Cedrick was clearly headed in the wrong direction. But he was only 17. He was killed as he tried to turn a corner.

    Could he have turned the corner in his life? No one will ever know.

    That small bit in bold is my emphasis. Talk about devaluing someone’s life.

    Oh, shut up. Will Cleveland riot if a cop is found not guilty?

    As early as Thursday, a Cuyahoga County judge is expected to deliver a verdict in the case of Michael Brelo, a former Cleveland police officer who joined a massive police chase in 2012 and helped pump 137 bullets into the car of Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell, black Cleveland residents who turned out to be unarmed.

    Now, less than a month after neighborhoods in Baltimore burned and less than a year after Ferguson, Mo., exploded, Cleveland officials fear an acquittal in the Brelo case could touch off the same kind of violence. So local politicians and clergy members, civic activists and even sports stars are working overtime to provide outlets for people’s frustrations.

    “Those of us vested in Cleveland’s success should not follow the pattern and practices of those outside instigators who looted, destroyed businesses and other crimes that ruined inner-city neighborhoods in Ferguson and Baltimore,” said David Malik, a civil rights lawyer.

    Noting that community leaders “are feverishly working together to eliminate police misconduct in Cleveland,” he said, “we are much better positioned than Ferguson or Baltimore.” […]

    City officials have spent months discussing the campaign. In early December, Jackson and Police Chief Calvin D. Williams — both of whom are black — participated in a forum titled, “Is Cleveland the Next Ferguson?”

    And when protesters demanding justice in the Brelo case tried to block interstate traffic, police were ordered not to intervene. Commuters complained, but Jackson declared the traffic delays the “inconvenience of freedom.”

    The effort has not been without missteps. Earlier this year, Jackson was forced to apologize when city attorneys appeared to blame Rice for his own death in a court filing in his family’s civil suit against the police department.

    Last month, top city officials had to make amends again when an official city Twitter account asked whether Cleveland should be “burned down” like Ferguson and Baltimore.

    “Our intention with the #ourcle campaign was to create a conversation online surrounding community and police relations,” tweeted @CRBcleveland, the account of the city’s Community Relations Board. “We apologize for recent inappropriate #ourcle tweets sent from this account.”

    Activist groups angered by the mayor’s reaction to the Justice Department report — and what they consider an inadequate response to the Rice shooting — have initiated a mayoral recall. Protests and marches are slated for this weekend, which will mark six months since Rice was killed.

    Another group has scheduled a “Protect Our City” counterprotest, and local clergy members and a group of former gang leaders and ex-inmates are being dispatched to various neighborhoods to call for peace and gather information about potential problems.

    And so on. You know what? This is the city whose cops killed Tamir Rice, so the efforts to improve relations (esp. seeing as how they’re dragging that case out and dragging it out and dragging their feet on it…) don’t seem to be matching up with the words they’re saying. Feverishly working, they are. But on what?

  115. says

    A thing I’ve noticed in the last few years: as I’ve grown more interested in hip hop and rap music, I found myself initially thinking that I didn’t hold with all that cop-killing, gangsta rap style stuff. While I felt superior (because I listened to the music) to the racist-tinged denials of “that’s not music” often aimed at hip hop by white people, I still piously insisted that the anti-police attitudes seemed antisocial and self-defeating.

    In the last year, though, I find that I understand it much, much better now, and I’ve dropped the pseudo-piety and pearl-clutching over a form of artistic expression that reaches out to shout “THIS IS GOING ON AND BLACK LIVES SHOULD MATTER MORE THAN THEY EVIDENTLY DO”.

    So now I just say: Fight the power.

  117. rq says

    opposablethumbs @113
    I’m just worried, because when they planted a memorial tree for Michael Brown Jr., it was cut off the next day and the plaque destroyed. But yes, something lasting will be nice.

  118. rq says

    Two powerful things going on right now: protest in San Francisco for black women, two unarmed men shot by police in Olympia. Which do you want first?

  119. rq says

    Guess you’re going to get San Francisco first. And more of it later.
    This is our declaration for women’s creation. To stop being patient and wage war.
    This is for Rekia, for you and me #SayHer “now you see me don’t you, now you see us, see her too.”

    Tears everywhere as black women going to work hug protestors #SayHerName
    Traffic is blocked for as far as the eye can see in San Francisco’s financial district. For Black Women. #SayHerName
    It is our duty to fight for each other! It is our duty to win! #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter #JusticeForRekia
    We ain’t gonna stop til our sisters are free! #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter #JusticeForRekia #BlackSpring

    more…

  120. rq says

    @blackoutcollect: “I am my sisters’ keeper.” This is what power and love look like. #SayHerName ” #sanfrancisco today.
    They love our bodies but not us. #SayHerName #RekiaBoyd #YuvetteHenderson
    Black women’s bodies have always been commodified. Today 10 Black Women reclaim power and victory. #SayHerName
    “I fight for survivors.” Holding a pic of Yazmin Payne, a Black trans woman murdered brutally. #SayHerName

    Black women reclaim femininity and the African tradition of bare chests as a freedom cry. #SayHerName
    In our hearts. #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter #JusticeForRekia #BlackSpring
    more…

  121. rq says

    CaitieCat @115
    I actually just recently realized the opposite about myself, in terms of music – back in the 1990s, I was regularly listening to and exposed to music by black artists, and I recently realized that inadvertently and unconsciously, black artists’ names have dropped off my playlist. Which is why I love all the musical posts that I come across and try to post them here, listening to that music comes a greater understanding of what is behind it. It really, really sounds different (in a good way) to me now.

    +++

    They’re not something new:
    Black Women in the 1950s.
    Black Women in the 1960-70s.
    And from the 1930s and 1940s.

    On the action happening: #SayHerName Report

    On May 20, 2015 the African American Policy Forum, the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia University and Andrea Ritchie, Soros Justice Fellow and expert on policing of women and LGBT people of color released #SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, a document highlighting stories of Black women who have been killed by police and shining a light on forms of police brutality often experienced by women such as sexual assault.
    “Although Black women are routinely killed, raped and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality,” said Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Director of the African American Policy Forum and co-author of the report. “Yet, inclusion of Black women’s experiences in social movements, media narratives and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.”

    #SayHerName gathers stories of Black women who have been killed by police and who have experienced gender-specific forms of police violence, provides some analytical frames for understanding their experiences, and broadens dominant conceptions of who experiences state violence and what it looks like.

    “Black women are all too often unseen in the national conversation about racial profiling, police brutality, and lethal force,” said Andrea J. Ritchie, co-author of the report. “This report begins to shine a light on the ways that Black women are policed in ways that are similar to other members of our communities – whether it’s police killings, “stop and frisk,” “broken windows policing,” or the “war on drugs.” It also pushes open the frame to include other forms and contexts of police violence – such as sexual assault by police, police abuse of pregnant women, profiling and abusive treatment of lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming Black women, and police brutality in the context of responses to violence – which bring Black women’s experiences into even sharper focus.”
    In 2015 alone, several Black women’s lives have already been lost to police violence. For instance, just before Freddie Gray’s case grabbed national attention, police killed Mya Hall–a Black trans woman, on the outskirts of Baltimore. No action has been taken to date with respect to the officers responsible for her death. Most recently, police fatally shot Alexia Christian in the back of a police cruiser while she was handcuffed. And in Ventura, CA, Police officers fatally shot Meagan Hockaday–a young mother of three–within 20 seconds of entering her home in response to a domestic disturbance.

    #SayHerName responds to increasing calls for attention to police violence against Black women by offering a resource to help ensure that Black women’s stories are integrated into demands for justice, policy responses to police violence, and media representations of victims and survivors of police brutality.

    The brief concludes with recommendations for engaging communities in conversation and advocacy around Black women’s experiences of police violence, considering race and gender in policy initiatives to combat state violence, and adopting policies to end sexual abuse and harassment by police officers.

    A closer look at one of the many women, Miriam Carey’s Killing Shows ‘Elevation Of Property’ Over Black Life, video via HuffPo live. I hope it’s viewable, I’m not sure if it’s now video or still going live.

    #NatashaMcKenna #SayHerName

  122. rq says

    Two suspected shoplifters shot by Olympia police

    Two men suspected of attempting to steal beer from the west Olympia Safeway were shot by an Olympia police officer early Thursday morning.

    Employees at the Safeway at 3215 Harrison Ave. W. reported about 1 a.m. that two men had attempted to steal beer and when confronted by employees, threw the items at them and fled, according to a news release.

    Police identified the suspects as two black men. An officer found two men matching the description a short distance away and a few minutes later notified dispatch that he had been involved in a shooting.

    Preliminary reports were that both men had been shot in the chest. One suspect is in stable condition at Tacoma General Hospital. One is in critical condition at Providence St. Peter Hospital, according to Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts.

    Both men are in their twenties and believed to be from the Thurston County area, police said. […]

    The officer, who has been an officer for 3 years, has been put on administrative leave while the incident is investigated, following Olympia Police Department policy. The Thurston County Critical Incident Team is investigating the shooting. The team is composed of detectives from five local agencies.

    Olympia officer shoots 2 men suspected of stealing beer

    As police investigated, an officer found two men with skateboards matching the suspects’ descriptions a short distance away – at Cooper Point Road near 14th Avenue NW. There was a confrontation and the officer opened fire, hitting one of the men in the chest, said Olympic Police Chief Ronnie Roberts.

    The two suspects then ran into a wooded area. When they emerged, the officer opened fire again, hitting the other man in the chest as well, Roberts said.

    Witnesses at the scene reported hearing six shots fired.

    The men, who are stepbrothers aged 24 and 21, were rushed to the hospital, where they are listed in critical but stable condition. Both are from the Olympia area. Neither of them was armed with a gun.

    The officer who fired the shots was not injured, Roberts said.

    The officer later told investigators that when he initially approached the suspects, there was a confrontation behind his patrol car and one of the men assaulted him with his skateboard. The officer said he felt threatened, so he opened fire.

    Later, when the two men emerged from the wooded area, there was another confrontation so he fired again.

    Roberts said an investigation will determine whether or not the shootings were justified. He said a skateboard could be considered a deadly weapon, depending on the circumstances.

    Prepare for the skateboard registry. With all these deadly weapons around (phones, screwdrivers, skateboards, etc.) USAmericans won’t need to carry guns anymore.
    Felt threatened. He felt threatened. He just won an award.

    Video Shows LAPD Officer Hit And Kick Woman Who Died During Her Arrest – slightly anomalous, as the offending officer is a woman, but otherwise, about par for the course.

    Alesia Thomas, 35, was arrested at her home in the 9100 block of South Broadway in South L.A. on July 22, 2012 after she allegedly left her children, ages 3 and 12, at a police station with some clean clothes and a note saying she couldn’t care for them anymore and their grandmother’s phone number, NBC LA reports. During that arrest, Officer Mary O’Callaghan, an 18-year veteran of the force, was caught on video threatening to “punt” her in her genitals (she used a different word for genitals), hitting Thomas in the throat, and kicking her. During all of that, Thomas had her legs bound by a nylon restraint and her hands cuffed behind her back. Thomas told officers she was having trouble breathing and standing, but they chose to ignore her, believing she was faking it. Thomas was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

    In footage from the dash cam in another police car, O’Callaghan can be seen lighting up a cigarette and looking through the car window at an unresponsive Thomas. She then says, “This ain’t a good sign.”

    O’Callaghan is not charged with Thomas’ death, in which the L.A. County Coroner has said cocaine use plus a heart condition was likely a factor, CBS LA reports. O’Callaghan is only being charged with assault under color of authority. She faces three years in prison if convicted.

    Passed this on my way to work. A conversation in signs: #BlackLivesMatter

    Dave Helling: Amid the St. Louis blues is a strong sense of entitlement, an interesting short look at the attitudes predominant in St Louis towards those less fortunate from those in authority.

  123. Tsu Dho Nimh says

    I see two who I would identify as “black” And several dark complected Hispanics.

  124. throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble says

    Tsu Dho Nimh

    I see two who I would identify as “black” And several dark complected Hispanics.

    Uh, good for you that you have such powers of observation. Now if only the title of the post had been: “Every single person was white” then you may have had a point.

  125. rq says

    Coming up: Baltimore State’s Attorney planning a special news conference regarding Freddie Gray at 4:30 p.m. We’ll keep you updated.

    And let’s not forget to compare: White bikers riot in #TwinPeaksShooting. Kill 9. 1000 guns. Arrests. Black men suspected of stealing. Skateboards. Shots. #OlympiaShooting
    At least they’re not dead this time. Yet… Yet?

    @deray friend of mine was on the scene last night.Cops were standing around and laughing. They’re still getting paid

    Elsewhere, More evidence of a slowdown or …? @BaltimorePolice made average of 625 arrests/wk in 7 wks prior to unrest. Past 2 weeks: 338/wk

    Rand Takes Left Turn on the Road to Bulls**tville on Clinton and Mass Incarceration. I thought he was already down the end of the road on that one.

    One of Rand Paul’s emerging angles in his hoped-for race against Hillary Clinton is to put the former Senator and Secretary of State on the line for her husband’s role creating the system of mass incarceration which many on both sides of the political spectrum now believe was either a mistake or at least should be reined in. “I’ll ask Hillary Clinton,” he said earlier this week, “what have you done for criminal justice? Your husband passed all the laws that put a generation of black men in prison. Her husband was responsible for that.” I think as a practical matter it will be a tricky and perilous proposition to hold Hillary Clinton responsible for things her husband did more than 20 years ago. (Husband being a different person from her and Clinton being a man she is somewhat demonstrably not able to control, etc.) But as Ed Kilgore rightly notes here, this is an almost comical distortion of the history of the last forty-plus years in the United States, one which he seems to be banking on a younger generation not remembering and reporters being either to lazy or stupid to contradict.

    Let’s start with some basic history.

    I’ve written a lot over the last two or three years on the massive effect on the nation’s politics and culture brought about by the late 20th century crime wave which began in the early 1960s and then unexpectedly crested and fell in the mid-1990s. It began unexpectedly and dissipated even more unexpectedly. Even now we have very few good explanations for why either happened, though I think it is increasingly difficult to ignore at least some significant role for lead poisoning as a driver of the mayhem. Fear of violent crime, melded together with urban riots and changing cultural mores was a key driver of the backlash politics of the early 1970s and increasing conservative and Republican dominance of US politics through the 1980s and 1990s.

    Though we like to think of the Supreme Court as immune from the swirls of public opinion, probably nothing better captures the whipsaw in the public mood than what turned out to be the Court’s temporary abolition of capital punishment in the mid-1970s. So why did we end up with a massive prison population in the US? The simple answer is two or three decades of populist law and order politics which drove the state and federal governments to the right and led them to pass legislation which tightened drug laws, lengthened sentences, expanded the scope of the death penalty and increasingly restricted judges’ sentencing flexibility. The main action was always at the state level – since that’s where the overwhelming number of crimes are prosecuted and where the overwhelming number of prisoners are incarcerated. Saying that mass incarceration is something that Bill Clinton did is about on par with claiming that Richard Nixon founded the environmental movement because, in an effort to gain freedom of action on other issues he cared about, he did sign many of the cornerstone pieces of environmental legislation in the early 70s.[…]

    Indeed, what makes Paul’s nonsense so maddening is that it really amounts to the same people who were banging drums for what we now call mass incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s now banging the drums to blame someone else. A critical issue to understand about the transformative role of criminal justice politics in the late 20th century is that it was based on a crime wave that was quite real. It was inflated by demogography and racialized fear-mongering but it was based on a hard, statistically demonstrably reality which had a profound effect on Americans sense of safety and their beliefs about the well-being and stability of the society they lived in.

    This simple chart plotting the rise and fall of the rate of murder – the ultimate crime – makes the point quite clearly. […]

    The history of mass incarceration in the United States came from a generation of law-and-order populist politics from the right, overwhelmingly from Republicans but eventually joined by many Democrats, pushing longer sentences and more automatic sentencing. Many Dems went along with it. And they should answer for that. But it was a cudgel Republicans used to win elections and grow their majorities at the state and national level. The 1994 Crime Bill was an important but relatively small part of the overall story. At most it helped accelerate a trend that had been galloping along since the 80s and mainly happened at the state level. Clinton’s responsible for his signature. But Paul’s ridiculous distortion of history – palpably bogus for anyone who had their eyes open in the 80s and 90s – still shouldn’t be allowed to stand. Give him credit for pushing criminal justice reform in a party that is still largely hostile to it. But his distortions of history, even recent history, are on par with the conspiracy theories he’s also notorious for spreading.

    “It’s Not Even Surprising Anymore”: Middle School Students React to Police Brutality, and it’s heartbreaking.

    Five days after the school year started in Atlanta, Georgia, Mike Brown lay dead in a Ferguson street. I had just started teaching middle school social studies in a Title I. school with a 97% black study body. The next week, I stayed late after school and with the assistance of fellow teachers, drove around thirty students to a local protest in support of Ferguson. After the protest, the students felt a sense of accomplishment and excitement. But those feelings have since waned.

    I did not know then that these public killings and public outcries would continue throughout the school year. With each new case, I have challenged my students to discuss, debate, and write about their feelings. Increasingly, they have become frustrated with this process. Their comments reflect a sense of hopelessness and anger. “In real life we all know the government isn’t gonna do anything about it, and the police isn’t gonna do anything about it,” one student tells the class. “I’m used to it. It’s not a surprise to me. I’m just like oh, another person got shot.”

    During the recent Baltimore uprising, the nation discussed whether or not rioting is logical and legitimate. But not my students. Not one of them questioned why people riot – they only debated if it’s a wise tactic. These are some of their reflections from one of our many conversations.

  126. says

    Also, we don’t know how those Black and Hispanic faces were treated by the cops – we just have plenty of images of heavily-armed white bikers sat down comfortably using cellphones while nominally ‘under arrest’ after murdering a couple of handfuls of people, compared to Black men being shot for carrying skateboards. SKATEBOARDS.

    If you can’t grasp the fucking difference between how white and Black are treated by the police (and I’m not going to qualify that by country), then you’d better get your mental claws sharpened, cause you probably couldn’t grasp the answer to two plus fucking two (fucking four, obviously).

  127. says

    Their comments reflect a sense of hopelessness and anger. “In real life we all know the government isn’t gonna do anything about it, and the police isn’t gonna do anything about it,” one student tells the class. “I’m used to it. It’s not a surprise to me. I’m just like oh, another person got shot.”

    I once saw a show of Romeo and Juliet set in Belfast, with the lovers coming from either side of the local sectarian divide. She was from a “nice” area, where the violence was distant, and was startled when she heard an explosion while she slept at his place. “Calm down,” he grumped while trying to get back to sleep, “it’s only a bomb.”

    It’s heartbreaking to hear that these kids have the same reaction. Comprehensible, utterly, but heartbreaking.

  128. rq says

    The ATF is now circulating flyers with a $10,000 reward to find people suspected of damaging property during the #BaltimoreUprising. Wow.

    Say her name #RekiaBoyd #YuvetteHenderson

    “Stolen beer does not equal stolen lives” is what demonstrators are chanting in downtown Olympia #Q13FOX
    #AndreThompson and #BrysonChaplin, shot by police today in Olympia, WA. #OlympiaShooting

    Men Shot by Policeman in Olympia, Washington, Were Unarmed, no new information.

    “When we say #BlackLivesMatter, we mean #allblacklivesmatter” Black women shutdown SF street.

  129. rq says

    Olympia officer shot two brothers following reported attack with skateboard; protests underway, another one on the same.

    An independent investigation has been launched after an Olympia police officer shot two brothers who allegedly attacked him with a skateboard during a shoplifting and assault investigation early Thursday morning.

    Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts and Mayor Stephen Buxbaum spoke to multiple media outlets around 10 a.m., expressing sorrow for the tragedy of two young men being shot, and to call for calm as multiple law enforcement agencies investigate.

    “Olympia is a community that cares deeply about social justice,” Roberts said. “It’s important that we stand together as a community during the investigation.”

    While police say there’s no indication that race played a factor in the shooting, Roberts identified the brothers, 21 and 23 years old, as black. Roberts said the Olympia police officer involved is white. The chief acknowledged the sensitivity of racial issues and policing in stating the race of the men and police officer.

    Protest @ Woodruff Park @ 6 on westside to demand justice for 2 unarmed black men shot by ofc Ryan Donald #BlackLivesMatter #OlympiaShooting

    Schumer to Recommend Brooklyn Prosecutor for U.S. Attorney Post

    Mr. Schumer confirmed that he would recommend that President Obama nominate Mr. Capers to succeed Loretta E. Lynch, who became the United States attorney general in April. If Mr. Capers is nominated, he will have to be approved by the Senate.

    “He rose to the top on the merits,” Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said of Mr. Capers, who joined the office in 2003 and currently prosecutes public corruption cases. “He’s really smart, he’s very hardworking, nose to the grindstone, not flashy, gets the job done and gets it done superbly.”

    Mr. Schumer also said that Mr. Capers’s family ties to law enforcement — his father was a noted New York Police Department detective, and his brother is retired from the force — meant he “fits the times perfectly.” […]

    Like Ms. Lynch, Mr. Capers is black. Mr. Schumer said he believes that, like Ms. Lynch, Mr. Capers will be able to take on difficult cases involving minority communities and have all sides feel they were treated fairly.

    Mr. Capers was born in the Bronx and lives in New Jersey. He graduated from New York University, where he was co-captain of the basketball team, and from Albany Law School.

    While many New York prosecutors leave government work for law firms, where they can make several times as much money, Mr. Capers has worked for the government his entire career. He was a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and for the office of the city’s special narcotics prosecutor before moving to the Eastern District. Other candidates for the job included people who had left the office for more prestigious Justice Department positions, making Mr. Capers’s promotion from inside the office noteworthy.

    “It’s nice to see career prosecutors given the opportunity to lead a significant and prominent office in the city,” said Anthony M. Capozzolo, a lawyer who worked in the office until last year. […]

    A recommendation from Mr. Schumer does not ensure that Mr. Capers will be nominated by the White House, but in making such appointments, presidents typically consult with their party’s top political leaders in a state. In New York, Mr. Schumer, as the senior senator, has played a major role in selections of United States attorneys and federal judges.

    Brittany Overstreet. #SayHerName

    Consultants uncover deep problems within Denver Sheriff Department. Is anyone surprised? I mean, really – is anyone surprised?

    The report, produced by Hillard Heintze of Chicago and OIR Group of Los Angeles for $295,000, delivers 14 key findings and 277 recommendations for change.

    Mayor Michael Hancock ordered the review in the summer of 2014 after a string of excessive-force cases shamed the department and cost the city more than $9 million in legal settlements and lawyers’ fees.

    Hancock said the consultants produced the type of report he was looking for, one that laid out everything.

    “They validated our concerns,” he said.

    City leaders already knew the sheriff’s department was troubled, but the report delves into every function at the department, revealing deficiencies at every level.

    “Yes, there are things that were a surprise to me,” said Stephanie O’Malley, executive director of the Denver Department of Public Safety. “As I continue to read and as I continue to digest and process all of this information, I continue to think to myself that these are things that can and will be fixed.”

    In several instances, the deficiencies are glaring.

    For example, the department does not have a method for counting inmates and keeping track of who is in court or at a hospital, and it does not account for gang affiliation when assigning inmates to cells, the report said.

    There is no single, comprehensive plan for emergencies, and drills for controlling disasters are held rarely.

    The department cannot readily say how many deputy positions it has and the number of full-time equivalent employees it needs to fill them, Hillard Heintze found in its review.

    And the department’s use-of-force investigations are “wholly inadequate” because supervisors make decisions on whether force is justified based only on the involved deputy’s account of the incident. They do not interview inmates and other witnesses or review video footage, the OIR Group wrote.

    Consultants found excessive amounts of contraband during the review of the two jails. Inmates had heroin, homemade hooch and inappropriate photographs.

    “One reason is that employees are not searched upon their arrival each day — and they could be a primary source of unauthorized items,” the report said.

    The consultants found other contributing factors to the contraband problem, including inconsistent cell searches and a failure to track tools or other equipment that inmates might have had access to during the day.

    Nonexistent, out-of-date and incomplete policies are a theme throughout the report. Training from supervisors is almost nonexistent, the report said. The consultants found multiple examples of instances where deputies did not know what was written in the department handbooks.

    For example, deputies are required to make routine rounds within their pods to check for contraband, maintain order, count inmates and look for medical emergencies.

    However, the department’s orders, division policies and procedures are inconsistent, Hillard Heintze found.

    “Staff members of all levels do not have a clear understanding of the requirements to conduct such checks,” the report said. […]

    Five surprising findings from the report

    1. Deputies are not searched when they come to work.

    2. The department is not able to accurately count inmates.

    3. Gang affiliations are not considered when assigning inmates to a pod.

    4. The entire IT system is outdated and unorganized.

    5. Sergeants justify their deputies’ use-of-force incidents without interviewing inmates and other witnesses or looking at video footage.

    What’s recommended

    The consultants listed 14 key findings in their report on the Denver Sheriff Department:

    – Across-the-board reform is needed.

    – Areas of strength include a commitment to change and modern facilities.

    – A leadership deficit exists. Changing it will prove transformational.

    – The department’s strategic plan should be rewritten.

    – Organizational alignment needs to be improved. Too many people report directly to the sheriff. Scheduling is dysfunctional, and roles are not clearly defined.

    – The department’s use-of-force culture must change, and its training must be improved.

    – More work must be done to improve internal affairs investigations.

    – Jail management and operations need extensive reform.

    – Staffing changes must be made before hiring new employees, or the cycle of inefficient operations will continue.

    – Deputy training must be expanded and improved.

    – Human resources issues abound.

    – Technology deficits compromise performance and safety.

    – Emergency preparedness planning needs attention.

    – More meaningful and productive community engagement is needed.

  132. rq says

    And @MarilynMosbyEsq has noted that some of the charges have changed since the initial press conference. #FreddieGray
    Articles probably tomorrow, complete with other people’s analysis.
    That just leaves the impending Brelo verdict in Cleveland, for now. Was supposed to be out Monday, today an article said Thursday, so who knows.
    Going to tie up leftover links and go to bed.

    #AlexiaChristian I #SayHerName killed just 2 weeks ago after police failed to search & secure her correctly.

    Worth a repost, as an example of really positive policing. And one wonders why there aren’t more PDs working like this. In Fresno, a community-policing ethos builds ties between officers and residents.

    Interlude: Comics! The 2015 Glyph Black Comics Award Winners Are…

    This weekend saw the annual Glyph Awards Ceremony take place in Philadelphia, at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention. The awards champion and celebrate the best in comics made by, for, and about black people, although the nominations are not exclusively limited to black creators.

    This year saw the 10th anniversary of the ceremony, established by Rich Watson in 2005. […]

    So it was good year for 133 Art, which picked up the Fan Award and the Rising Star Award (for the second year running). Shaft was expected to pick up story of the year (not least from all of us, because we’ve loved it). A major takeaway of the awards is a lack of recognition for most of the biggest publishers in the Diamond Catalog, save for Image (via Top Cow) and Dynamite Entertainment.

    The awards are about finding and showcasing new talent –- certainly, there are names and comics here that are completely new to me -– but it also showcases the absence of black storytelling from the major publishing houses.

    That’s less immediately important, however, than celebrating the achievements of the comics listed above, each of which emerged out of a crowded and diverse field of nominees. These have been ten very successful years for the Glyph Awards, and hopefully everyone recognized by the awards will go on to further success within the industry.

    The judging panel this year were Pamela Thomas (chair), William H. Foster III, Joseph R. Wheeler III, Rich Johnston, Regine Sawyer, and Jamal Igle.

    And yes, I took out all results and winners. Go to the link.

    This Mom Made A Natural Hair Doll To Help Her Daughter’s Self-Esteem. Seems like such a small thing…

    Angelica Sweeting is the mother of two little girls. When she went shopping for her daughters one day, she discovered that she couldn’t find any dolls that looked like them.

    By the age of three, she told BuzzFeed Life, her oldest daughter Sophia was already struggling with body image.

    […]

    Per Sweeting’s design, the Angelica doll has “face of a beautiful brown girl including a full nose, fuller lips, beautiful check bones, and brown eyes.”

    The 18-inch doll’s hair is fully style-able. You can wash it, dry it, twist it out, put it up, curl wand, and bantu knot it, if you want.

    The Angelica doll is still in its backing phase on Kickstarter, but Sweeting believes that the doll has the potential to truly change things for young women.

    Kickstarter link within, for those interested.

    Just came across an article entitled “Steph Curry’s Daughter and the Epitome of Light Skinned Privilege” what the hell is wrong with y’all. I read that article. It’s… yeah.

  134. rq says

    Cait
    Funny. Funny, indeed.
    Also, I think I need a poster of Mosby for my office. Whenever I have one.

    +++

    The last loose ends:
    It’s fascinating to see the difference in media coverage of the grand jury process re: #FreddieGray vs #MikeBrown. Fascinating.

    Not necessarily unrelated, What has the movement achieved? Millions have awoken. Communities have been built. Laws have begun to be changed. Link to protestor milestones within. Take a look.

    And for tonight I leave you with this litany. For the women. For the women, cis, trans, queer, straight, children, mothers, daughters, friends… humans.
    20 black women police have killed in the past 17 months. #SayHerName
    Yvette Smith. Perlie Golden. Jacqueline Nichols Michelle Cusseaux. Vernicia Woodard. Iretha Lilly. Tracy Ann Oglesby Wade. #SayHerName (1/3)
    Latandra Ellington. Florence White. Aura Rosser. Tanisha Anderson. Keara Crowder. Nuwnah Laroche. Alexia Christian. #SayHerName (2/3)
    Maya Hall. Janisha Fonville. Monique Deckard. Yuvette Henderson. Monique Deckard. Meagan Hockaday. (3/3) #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter

    Good night.

  135. says

    Watch: undercover NYPD cop helps beat couple in suv attack

    The testimony of one of the victims, Rosalyn Ng, was backed up in court by a new video obtained by the Daily News showing the brutality of the attack that left her husband hospitalized for months. The video depicts the men (one of whom it was later revealed infiltrated Occupy Wall Street on behalf of the NYPD) dragging Alexian Lien out of his SUV in broad daylight in Washington Heights. They proceed to severely beat him as his wife, Rosalyn Ng, cries for help. The couple had an infant child in the back seat, a fact Ng claims she yelled out repeatedly as the men continued to stomp and kick Lien. The footage was taken from one of the bikers’ GoPro helmets.

    Braszczok’s lawyer alleges his client went along with the attack because he didn’t want to break what he called “deep cover.” The former NYPD officer is also accused of being responsible for breaking the couple’s windshield, a charge he denies. If convicted, both men face up to 25 years in prison.

    Lien recently testified about the incident as well. As CBS News reported:

    In court, the man whose beating was later seen by millions of online viewers broke down and told a New York judge in emotional testimony that he was in “complete fear” as the bikers closed in.

    Two of the eleven bikers charged in the attack are now on trial. With his face covered by a t-shirt, Wojciech Braszczok entered a Manhattan courtroom. The undercover cop, along with co-defedent Robert Sims, face charges that include assault for participating in the now-infamous road rage incident in which thirty-five year old Alexian Lien was pulled from his vehicle and beaten in front of his wife and young daughter.

    In describing the September 2013 incident, Lien said, “I felt complete fear for my life, my wife and my daughter.”

    As for Braszczok’s gig spying on Occupy Wall Street, Gothamist detailed how the 2013 motorcycle incident revealed the disturbing subplot:

    “It’s definitely creepy and unsettling to think of this guy monitoring conversations and actions and tweets that were all part of this nonviolent social movement,” Molly Knefel says. “Once you know you’re being surveilled, it changes the way you think and the way you act.”

    Most Occupy Wall Street participants assumed that undercover police had infiltrated their ranks, but many said yesterday that they were taken aback at how far the 32-year-old detective had taken his work. “I mean, he came to my birthday at the Blarney Stone,” said one occupier who asked to be identified by his Twitter handle, @SeaNick_. “He was there ‘til like 4:30 in the morning with us. I never thought anything of it.”

    In addition to Occupy Wall Street, Braszczok also spied on Hurricane Sandy relief work for the NYPD, according to the Gothamist.

  136. rq says

    I can’t stick the flounce.
    Here’s the official release from the attorney’s office, then that’s it.
    Marilyn Mosby Announces Indictments of the Six Baltimore Police Officers Involved in the Freddie Gray Arrest

    Today Marilyn Mosby, State’s Attorney for Baltimore City, announces indictments against the six Baltimore City Police Officers for their alleged role in the death of Freddie Gray. The State’s Attorney’s Office conducted an independent investigation into this matter upon receiving notice of the incident and presented the evidence to the Grand Jury, who returned the indictments this afternoon.

    “On May 1st our investigation revealed that we had enough probable cause to bring charges against the six officers,” stated Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore City State’s Attorney.

    Mosby further explained that as their investigation continued, additional information was discovered and as is often the case, during an ongoing investigation charges can and should be revised based on the evidence.

    “The Grand Jury, who also concluded there is sufficient evidence for probable cause, returned indictments on all counts presented to them.” Mosby said.

    The indictments include the following charges with the respective maximum penalties. Arraignment is scheduled for July 2, 2015.

    Officer Caesar R. Goodson, Jr.

    – Second degree depraved heart murder (30 yrs.)
    – Manslaughter (involuntary) (10 yrs.)
    – Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
    – Manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence) (10 yrs.)
    – Manslaughter by vehicle (criminal negligence) (3 yrs.)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    Officer William G. Porter

    – Manslaughter (involuntary) (10 yrs.)
    – Assault/second degree (10 yrs.
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    Lt. Brian W. Rice

    – Manslaughter (involuntary) (10 yrs.)
    – Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    Officer Edward M. Nero

    – Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    Officer Garrett E. Miller

    – Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*)
    – Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    Sgt. Alicia D. White

    – Manslaughter (involuntary) (10 yrs.) 2) Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
    – Misconduct in office (8th Amendment*) 4) Reckless endangerment (5 yrs.)

    *Any sentence that does not constitute cruel & unusual punishment.

    Well, it’s going to go to trial, at least. That actually feels like a relief.

    Prosecutor @MarilynMosbyEsq announces indictment of 6 #Baltimore officers in #FreddieGray’s death. Latest on #AC360 (with video).

  137. Grewgills says

    @Okidemia #109
    The purpose is generally just curiosity. Most people here identify as either Asian or mixed and those identifying as Asian are often have mixed Asian ancestry (Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino, most commonly). When these conversations start they generally move onto shared experiences around the cultures brought up, talking about food, home life, jokes, etc. Most people here (unless they are a recent transplant) has a pretty broad experience of a variety of Asian and Pacific Islander cultures along with typical American culture and specifically Hawai’ian culture, so everyone ends up sharing in the conversation regardless of their ancestry. The point I guess I was trying to make was that the context here makes the ethnic background questions more about open sharing than exclusion, which was in sharp contrast to my experience with that in the South East.

  138. militantagnostic says

    Tsu Dho Nimh @123:

    I see two who I would identify as “black” And several dark complected Hispanics.

    You also failed to notice the link to article as well as the comments about the non outlaw bikers who were arrested.

  139. says

    Charges dropped against cop caught having sex with cows

    In Mount Holly, New Jersey, Officer Melia was indeed caught sexually assaulting a cow, but his sexual crimes did not end with non-humans. Melia was also charged, several years ago, with sexually assaulting three girls.

    It was during the course of that investigation that police found a video in Melia’s home that recorded him… abusing multiple cows. Apparently he was so proud of this abuse that he filmed it and saved it for posterity.

    The incident was allegedly recorded on a South Hampton farm back in 2006. But a Superior Court Judge ruled in 2012 that prosecutors had failed to present sufficient evidence to jurors that Melia’s actions in fact tormented the cows.

    As a result, the judge explained, they were unable to convict him of animal cruelty charges.

    “I’m not saying it’s okay,” Judge Morley tried to explain of his dismissal of the charges.

    “This is a legal question for me. It’s not a question of morals.”

    But this was not the end for Melia and former girlfriend Heather Lewis, as both remained charged with the abuse of the aforementioned three girls.

    Only months later, a jury found Melia and Lewis guilty of six counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault in addition to multiple counts of sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact, sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child.

  140. says

    Speaking only for myself, some stories about police brutality hit harder than others. This is one of them. It turns my stomach. I’m going to include a Trigger Warning for the ghastly actions of the officers in this story.

    Feds investigating FL officers who scalded inmate to death in locked shower ‘torture chamber’.

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) has just opened a criminal investigation into the Florida officers who murdered 50-year-old Darren Rainey in what is being called a shower “torture chamber.”

    The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ has reportedly acknowledges that the Florida inmate may have been murdered by prison officials in what the Miami Herald described as a “scalding torture chamber.”

    The Herald investigation further found that Rainey was tortured by guards in 2012 when he defecated in his cell. Rainey was known by the guards to be schizophrenic. In spite of his mental health diagnosis being known to the guards, when he refused to clean up the mess, they tortured him.

    The “scalding torture chamber” was created with a locked shower that had a hose from a nearby janitorial closet rigged up so that it would cover him with 180-degree water.

    The steam from the water itself was said to have essentially suffocated Rainy. The heat from the water literally burned the skin off of his body.

    Corrections officers Cornelius Thompson and Roland Clarke were two of those involved who were confirmed to have mocked Rainey as he was tortured to death. Thompson and Clarke laughed as Rainy kicked on the door of the shower begging to get out.

    They left him in there for two hours, after which he collapsed and died.

    In recent months, the Florida prison system has been criticized for a string of suspicious inmate deaths.

    Rainey’s family has now filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Corrections.

    They have included the health care company Corizon in the suit, as the company was responsible for Rainey’s medical care as part of their contract with the prison.

    The Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, Howard Simon, said in an interview with the Miami Herald that the Department of Corrections has not changed a thing about how they operate.

    “There must be a change in the culture in Florida prisons,” he said. “But that is not going to happen until officials are routinely held accountable for the brutality that too often characterizes our state prison system.”

    Bolding mine.
    That is horrific. It’s a such an utter denial of the Rainey’s humanity that words cannot properly express my disgust.

    And they say racism is over.

    ::pukes::

  141. says

    Yo, Religious Right! Instead of whining about the imaginary threat marriage equality and LGBT rights poses to religious liberty, how about you stand up for the rights of this American Indian high school student who is dealing with a true violation of her religious liberty:

    A Native American student at a Nebraska high school was recently told that she could not wear her religious feather to graduation. The reason why has been called “unconstitutional” and even “racist.”

    Omaha’s Public School board held and emergency meeting after members of Nebraska Native American community called them out for attacking the feather as “bling-bling.”

    The Sicangu Lakota teen has requested that she be permitted to attend the ceremony at South High with the eagle feather as well as Native American beads, specific to her community, on her graduation cap.

    […]

    “Do I have bling-bling on?” John Andrew Tate said to the board, as he pointed as the feathers on his hat.

    The school’s contention was problematic in the first place, as the notion and terminology of “bling” seems to be racialized in the use by the school. The school seems to object to any ornamentation that they are lumping together with hip hop “bling” – apparently seeing no difference between diamond studs and religiously ceremonial feathers.

    Nicole Tamayo, the girl’s sister explained that their community has “fought a long time to be able to wear our feathers, to practice our religious rights.”

    “My sister was told if she wore the plume on her cap she wouldn’t be able to walk (at graduation) and would have her diploma withheld from her,” Tamayo continued.

    Tamayo added in an interview with local KETV that this was about honoring family and tribe.

    “It tells the story of your achievements,” she explained.

    Jordan Menard reminded the board that this is essentially an issue of religious discrimination.

    “Nobody at school is going to tell a young lady not to wear a crucifix to her graduation. Nobody is going to tell anybody not to wear something that represents their faith. But somebody told a young lady not to wear an eagle feather.”

  142. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Tony! – that is horrific.

    Or, …it’s not. I wish I had the word. Horrific just isn’t horrific enough.

    I know what it’s like to labor in breathing from having too much steam in a room…and that was at a way lower temp and for much less time.

    I want to snark, I want to turn away, I want to somehow minimize the horror I’m feeling, but nothing does. I can only hope someone wiser than me can figure out how to create justice for Rainey.

  143. says

    NYPD admits they have been arresting too many people, considering amnesty for 1.2 million:

    The New York Police Department is being forced to acknowledge they have arrested far too many people for victimless crimes. Now, the department admits they will have to do something about it.

    Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has publicly accepted the fact that “millions” have been convicted of crimes that they should never have been jailed for.

    The new controversial proposal suggests the City of New York grant amnesty to over 1 million citizens who have open warrants for low-level, clearly victimless offenses.

    The prison industry warns that this will “cause crime to skyrocket,” but what they seem more worried about is the bottom line for their for-profit, tax-payer-funded prison schemes.

    Of course they’d whine about this. They make money by having people imprisoned. Which is yet another reason that prison systems should not be privatized.

    Commissioner Bratton first called for a lessening of penalties for smoking marijuana in public. Private use of the plant has already been effectively decriminalized in NYC.

    But now, the NYPD Commissioner says that 1.2 city residents with open warrants should not be picked up for those warrants.

    Many of these warrants are for unpaid tickets, disorderly conduct and public intoxication. The city simply cannot afford to jail people for victimless crimes any longer.

    CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday that Council Public Safety Chair Vanessa Gibson said she too favors eliminating the backlog of warrants out on victimless crimes.

    “I think it would be a very delicate conversation where we want to find the right balance,” Gibson, D-Bronx said. “We also want all New Yorkers to respect the laws we have on the books because laws are meant to be implemented. They’re meant to be enforced.”

    That’s true and all, but FFS, not all violations of the law should result in imprisonment.

  144. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    and Tony! posted again.

    My “horrific” response is (i hope obviously) in response to your #140.

    #141 is horrible and racist as fuck, but it’s common enough that I have skills to help me cope with that one.

  145. says

    CD @142:

    I know what it’s like to labor in breathing from having too much steam in a room…and that was at a way lower temp and for much less time.

    I have some experience being in a room with hot steam. Back when I worked out, I spent some time at the local YMCA and they had a steam room which I often made use of following a workout. I don’t recall what temperature the steam reached, but I do know I couldn’t stand the heat for more than 5-10 minutes.

  146. says

    Aaaaaaaand here’s something else deeply fucked up-
    FBI says racist organizations have been infiltrating police departments for years:

    Many have said it for years, but now the Federal Bureau of Investigation is claiming that police departments have been deliberately infiltrated by racist, white supremacist organizations.

    The claim comes after what the FBI says has been nearly a decade of federal law enforcement’s confirmed and documented acts of infiltration by white supremacist groups into American police departments.

    The FBI warning first came back on October 2006, but it fell on largely deaf ears. Now, the report entitled “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” is being revisited by many experts in fighting back against organized hate group terrorism.

    In the 2006 report, the FBI found that federal court determined that members of a Los Angeles sheriffs department had organized a Neo Nazi gang. The officers involved did not keep their racist ideas to themselves either, as the FBI found that these same officers “habitually terrorized” the African American community.

    The FBI also found that the Chicago police department fired a detective after it was discovered that he had strong ties to the Ku Klux Klan. That detective, Jon Burge, was found to have tortured over 100 African American suspects.

    The City of Cleveland, in news lately for their shooting of Tamir Rice, and other extreme instances of police gunning down unarmed African Americans, found that police locker rooms had been overrun with “white power” graffiti and vandalism.

    In Texas, a sheriff department found that two of their deputies not only were in the Klan, but were actually prominent recruiters for the hate group.

    Now, the just as the FBI had warned, the number of white supremacist members infiltrating law enforcement has soared.

    Between the years of 2008 to 2014, that number of documented infiltrators rose from just shy of 150, to one thousand. Even worse is the fact that most of them were never fired after their hate group affiliation was discovered.

    Part of me wants to say tear the system down and rebuild it from scratch, but then I worry about all the people who need assistance from law enforcement. They’d be left out in the cold if such a (highly unlikely) thing happened.

  147. says

    This is an older story, but video of the incident has been released which guess what, shows that official police reports of the incident were less than accurate-
    Leaked video shows NC cop shooting black suspect in the back:

    A new, leaked dashcam video shows a North Carolina police officer shooting an African American man in the back. No, this is not another video of Officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in South Carolina.

    This new video out of North Carolina is unrelated (directly, at least), but it shows a similar scenario, where officers shot a fleeing suspect in the back.

    This shooting, however, took place in 2013, but the video leak has raised new questions.

    The victim was 22-year-old Nijza Lamar Hagans. Hagans was gunned down by Officer Aaron Hunt, during a traffic stop, just like Walter Scott.

    All of this was over an alleged running of a red light.

    Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West says that Hagans was said to have “reached for a gun”.

    The official police story and that of DA West, claimed that this all took place in the vehicle. There was no mention in the DA’s report or police report that Hagans was running away, or that the bullet entry wounds were from behind.

    The DA refused to press charges against Hunt, as they claimed the shooting was “lawful and measured.”

    The video, newly-leaked to the Intercept (see below), had never been mentioned in the prosecutor’s report, nor in the police report.

    The prosecutor simply said that Hagans died of “multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.”

    The officer thought he was “reaching for a gun”? Golly, we never, ever, EVER hear that excuse for the extrajudicial execution of black people by LEOs.

  148. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Tony!, #146:

    Part of me wants to say tear the system down and rebuild it from scratch, but then I worry about all the people who need assistance from law enforcement.

    It’s totally doable, in installments.

    PLUS… while there are people who would be harmed by the lack of policing in an area, so many areas are over policed and so many encounters are harmful, that I’m sure there are plenty of places (like Ferguson) where relying on spotty state-police coverage would be better even than turning over calls to the sheriff’s office.

    The sheriff’s offices, in turn, could be replaced on a 3 county rotation: 2 counties covering for the third while it’s LEO services are not able to function. If they each promise to take their turn covering, money should be consistent and things could go fairly smoothly.

    The harder part would be big cities, really. At least to my mind. And a few very large state police agencies. If the individual agency is under 200 employees (and for this purpose I think we can separate LEOs from COs, even when the main local agency is a sheriff with responsibility for both), we can probably shut it down and replace it fairly easily on such a rotating basis.

    We can whittle down officer numbers in an area via normal attrition, then move many remaining officers to the neighboring jurisdictions that will be covering the closed LE services department. So they’ll even have local experience…should that be an asset (obviously we should simply let go during downsizing those officers with too much investment in a problematic department or too much problematic history…though determining how much is too much will be hard). Some officers – those considered the ethical best or the best prepared to help design the new department as well as some who are simply skilled at follow up work who need to stay on to close cases, testify at trials, etc – will stay on in the original jurisdiction.

    Thus we probably only need to drop about 20%-25% of officers through attrition in a given area before the transfer-and-shutter date.

    3 offices, each down 20%.
    One office transfers 20% of their original roster to each of the neighboring jurisdictions
    That office has 40% left. Let go of those that need to be moved out of law enforcement and you have…

    …what? That’s the big question. In ferguson, I’d say anyone with 4 years experience in that place is simply too likely to be captured by a too-fucked-up system. That might leave a similar office with only 5-10% of its original staff to do the follow up and reboot tasks. It might not even be enough…though in a corrupt jurisdiction like Ferguson, maybe you want to dismiss a lot of charges and don’t really **want** follow up in many cases. Hard to know.

    In other jurisdictions, maybe we want to save every last one of that 40%. I’m sure statistically that’s bound to happen somewhere. Then we might wait for more natural attrition…but more likely we just pick a different one of the 3-departments-in-partnership to go first, since if the department is that good, we’d rather it be the last reformed (do the least harm during the transition, after all).

    The state cops can also be reformed in stages, possibly even first in many jurisdictions (like Oregon) where moderate population but high concentration allows for the income to hire more officers than needed (since in concentrated areas most LE tasks are carried out by the city police and the sheriff’s office, but they still pay into the general revenues that can hire officers).

    I think we could shutter everything…I just don’t think we could shutter everything all at once.

  149. says

    CD @148:
    As always, your perspective and insight are appreciated. Thanks for pulling me out of my binary thinking and reminding me that there are more options than keep the system going as it is or tear it all down at once.

  150. says

    The chilling word that comes to my mind, though, CD, when I read your quite-clever plan to get the thing done, is “de-Baathification“.

    In short, what does the economy do with (conservatively) 60% of nearly one million officers (federal and state with arrest powers in 2008, 920,000), many of whom have families set up to live on a middle-class salary? What do those half a million people do with themselves? Wouldn’t the US be setting itself up to have the Wild West all over again – literally hundreds of thousands of people with anger issues, police and military training, and hair-trigger responses, dumped on the population without jobs and with poor prospects to get any replacement work…”Christian State”, anyone?

    Or am I being too gloomy? I helped an academic with a paper about a de-baathification process in Libya after the revolution there. I’ve since lost track of that colleague, for over a year now. It could be that this will have affected my ability to think clearly on the topic.

  151. Pteryxx says

    I went and followed up on Tony!’s articles, as if the summaries from Countercurrent News weren’t awful enough.

    Miami Herald: Scalding-shower death in Dade prison prompts federal probe

    The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has begun a criminal investigation into the death of Darren Rainey, the 50-year-old inmate who was locked in a shower that had been converted into a scalding torture chamber at Dade Correctional Institution.

    The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida also are questioning witnesses in connection with alleged atrocities in the prison’s mental health ward, including a practice of starving inmates so severely that they would snap off sprinkler-heads, flooding their cells and violating fire codes, so they would be arrested and sent to the county jail, where they would be fed.

    Rainey’s death nearly three years ago, along with subsequent stories about rampant inmate abuse as well as a record number of deaths in Florida’s prisons, has spawned demands for an overhaul of the Florida Department of Corrections. The agency’s inspector general, Jeffery Beasley, has been accused of trying to whitewash suspicious deaths, medical neglect cases and corruption. He himself is the subject of a state investigation after four of his subordinates stated under oath this year that he asked them to sideline cases that would give the agency “a black eye.’’

    For more than a year, the Miami Herald has investigated claims, interviewed witnesses and reviewed hundreds of records from current and former inmates and staff at Dade Correctional, located on the edge of the Everglades south of Homestead. Alleged abuses included sexual assaults by officers against inmates, racially motivated beatings and the withholding of food from inmates in one wing of the mental health ward.

    […]

    Harriet Krzykowski, a former counselor at the prison, said that she suspected corrections officers were starving and abusing inmates. She said that officers told her if she didn’t keep quiet, she might find herself alone in a dorm full of violent inmates with no officers to protect her. She said corrections officers described to her how they would fabricate reports to make it appear that inmates who were beaten or abused had instigated the trouble.

    […]

    [Two of the officers who reportedly laughed at Rainey as he died – Ptx] Thompson left the Department of Corrections to work as a guard in the federal prison system, and Clarke is now a police officer in Miami Gardens.

    On the 2006 FBI report that’s just now getting wider attention: The Grio:

    Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed black men and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What’s wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with a FBI warning of October 2006, which reported that “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.

    Several key events preceded the report. A federal court found that members of a Los Angeles sheriffs department formed a Neo Nazi gang and habitually terrorized the black community. Later, the Chicago police department fired Jon Burge, a detective with reputed ties to the Ku Klux Klan, after discovering he tortured over 100 black male suspects. Thereafter, the Mayor of Cleveland discovered that many of the city police locker rooms were infested with “White Power” graffiti. Years later, a Texas sheriff department discovered that two of its deputies were recruiters for the Klan.

    In near prophetic fashion, after the FBI’s warning, white supremacy extremism in the U.S. increased, exponentially. From 2008 to 2014, the number of white supremacist groups, reportedly, grew from 149 to nearly a thousand, with no apparent abatement in their infiltration of law enforcement.

    Daily Kos:

    Samuel Jones at The Grio reminds us that as recently as 2006, The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning that white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan were increasingly seeking to “infiltrate” law enforcement.

    The document that Jones refers to is a 7-page unclassified document published by the FBI.

    White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement

    White supremacists in law enforcement is nothing new of course; in part, the origins of organized police departments in America actually goes back to the slave patrols of colonial times.

    One positively chilling aspect of this 2006 FBI report is the description of what white supremacists call “ghost skins.”

    Since coming to law enforcement attention in late 2004, the term “ghost skins” has gained currency among white supremacists to describe those who avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.

    I don’t know who the white supremacists are in the police departments, DA offices, and judge’s chambers of this country.

    And neither do you.

    The report itself at documentcloud: PDF link

    and in following up on torture cop Jon Burge, while I haven’t yet found anything about the KKK, I found this rant from April via the Chicago Sun-Times: Disgraced Chicago cop Jon Burge breaks silence, condemns $5.5 million reparations fund

    Former convicted Area 2 Police Commander Jon Burge says he finds it “hard to believe” that Chicago’s “political leadership” could “even contemplate giving reparations to human vermin” like the “guilty vicious criminals” he tried to take off the streets.

    Three days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to create a $5.5 million “reparations” fund to compensate torture victims, Burge unleashed a torrent of anger against plaintiffs’ attorneys, politicians, a “complicit” news media and two torture victims.

    Much more ranting at the link.

    Taylor was outraged by the suggestion that he and his fellow attorneys representing torture victims are money-grubbers.

    “We have been committed to this for over 2 1/2 decades — not to make money, but because we are firmly committed to exposing racist crimes against humanity. And the people who have joined with us include Amnesty International and a wide range of other organizations who . . . see his crimes for what they are,” Taylor said.

    “He says the truth will come out. The truth has come out. That’s why the city has acted as it has. No matter what kind of cowardly statements Burge may make under cover of darkness, it is not going to change the public record of his and his fellow officers’ crimes.”

    For background if anyone’s new to that story, here’s a summary at the Guardian.

  152. says

    CaitieCat

    In short, what does the economy do with (conservatively) 60% of nearly one million officers (federal and state with arrest powers in 2008, 920,000), many of whom have families set up to live on a middle-class salary? What do those half a million people do with themselves

    Same as all the other un- and underemployed people in the U.S; hire them onto the massive, massive infrastructure projects we so desperately need, and/or subsidize further education/training, and/or provided with capital and technical assistance to start their own businesses. All of these things need to be done anyway, there’s no reason not to include ex-cops (except to prohibit them from forming any type of business related to security or law enforcement, or gaining employment in same, which would kind of defeat the purpose of restructuring the police in the first place).

  153. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @CaitieCat:

    In short, what does the economy do with (conservatively) 60% of nearly one million officers (federal and state with arrest powers in 2008, 920,000), many of whom have families set up to live on a middle-class salary? What do those half a million people do with themselves? Wouldn’t the US be setting itself up to have the Wild West all over again – literally hundreds of thousands of people with anger issues, police and military training, and hair-trigger responses, dumped on the population without jobs and with poor prospects to get any replacement work…”Christian State”, anyone?

    Or am I being too gloomy?

    You’re not being too gloomy.

    Obviously my plan as laid out here is a page or two short of a full and effective checklist. De-Baathification was on my mind as well, but ***continuing to give those officers powers of arrest, investigation, interrogation, and (violent) intervention when they don’t deserve to be trusted with those powers*** is worse than removing them – kinda by definition of the word “deserve”. [Which is at issue in another thread. :sigh:]

    I think one of the things that must be acknowledged is that if a large number of LEOs are abusing the trust we give them (and I think that’s true – the Blue Wall of Silence is an abuse of public trust that is distressingly common even among cops considered “good”), that can only be because we set up a system that trained officers to behave this way. We, as civilians, created police forces that have the incentives and policies and procedures and privileges and immunities and horrible conflicting expectations that we, as civilians, chose to instill.

    I don’t mind throwing out every practice and policy and starting over. But I will not throw out the people. Even the worst of those who can’t be convicted of a felony should not be discarded during this process. We created this mess. (We meaning voters and none of us are without some responsibility, but especially whites and especially the wealthy: the two groups the system is set up to most benefit.) We have to take responsibility rather than use our (understandable) outrage to absolve us of our duty to the persons we trained to fill, occupy, and perpetuate racist, mental-illness hostile, entitled and corruptible-if-not-corrupt agencies.

    NO, I don’t want policing in the US to continue on anything like it’s present course. YES human inertia requires the dismissal of humans whose faults are entirely the result of adapting to the positions we asked them to occupy. But there’s no reason that such dismissal requires us to fail to support those persons throughout their transition, much less to demonize them while anointing ourselves in purifying moral outrage.

    Our police are what our societies have made them. Neither individuals nor demographic groups bear equal responsibility for having created them in this form, but we must all pull together to remake them.

    And as long as we’re dreaming, let’s do it with Koch money.

  154. militantagnostic says

    Tony @147

    I don’t think “extrajudicial execution ” is the appropriate term – this sounds more like killing for fun. In some of these cases it looks like the officer just took advantage of an opportunity to do something they had always wanted to do – kill a human. I wonder if there are many cases where LEOs have killed more than once.

  155. rq says

    militantagnostic
    Yes, there are such cases. I believe just recently (can’t remember the name) an officer was cleared of wrongdoing for the second time. They had also been cleared of wrongdoing in a fatal shooting in 2007 or 2008, I think. I’ll take a closer look later, I think it got mentioned towards the end of the last thread. Most officers who do fatally shoot (or even not fatally shoot) unarmed black people have a history of violence and complaints within the force – those complaints are not always dealt with adequately or the accusations are dropped for one reason or another, but there does seem to be a pattern.

  156. militantagnostic says

    I think a first step has to be independent investigation of every incident, not just fatalities by a body like the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, but maybe with less police involved in the investigation. As far as I can tell, most of these incidents are only superficially investigated by the police department that was involved – nothing remotely resembling an independent investigation.

  157. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    As far as I can tell, most of these incidents are only superficially investigated by the police department that was involved – nothing remotely resembling an independent investigation.

    And as far as I can tell, that is the only position consistent with the reporting.

    AKA: You are correct, militantagnostic.

  158. says

    militantagnostic @154:

    I don’t think “extrajudicial execution ” is the appropriate term – this sounds more like killing for fun.

    I disagree. I think it’s the right term-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment

    Extrajudicial punishment is punishment for an alleged crime or offense carried out without legal process or supervision from a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding.

    But in any case, there’s no reason it can’t be an extrajudicial execution done for fun. ::Shudder::

  159. rq says

    And in case anyone missed the protest for women by women yesterday, there will be more interspersed today.
    The baring of breasts is historically an act of mourning, grief or protest. #SayHerName encapsulates this perfectly.

    Black women make up 32.6% of the female prison population, but only 6.6% of the country’s population. Yet, silence. #SayHerName

    New report on Attica prison riot reveals inmates were beaten, TW.

    More than 40 years after the nation’s bloodiest prison rebellion, newly released documents contain accounts, some never before seen publicly, from National Guardsmen and a doctor who said they saw injured inmates beaten with clubs and others with wounds indicating they were tortured as state police and guards retook control of Attica.

    The documents released Thursday, two years after state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sought the disclosure, say several witnesses to brutal crimes against prisoners weren’t contacted or interviewed by criminal investigators. They show apparent violent crimes by authorities, described by neutral witnesses, after police and guards fatally shot 29 inmates and 10 hostages and 1,300 inmates surrendered after their riot and five-day standoff at the maximum-security prison in western New York.

    Such abuses have long been alleged by prisoners and their families, and the newly released witness accounts lend credence to their arguments. A 1975 report by Judge Bernard Meyer concluded there was no intentional cover-up, only serious errors in judgment and omissions in evidence gathered by troopers. He also noted an imbalance in the ensuing prosecution: More than five dozen prisoners and just one state trooper were indicted.

    That conclusion, contained in the 570-page report’s first volume, has been public for 40 years. The 46 pages detailing some of the factual basis for Meyer’s findings were released Thursday. Another 350 pages remain sealed because they contained grand jury testimony, which by law is generally kept secret to protect the privacy of witnesses and investigation targets. A judge refused last year to make an exception to release those pages for the public and historical Attica record.

    “Today, we are shining a light on one of the darkest chapters of our history,” said Marty Mack, executive deputy state attorney general. This release might bring families of the victims nearer to closure and help Americans learn from what happened, he said.

    Michael Smith, a corrections officer taken hostage in the riot and shot when the prison was stormed by police, said Thursday that so much was redacted there isn’t much new, and significant information is still being suppressed.

    “The truth will all come out someday but I don’t know if anybody’s going to be alive who was involved in the event,” he said.

    In the newly released details, Meyer wrote that his own public request for information led to contacts and interviews that were made available to the criminal investigators but apparently went unused. Meyer, who later sat for seven years on New York’s highest court, died in 2005.

    “A National Guardsman who treated wounded inmates only to have bandages ripped off, saw stretchers deliberately tilted, saw guards beat inmates on medical carts with clubs, saw a prison doctor pull an inmate off a cart and kick him in the stomach, saw inmates beaten while running a gauntlet,” Meyer wrote. The criminal investigation files contained no record of the guardsman or any attempt to interview him, he noted.

    A doctor from Genesee Memorial Hospital saw “an inmate with large wounds around his rectum which were not from gunshot,” which the doctor later heard were caused by a broken bottle, Meyer wrote. The doctor also said he was refused permission to take a brain-damaged inmate to the hospital and a day later saw prisoners with untreated broken bones.

    Another guardsman testified in a federal class-action suit by inmates that he saw “inmates beaten on stretchers, poked in the groin and rectum with nightsticks, beaten while running through gauntlets,” Meyer wrote. Other inmates and observers testified about cigarette burns on prisoners.

    Schneiderman two years ago sought full disclosure of the report, offering to redact only names of grand jury witnesses, noting related prosecutions and lawsuits were done. Others seeking the complete records are the Forgotten Victims of Attica, a group of prison employees who survived and relatives of those who died.

    Protest in Oakland, #oakland police telling us we can’t take the streets and that we must leave immediately #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter

    Quite telling to see an OPD motorcycle cop lowkey threaten @brownblaze with his bike at protest against police violence towards Black women

    And of course, from Baltimore: Six Baltimore police officers indicted in death of Freddie Gray

    The expected grand jury action leaves the most significant ­charges in the case unchanged, including a second-degree murder count against one officer and involuntary manslaughter ­charges against that officer and three others. The indictment means that the case will move out of the lower District Court and into Circuit Court.

    Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, who filed charges against the officers May 1, said at a news conference Thursday that prosecutors presented evidence in the case to the grand jury over two weeks. As a result, the grand jury added a charge of reckless endangerment against each of the officers.

    Mosby initially had charged three of the six officers with false imprisonment in connection with what she said was the illegal arrest of Gray. However, the indictment does not include any false imprisonment counts, meaning that those charges are no longer part of the cases. […]

    The officers are expected to be arraigned July 2 in Baltimore Circuit Court, which could mean making their first public appearances before a judge. They each are free after posting bail set by a court commissioner after they surrendered May 1. After an indictment, when a criminal matter moves from District to Circuit Court, a judge usually reviews a defendant’s bail and could adjust it based on any new or dropped charges.

    Typically prosecutors and defense attorneys wait until after indictments to begin filing motions that outline their cases. But in this high-profile case, the sides already have begun to lay out their positions, arguing in court over the legality of Gray’s arrest and allegations of conflict of interest involving the city’s top prosecutors.

    Also Thursday, federal authorities released a series of wanted posters, seeking to identify people believed to have intentionally set fires in looted stores and on the streets during overnight rioting that began shortly after Gray’s April 27 funeral. […]

    The union representing Baltimore police officers and attorneys for the individual officers have lashed out against the charges­­ and Mosby, accusing her of several conflicts of interests — her husband is a City Council member who represents the district in which Gray was arrested. They also say she rushed her investigation and charged the officers to quell the unrest, which they contend benefited her and her husband’s political ambitions.

    Attorneys for the officers filed a voluminous motion contending that statements such as the ones Mosby made during her May 1 announcement went beyond mere recitation of the criminal charges and laid bare biases showing that she was trying to placate hostilities and elevate her own stature. They also have noted that the lawyer for the Gray family once represented Mosby on an attorney grievance issue. Those attorneys are calling for Mosby to be removed from the case.

    Mosby’s office has countered in court, calling the accusations desperate and an attempt to hijack the grand jury process.

  160. fergl100 says

    Just listened to a BBC radio item on “why are so many black people killed by the police in USA?”

    It was quite good. The training of the police was questioned. Tropes like “all situations and all people are a possible threat” the fact that their is a militaristic slant to the training, this fact attracts militaristic types, 90% training on self preservation and 10% on conflict issues etc.

  161. rq says

    Carrying our burdens on the train #SheMatters – more of this action as we move along, too!

    #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter #BaltimoreUprising

    “BLM is the biggest issue of our time and we are becoming irrelevant because we are silent on this issue,” #CBTU Quick clip from an event.

    It is so important to not participate in the erasure of black women who are victims of state sanctioned violence. #SayHerName
    And when I say BLACK WOMEN that includes BLACK TRANS WOMEN. #SayHerName
    For example, #KaylaMoore. Transgender sister. Murdered by police in her own home. Her last worde: “I can’t breathe.” #SayHerName

  162. rq says

    Just going to leave this one here for a little bit of WTF?
    How a former Virginia lawmaker made a bad situation even worse, in 1 picture.

    FBI deputy director speaks ahead of Brelo verdict, yep, still waiting on that one.

    On Thursday, FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano, a Middleberg Heights native, drew on Baltimore and Ferguson when he weighed in for reporters in on the Michael Brelo verdict that is looming large.

    “The citizens of this great city and other cities have the right to protest. They have a right to vent. They have a right to speak their opinion but they don’t have a right to destroy the city and businesses. A lot of the changes in this country have come from good civil protests,” said Giuliano

    When asked about local law enforcement’s concerns over protesters coming to Cleveland, Giuliano said, “It’s outsiders who tend to stir the pot. If we have that intel we pass it directly on to the PD, we have worked with Ferguson. We’ve worked with Baltimore and we will work with the Cleveland PD on that very thing. That ‘s what we bring to the game.”

    Giuliano added that the FBI will be a significant support role for security when the RNC comes to Cleveland:

    “I feel very good that this will be a well protected event. I believe Cleveland will be very well prepared.”

    In general, Giuliano believes police are more vulnerable nowadays than even in the days when he was in blue as part of a Violent Crimes unit and SWAT.

    “I do worry about that. And we worry about people in military uniforms that they could be targeted. That is a very real concern that we have. “

    The ABC on the Baltimore indictment, 6 Baltimore Police officers in Freddie Gray case indicted, and the New York Times, too: 6 Baltimore Police officers indicted in the death of Freddie Gray.

    #AlbertaSpruil: Government worker. Cops threw a grenade into her home. She died of a heart attack. #SayHerName

    The ACLU on the Denver PD, of which we saw a bit yesterday evening: Report Shows Denver Sheriff Department is Badly Broken and in Need of Deep, Substantial Reform

    Earlier today, an independent assessment team, which had been hired by the City of Denver to review the culture and practices of the Denver Sheriff Department following a string of multi-million dollar settlements and judgments for excessive force, released a comprehensive report with 277 recommendations for reform of the Department.

    The ACLU of Colorado issued the following statement:

    “Today’s report from the independent assessment team confirmed that the Denver Sheriff Department is badly broken and in need of deep and substantial reform. The report found ‘problems at almost every level’ of the department, including a near complete lack of accountability for use-of-force incidents against prisoners. It is clear from the report’s findings that a pervasive culture has taken hold at the Denver jail, in which guards and officers believe that they have wide license to violate the rights of prisoners, because there is hardly any oversight or discipline for their actions.

    “The public cannot trust a broken department that lacks accountability, especially when taxpayers are repeatedly forced to pay the bill for multi-million dollar settlements and judgments. We call on Mayor Hancock and Denver city officials to transform the culture at the Denver Sheriff Department from top to bottom and to give the department the complete overhaul that it clearly needs.”

    That’s a lot of recommendations.

  163. rq says

    #ShellyFrey: Single mother killed for shoplifting by off-duty cop working security for @Walmart #SayHerName

    .@bdoulaoblongata so damn #FOCUSED! #KimKing #SayHerName #SheMatters #BlackWomensLivesMatter #stl #ABanks

    Paternalistic #Metrolink security demanded to know where we were going and who we were. Really, @STLMetro? REALLY?

    Interesting how a march for Black women and full of Black women has a heavier police presence than any other action I’ve done in Oakland.
    .@libbyformayor’s new evening protest curfew not working out so well thus far. Protesters on OPD doorstep. #PaintItBlack #SayHerName

    And this in regard to the Olympia shooting, where the mayor is already calling for ‘healing’: There’s a tendency to push black folk into this immediate “healing” phase without acknowledging the actual trauma.

  164. rq says

    The #Oakland police are giving us a dispersal order already and we literally JUST took off on the March. #SayHerName
    OPD Threatening arrests now. We are headed to the police station. About 200 deep. Headed down Broadway. #Oakland #SayHerName
    Police blocking us from moving forward on the streets AND sidewalks now…. After telling us we can assemble on sidewalks… #Oakland

    Hundreds of people here to protest 2 men shot in #Olympia earlier today. Silence continues here in the intersection.
    Group protesting the shooting of 2 men by police arrives at #Olympia City Hall. @KIRO7Seattle
    Silence here in #Olympia after 2 men shot by police earlier today. @KIRO7Seattle

  165. rq says

    #SayHerName #MitriceRichardson – found dead after the LA County Sheriff’s Dept let her go in the wee early hours of the a.m. in Malibu.

    Blackout For Human Rights

    “On May 20, 2015 the African American Policy Forum, the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia University and Andrea Ritchie, Soros Justice Fellow and expert on policing of women and LGBT people of color released #SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, a document highlighting stories of Black women who have been killed by police and shining a light on forms of police brutality often experienced by women such as sexual assault.” Please Read this Important Report: http://bit.ly/1cR27AO via AAPF

    “Tanisha Anderson. Rekia Boyd. Miriam Carey. Michelle Cusseaux. Shelly Frey. Kayla Moore. These names are etched into tombstones that stand over the graves of black women killed by police – and were echoed at a vigil in New York City on Wednesday, where dozens gathered to show that these women should not be forgotten.” Lilly Workneh: http://huff.to/1Bf7lfy via Huffington Post

    “We will not remain silent. If we remain silent, who will march for us, who will speak for us?” Joanne Smith, executive director of Girls for Gender Equity, told Mic. “We are literally fighting for our lives when we demand that the deaths and atrocities against black girls and women in this country be made known and included in our nations racial justice fight of the 21st century. ” Derrick Clifton: http://bit.ly/1LhVFOr via Mic

    “Black Women Are Getting Killed by Police Too — So Why Aren’t More People Discussing It?” Derrick Clifton: http://bit.ly/1R8msAx via Mic

    Lots of pictures at that link, too.

  166. rq says

    Officer-involved shooting press conference at Olympia City Hall

    Flanked by Olympia Mayor Stephen Buxbaum (right) and City Manager Steve Hall Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts gives a preliminary report on the officer-involved shooting that occurred around 1am Thursday in West Olympia. staff video by Steve Bloom

    Standard story-line.

    Olympia’s mayor already called for community to come together and heal. Less than 24hrs later. #OlympiaShooting

    Tamir Rice was not charged posthumously by Cleveland police – no, he spent several days in hospital dying, so maybe they charged him then…? No?

    Rumors began swirling online Wednesday that Cleveland police charged Tamir Rice with aggravated menacing and inducing panic a week after he was shot and killed by an officer.

    That’s not entirely accurate.

    “We don’t charge dead people,” Joe Frolik, a spokesman with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office said.

    Police arrest people. They don’t charge them. It’s a confusing bit of semantics that also differs from state to state.

    In Ohio, charges in misdemeanor cases are often directly filed by municipal court prosecutors. In felony cases, a prosecutor most often presents facts gathered by police to a grand jury. The grand jury decides what, if any, charges to hand up to the court.

    The first story, written by the Daily Kos’ Shaun King, is based on a police report filed a week after Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police. That story has been revised to say police “wanted” to charge Rice. His piece was picked up by Raw Story and Esquire.

    Northeast Ohio Media Group obtained the same incident report in March through a public records request. It lists the offenses of aggravated menacing and inducing panic.

    The report was one of two generated by Cleveland police from the incident. The other report, created after Tamir’s death, is titled “Dead body/suspected homicide/child fatality” and lists no offenses.

    You can view the documents below. […]

    Police reports list what Frolik calls “preliminary charges.” While the report lists “charges,” those are more of a suggestion from the officer as to what charges prosecutors might seek.

    “In a perfect world we should come up with some different semantics, because it can be confusing,” Frolik said.

    Loehmann, on the other hand, may face charges in connection with the incident. His case is still being investigated by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office.

    Oh, so they were going to recommend that he be charged with all that. Makes much more sense, uh-huh.

    Beautiful action @MillennialAU Laying burdens of Black Women at Pagedale PD. Balloon release for slain Black women.

    “I’m here for the women I won’t name that have been raped by @BaltimorePolice, in a station, on the street…”

    #SayHerName: Families and Social Media Rally for Justice in the Police Killings of Black Women

    Over the last several months, the social media and activists have made it clear that #BlackLivesMatter. The movement has grown worldwide, but often missing from the dynamic is the talk about black women who have been killed at the hands of police.

    According to a new report, “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women,” by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality & Social Policy Studies at Columbia University, the number of cases involving black women assaulted or killed by law-enforcement officers has increased.

    “Although Black women are routinely killed, raped and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality,” said Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, director of the AAPF and co-author of the report, in a statement. “Yet, inclusion of Black women’s experiences in social movements, media narratives and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.”

    On Wednesday a rally was held in New York City to bring to light the names of the black women who have lost their lives because of police officers. Families of women, like Rekia Boyd, who were killed by police were in attendance. And the call for action continues online with the hashtag #SayHerName, which highlights the issues faced by black women and their encounters with law enforcement.

  167. rq says

    Grand jury indicts 6 officers in death of Freddie Gray, that’s the CTV there.

    Gathering at Emeryville Home Depot where #YuvetteHenderson was killed #SayHerName @deray @MCHammer

    “The second form of police brutality is sexual assault,” Jason Perez from @BYP_100 #CBTU #SayHerName

    Holding their burdens @bdoulaoblongata @geauxAWAYheaux @dlatchison011

    What’s her name? #KimKing #RekiaBoyd #AiyanaJones #YvetteSmith #SheMatters #BlackWomenMatter

    And on the bare-chested protest, Bodies That Matter: The African History of Naked Protest, FEMEN Aside.

    If you’re unfamiliar, FEMEN is a Ukraine based feminist group with chapters throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. FEMEN has been making waves for the past year now, through their chosen method of activism: naked protest. While the method has gained popularity and visibility in the mainstream, it has also been problematized by feminists in other parts of the world. This past November, when Egyptian feminist Alia al-Mahdy posted photos of her naked body wrapped in an Egyptian flag, there was a huge debate over the use of the method as an example of European feminists imposing their values onto Third world feminism/Islamic feminism. Sara Mourad has already provided an excellent analysis contextualizing the debates surrounding Alia’s naked body, which is in many ways applicable to the latest manifestation of FEMEN’s tactics in Tunisia, via the naked body of Amina Tyler. Tyler’s naked protest has been the topic du jour particularly because of the call for her to be punished with at least 80 to 100 lashes, or actually death by stoning.

    Maroud highlights how many women of color feminists have taken issue with what they consider a clear example of imperial feminism, through importing western understandings of nakedness onto Islamic notions of the body; I want to draw attention to what continues to be overlooked. It seems that no one is emphasizing the fact that these white feminists do not own the method they have chosen to declare as their call to arms against patriarchy. In short, before we discuss how FEMEN is engaging in somewhat problematic dynamics with women of color feminists throughout the Middle East & North Africa region, we should recall that their chosen method of protest is certainly not exclusive to white European feminists. Have we forgotten the naked protests that have taken place in Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya and Uganda for over a century? While the conversations surrounding FEMEN’s growing presence in the MENA region certainly highlight valid arguments about Western feminism and how it relates to other notions of feminism/womanism throughout the globe, what I find to be the greatest example of liberalism is that they’ve managed to convince us that they own the method and in some ways, how we understand our own nakedness.

    What is arguably one of the most powerful manifestations of naked protest over the past century took place during the Women’s War in Eastern Nigeria (1929) and was a significant manifestation of black women’s resistance to colonial authority and racialised Western notions of the body. The significance of the history of this method continues to manifest in naked protests, which have taken place in West, East, and Southern Africa as recently as December 2012. Yet these black women and their unyielding fearlessness to literally put their bodies on the line and stand against multinational oil companies, corruption, and violence, receive little visibility in the mainstream. Sometimes, even in their own countries, their commitment and strength is dismissed as foolish, unfruitful and futile.

    In this era of social media and new technologies FEMEN’s tactics are able to gain notice through their chosen mediums of expression and well connected network. The issue is not so much that they use naked protest as a method, but rather that we continue to confuse our disapproval of how their tactics mimic imperial feminism with the method itself. In other words, FEMEN’s expansion into the Middle East and North Africa is likely a glaring example of imperial feminism, but not because of the method. Women of color, specifically throughout the continent have been using naked protest and genital cursing for centuries to express their intolerance and perform resistance. FEMEN’s naked bodies aren’t the only bodies making waves- while their tactics are highly visible, they have yet to shut down an entire oil facility for seven days with the simple threat of disrobing.

    Something new every day.

  170. says

    Excerpt from ‘Three Thousand Years of Racism’, by Merlin Stone

    “Racism is not, and never has been, a static attitude, a monolithic form of behavior, or a body of random events. The records make it clear that racism occurs as a long-term *process* comprised of specific stages…To understand racism as a process, we should first delineate the two major aspects within it…The first aspect, and nearly always the underlying purpose of racism, is *economic racism*, the theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor from people of a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own. The second aspect is *cultural racism*, the act of propagandizing and/or believing that a racial or ethnic group other than one’s own is innately inferior in human development. This second aspect may range from assertions of an innate lack of mental or creative capacities to an innate lack of various ‘moral’ capacities. It is the assertion that the lack of these qualities is innate, i.e., genetic, as much a biologically determined factor as skin coloring, that is the core of cultural racism.
    “The first stage of economic racism is the initial theft of the land, property, resources and/or labor belonging to another racial or ethnic group by violence as extreme as that required to accomplish the theft…This theft is supported by the first stage of cultural racism. This is the assertion that the victims of the theft are innately immoral, even innately evil…In this first stage of cultural racism there is little or no emphasis on a supposedly innate mental superiority of the aggressors; innate moral superiority is the issue. The aggressors declare that they are innately moral. The victims are supposedly lacking in fully developed human capacities for morals and ethics, leading to the aggressors’ declaration that they must be controlled or annihilated. The aggressors claim to be combating this evil and immorality for the sake of all humankind or in the name of some supposedly higher divine force…the length of time of the entire first stage encompasses the initial attack until the final conquest, a time period that may range from several weeks to several centuries, i.e., as long as there is serious resistance by the victims.
    “The second stage of economic racism is the long-term control by the aggressors/conquerors of what they have taken by force and then claim is rightfully theirs. The land, property and resources of the victims are legally in the conquerors’ name no matter that they wrote the new laws themselves…The level of overt violence in this second stage is lower than in the first stage but is always present as an example or threat against rebellion by the victims.
    “The second stage of cultural racism supports the second stage of economic racism. This is the assertion that the members of the subjugated population are innately mentally inferior, e.g., less able to learn, less inventive, less creative toward cultural accomplishments, at a lower level of human development, etc. The menial jobs allotted to the conquered victims supposedly affirm this innate mental inferiority. These assertions of the victims’ supposed inferiority are structured into the social institutions of the conquerors, as well as the laws, customs, educational and economic systems and, at times, the religious systems.
    “Deprived of their ancestral lands, property and resources, of their own cultures and customs, even of control of their own lives, the victims and their descendents gradually internalize the conquerors’ assertions of their superiority. The level of this internalization creates various sub-stages, forming a direct ratio to the level of repressive violence, i.e. the greater the internalization, the less overt the violence – and vice versa…The length of time of this second stage is determined by the ability of the aggressors/conquerors to maintain the subjugation of the victims and to fend off rebellion.
    “But the most important factor in understanding the entire process of racism is perceiving the conquerors’ strategy of revising both aspects of first stage racism upon any serious intransigence or rebellion by the victims at any time during the second stage, i.e., an acceleration of repressive violence accompanied by a reversion to the various forms of assertions of an innate evil or immorality in the rebellious victims…the conquerors’ strategy of vacillation between the two sets of quite different stereotypes of cultural racism:…assertions of an innate mental inferiority upon the passivity or cooperation of the victims; the assertions of an innate evil or immorality when the victims refuse to be victimized.”

  172. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    I can’t believe no one set up surreptitious recording after the first memorial was destroyed. The video would be invaluable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed cops doing the vandalism.

  173. rq says

    Crip Dyke
    This is only the second attempt to set up a memorial, so that may be in the works, once it’s actually put up. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened yet but is imminent. And yes, I agree – the video would be invaluable, whether it is cops or people close to cops.

  174. rq says

    Sorry, I thought you meant the previous memorial that was meant to be permanent (the tree and plaque). My bad,

  178. Pteryxx says

    More ways wealthy investors, big and small, are squeezing profits out of poor folks’ housing. Noted here because the foreclosure crisis disproportionately affected black people, and because the current schemes fall hardest on poor and underserved communities.

    Boing Boing: Hedge funds buy swathes of foreclosed subprimes, force up rents, float rent-bonds

    When a giant hedge fund is bidding on all the foreclosed houses in a poor neighborhood, living humans don’t stand a chance — but that’s OK, because rapacious investors make great landlords.

    Wall Street investors have bought more than 200,000 foreclosed houses in the past two years, bundling together the rents they generate into bonds that are just like subprime mortgage bonds, only without the pretense that the poor people who generate their payments have a hope of ever getting out from under their obligation to enrich the richest people in the world.

    Blackstone — owner of Seaworld, Hilton Hotels, and the Weather Channel — is the biggest player here, and when they come into town to buy up all the single-family properties, they price actual families out of the market. Their securitized rent payment bonds are backed by some of the biggest subprime criminals, including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan.

    Hedge funds really epitomize compassionate landlording, too. When Blackstone buys in, it jacks up tenants’ rents by as much as a third and immediately begins eviction proceedings against renters who can’t pay. If there are any troubles with your payments, they assess fines against you and make you miss work to pay the rent and penalties in person.

    MoJo:

    Toward the end of 2012, Mark Alston, a real estate broker in Los Angeles, began noticing something strange. Home prices were starting to rise, and fast—about 20 percent annually. Normally, higher home prices would signal increased demand from homebuyers and indicate that the economy was rebounding. But the home ownership rate was still dropping. Somehow, the real estate market was out of whack.

    Then there were the buyers themselves. “I went two years without selling to a black family, and that wasn’t for lack of trying,” recalls Alston, whose business is concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods where the majority of residents are African American and Latino. Now all his buyers were businessmen in suits. And weirder yet, they were all paying in cash.

    Over the last two years, private equity firms and hedge funds have amassed an unprecedented real estate empire, snapping up Spanish revivals in Phoenix, adobes in Los Angeles, Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, and brick-faced bungalows in Chicago. In total, Wall Street investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in some of the cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown. But they’re not simply flipping these houses. Instead, they’ve started bundling some of them into a new kind of financial product that could blow up the housing market all over again.

    No company has bought more houses than the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. (Its many investments include Hilton Hotels, the Weather Channel, and SeaWorld. Among its institutional investors are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase.) Through its subsidiary, Invitation Homes, Blackstone has picked up houses through local brokers, at foreclosure auctions, and in bulk purchases. Last April, it bought 1,400 houses in Atlanta in a single day. In Phoenix, some neighborhoods have a Blackstone-owned home on just about every block. As of November, Blackstone had acquired 40,000 houses, most of them foreclosures, worth $7.5 billion. Today, it is the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the nation.

    On the other end, individuals are looking to cash in by buying trailer parks: The Guardian

    Welcome to Mobile Home University, a three-day, $2,000 “boot camp” that teaches people from across the US how to make a fortune by buying up trailer parks.

    Trailer parks are big and profitable business – particularly after hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost their homes in the financial crisis created a huge demand for affordable housing. According to US Census figures, more than 20 million people, or 6% of the population, live in trailer parks.

    It is a market that has not been lost on some of the country’s richest and most high-profile investors. Sam Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) is the largest mobile home park owner in America, with controlling interests in nearly 140,000 parks. In 2014, ELS made $777m in revenue, helping boost Zell’s near-$5bn fortune.

    Warren Buffett, the nation’s second-richest man with a $72bn fortune, owns the biggest mobile home manufacturer in the US, Clayton Homes, and the two biggest mobile home lenders, 21st Mortgage Corporation and Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance Company. Buffett’s trailer park investments will feature heavily at his annual meeting this weekend, which will be attended by more than 40,000 shareholders in Omaha.

    […]

    Rolfe, who bought a pistol for personal security when he bought his first park, 20 years ago, says he sent a letter to every tenant at that park in Grapevine, Texas, telling them the rent was going to more than double but was still below the market rate of $325.

    “If you don’t like this or you think you can do better, here’s a list of all the other parks in Grapevine and a list of the owners,” he said in the letter. “Go ahead, call them if you want to move. How many customers do you think we lost? Zero. Where were they going to go?”

    Rolfe, who started Mobile Home University seven years ago and now runs boot camps every couple months in cities across the country, tells his students they can easily increase the rent even at parks that are already charging market rates, because there is so much demand for affordable housing and local authorities are very reluctant to grant permission for new parks.

    He quotes US government statistics showing that in 2013, 39% of Americans earned less than $20,000 – less than the government’s poverty threshold income of $20,090 for a three-person household.

    “That’s huge. No one believes that number – people say: ‘You’re crazy, this is America, everyone is rich.’ [Being on an income of $20,000 or less] means you have a budget of about $500 a month for your housing, but the average two-bedroom apartment is $1,109 a month. There’s not a lot you can do.”

  179. Pteryxx says

    In better news from Fox: Veteran John Watson, 96, finally recognized as a Tuskegee Airman, receives Congressional Gold Medal.

    During the war, Watson served as an aircraft crew chief in support of the first African-American combat pilots, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He has long considered himself a member of the group, but never received any official praise or commendation.

    Initially, Watson got on the computer himself, to try and figure out how someone with his service record as part of the group could officially become recognized. But with little technical expertise, that initial search didn’t take Watson very far.

    His relatives, however, then reached out to Sgt. Paul Dorsey, vice president of the “Always Free Honor Flight,” who was able to get word to someone at the office of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

    “He knew he was there,” Manchin explained. “He knew he did his duty and did it well and had succeeded, but he had never been truly honored as a Tuskegee Airman.”

    Manchin’s staff was able to expedite a review process that normally takes several months. The Tuskegee Airman Association ensured Watson was, in fact, part of the historic group, so the veteran could be feted during an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

    There are fewer than 200 Tuskegee Airmen still alive, according to a January 2015 tally.

  180. rq says

    Some ctach-up (but holy shit, HappyNat, I was afraid of that :( ).

    @OlyPD deployed 6 flashbangs into crowds of people next to city hall #olympia #blacklivesmatter, this from night before last.

    Time, Topless Women Stage #SayHerName Rally Against Perceived Police Brutality

    The demonstration was part of a nationwide day of action to protest the deaths of Aiyana Jones, Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Rekia Boyd and other women and girls killed by law-enforcement officers, reports USA Today.

    The rally followed the release of a report Wednesday by the African American Policy Forum named Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, which highlights the stories of black women who have suffered from alleged police brutality. […]

    Campaigners said rallies raising awareness of police brutality in the wake of the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others had focused on black men who had died, and overlooked the many black women who have suffered the same fate.

    Protests and vigils took place in cities across the country including New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, two months after an officer was acquitted for the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Boyd.

    Darnisha Harris. Tanisha Anderson. Shelly Frey. Rekia Boyd. Yvette Smith. Shantel Davis. Alesia Thomas. Alberta Spruill. #SayHerName.

    , that’s Olympia again.

    Hundreds marched peacefully in Washington state’s capital city to protest a police shooting that wounded two unarmed stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store.

    The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting that left a 21-year-old man in critical condition and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive.

    The stepbrothers are black, and the officer is white, but Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said, “There’s no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all.”

    Protesters who turned out Thursday evening held signs that read “Race is a Factor” and “We Are Grieving.”

    The two men were identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, both of Olympia.

    “It was terrible,” the young men’s mother, Crystal Chaplin, told KIRO-TV. “It’s heartbreaking to see two of my babies in the hospital over something stupid.”

    The shooting is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies. Brad Watkins, chief deputy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department, said two skateboards were recovered from the shooting scene and an investigation will likely take three to six weeks. The young men had no guns, investigators said.

    The crowd of demonstrators rallied first at a park, then marched about a mile to a building that houses the Olympia police headquarters and City Hall. Protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” ”No Justice, No Peace” and the names of the young men who were shot.

    Olympia police tweeted their thanks to marchers “for keeping the event nonviolent.”

    “We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult circumstance and help us understand this tragic event,” the police chief told a news conference Thursday afternoon. […]

    The shooting follows a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, which set off weeks of protests and a national “Black Lives Matter” movement that has gained momentum across the country.

    Olympia Mayor Stephen H. Buxbaum called for calm in the community.

    “It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law,” he said. “Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive.”

    Merritt Long, a retired chairman of the state’s liquor control board, was one of several residents to attend the news conference Thursday.

    “Does the punishment fit the crime?” he asked afterward. “Given the seeming epidemic of this happening not only here but in our country, it makes you pause and wonder what’s going on.”

    Gentrification’s insidious violence: The truth about American cities

    While film narratives of white folks in low-income neighborhoods tend to focus on how endangered they are by a gangland black or brown menace, this patient was singular in that he was literally the only victim of black on white violence I encountered in my entire 10-year career as a medic.

    “What is distinctively ‘American’ is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history,” Richard Slotkin writes, “but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced, the forms of symbolic violence we imagine or invent, and the political uses to which we put that symbolism.” Slotkin was talking about the American frontier as a symbolic reference point for justifying expansionist violence throughout history. Today, we can see the mytho-political uses of symbolic violence in mainstream media portrayals of the “hood.”

    It’s easy to fixate on physical violence. Movies sexualize it, broadcasters shake their heads as another fancy graphic whirs past sensationalizing it, politicians build careers decrying it with one side of their mouths and justifying it with the other. But institutionalized violence moves in far more insidious and wide-reaching patterns. “Gentrification,” Suey Park and Dr. David J. Leonard wrote in a recent post at Model View Culture, “represents a socio-historic process where rising housing costs, public policy, persistent segregation, and racial animus facilitates the influx of wealthier, mostly white, residents into a particular neighborhood. Celebrated as ‘renewal’ and an effort to ‘beautify’ these communities, gentrification results in the displacement of residents.”

    Gentrification is violence. Couched in white supremacy, it is a systemic, intentional process of uprooting communities. It’s been on the rise, increasing at a frantic rate in the last 20 years, but the roots stretch back to the disenfranchisement that resulted from white flight and segregationist policies. Real estate agents dub changing neighborhoods with new, gentrifier-friendly titles that designate their proximity to even safer areas: Bushwick becomes East Williamsburg, parts of Flatbush are now Prospect Park South. Politicians manipulate zoning laws to allow massive developments with only token nods at mixed-income housing.

    Beyond these political and economic maneuvers, though, the thrust of gentrification takes place in our mythologies of the hood. It is a result, as Park and Leonard explain, of a “discourse that imagines neighborhoods of color as pathological and criminal, necessitating outside intervention for the good of all.” Here’s where my pistol-whipped patient’s revelation about his cinematic experience kicks in. The dominant narrative of the endangered white person barely making it out of the hood alive is, of course, a myth. No one is safer in communities of color than white folks. White privilege provides an invisible force field around them, powered by the historically grounded assurance that the state and media will prosecute any untoward event they may face.

    With gentrification, the central act of violence is one of erasure. Accordingly, when the discourse of gentrification isn’t pathologizing communities of color, it’s erasing them. “Girls,” for example, reimagines today’s Brooklyn as an entirely white community. Here’s a show that places itself in the epicenter of a gentrifying city with gentrifiers for characters – it is essentially a show about gentrification that refuses to address gentrification. After critics lambasted Season 1 for its lack of diversity, the show brought in Donald Glover to play a black Republican and still managed to avoid the more pressing and relevant question of displacement and racial disparity that the characters are, despite their self-absorption, deeply complicit with. What’s especially frustrating about “Girls” not only dodging the topic entirely but pushing back – often with snark and defensiveness against calls for more diversity – is that it’s a show that seems to want to bring a more nuanced take on the complexities of modern life.
    […]

    For groups facing economic and cultural marginalization in the U.S., community means much more than just a residential area. In a country whose institutions historically fail or deliberately erase us, community constitutes a central pillar in surviving hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Technology has brought new possibilities for collective action and resistance, but the centrality of physical community remains crucial. What becomes of community organizing, which is responsible for our continued survival here, when communities are increasingly uprooted and scattered?

    The shifting power dynamics of today’s urban neighborhoods are reflected even in issues of food and nutrition. “Once-affordable ingredients have been discovered by trendy chefs,” cultural critic Mikki Kendall writes, “and have been transformed into haute cuisine. Food is facing gentrification that may well put traditional meals out of reach for those who created the recipes. Despite the hype, these ingredients have always been delicious, nutritious and no less healthy than other sources of protein.” Writing about this phenomenon at Bitch Media, Soleil Ho stated that food gentrification takes “the form of a curious kind of reacharound logic wherein economic and racial minorities are castigated for eating ‘primitively’ and ‘unhealthily’ while their traditional foods are cherry picked for use by the upper class as ‘exotic’ delicacies.” […]

    These power plays – cultural, political, economic, racial — are the mechanics of a city at war with itself. It is a slow, dirty war, steeped in American traditions of racism and capitalism. The participants are often wary, confused, doubtful. Macklemore summarized the attitudes of many young white wealthy newcomers in his fateful text to Kendrick Lamar on Grammy night: “It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.” But as with Macklemore, being surprised about a system that has been in place for generations is useless. White supremacy is nothing if not predictable. To forge ahead, we require an outrageousness that sees beyond the tired tropes and easy outs that mass media provides. This path demands we organize with clarity about privilege and the shifting power dynamics of community. It requires foresight, discomfort and risk-taking. It will be on the Web and in the streets, in conversations, rants and marches.

    We need a new mythology.

    Man refused entry to club ‘because they’d filled their black quota’

    Kosi Orah, 19, was celebrating his birthday with friends when they queued to get in to Leicester’s Ghost nightclub at around 2am on Sunday.

    But according to Kosi, who is a first-year economics student at Leicester University, the bouncer turned the group away, allegedly saying there was ‘a quota of the number of black people allowed in the club.’ […]

    ‘He was almost apologetic,’ Kosi, who filmed the exchange, told the Sun.

    ‘But it was sickening. It left us devastated. It was like the kind of incident you heard about happening in parts of America in the 1960s.’

    Kosi, who plans to work in asset management once he leaves university, made a statement to police alleging a race hate crime. [….]

    ‘We feel very strongly that racism has no part in the night-time economy and we feel that this security employee acted out of character.’

    Police said: ‘We can confirm that the incident has been reported to Leicestershire Police, it’s been recorded as a racist incident and enquiries are ongoing into the report.

    ‘Leicestershire Police takes reports of racism extremely seriously and would encourage anyone who has been a victim of such a crime to contact them. Recent figures suggest that 82% of hate crime victims who were surve

  181. rq says

    Some ctach-up (but holy shit, HappyNat, I was afraid of that :( ).

    @OlyPD deployed 6 flashbangs into crowds of people next to city hall #olympia #blacklivesmatter, this from night before last.

    Time, Topless Women Stage #SayHerName Rally Against Perceived Police Brutality

    The demonstration was part of a nationwide day of action to protest the deaths of Aiyana Jones, Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Rekia Boyd and other women and girls killed by law-enforcement officers, reports USA Today.

    The rally followed the release of a report Wednesday by the African American Policy Forum named Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, which highlights the stories of black women who have suffered from alleged police brutality. […]

    Campaigners said rallies raising awareness of police brutality in the wake of the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others had focused on black men who had died, and overlooked the many black women who have suffered the same fate.

    Protests and vigils took place in cities across the country including New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, two months after an officer was acquitted for the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Boyd.

    Darnisha Harris. Tanisha Anderson. Shelly Frey. Rekia Boyd. Yvette Smith. Shantel Davis. Alesia Thomas. Alberta Spruill. #SayHerName.

    , that’s Olympia again.

    Hundreds marched peacefully in Washington state’s capital city to protest a police shooting that wounded two unarmed stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store.

    The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting that left a 21-year-old man in critical condition and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive.

    The stepbrothers are black, and the officer is white, but Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said, “There’s no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all.”

    Protesters who turned out Thursday evening held signs that read “Race is a Factor” and “We Are Grieving.”

    The two men were identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, both of Olympia.

    “It was terrible,” the young men’s mother, Crystal Chaplin, told KIRO-TV. “It’s heartbreaking to see two of my babies in the hospital over something stupid.”

    The shooting is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies. Brad Watkins, chief deputy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department, said two skateboards were recovered from the shooting scene and an investigation will likely take three to six weeks. The young men had no guns, investigators said.

    The crowd of demonstrators rallied first at a park, then marched about a mile to a building that houses the Olympia police headquarters and City Hall. Protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” ”No Justice, No Peace” and the names of the young men who were shot.

    Olympia police tweeted their thanks to marchers “for keeping the event nonviolent.”

    “We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult circumstance and help us understand this tragic event,” the police chief told a news conference Thursday afternoon. […]

    The shooting follows a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, which set off weeks of protests and a national “Black Lives Matter” movement that has gained momentum across the country.

    Olympia Mayor Stephen H. Buxbaum called for calm in the community.

    “It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law,” he said. “Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive.”

    Merritt Long, a retired chairman of the state’s liquor control board, was one of several residents to attend the news conference Thursday.

    “Does the punishment fit the crime?” he asked afterward. “Given the seeming epidemic of this happening not only here but in our country, it makes you pause and wonder what’s going on.”

    Gentrification’s insidious violence: The truth about American cities

    While film narratives of white folks in low-income neighborhoods tend to focus on how endangered they are by a gangland black or brown menace, this patient was singular in that he was literally the only victim of black on white violence I encountered in my entire 10-year career as a medic.

    “What is distinctively ‘American’ is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history,” Richard Slotkin writes, “but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced, the forms of symbolic violence we imagine or invent, and the political uses to which we put that symbolism.” Slotkin was talking about the American frontier as a symbolic reference point for justifying expansionist violence throughout history. Today, we can see the mytho-political uses of symbolic violence in mainstream media portrayals of the “hood.”

    It’s easy to fixate on physical violence. Movies sexualize it, broadcasters shake their heads as another fancy graphic whirs past sensationalizing it, politicians build careers decrying it with one side of their mouths and justifying it with the other. But institutionalized violence moves in far more insidious and wide-reaching patterns. “Gentrification,” Suey Park and Dr. David J. Leonard wrote in a recent post at Model View Culture, “represents a socio-historic process where rising housing costs, public policy, persistent segregation, and racial animus facilitates the influx of wealthier, mostly white, residents into a particular neighborhood. Celebrated as ‘renewal’ and an effort to ‘beautify’ these communities, gentrification results in the displacement of residents.”

    Gentrification is violence. Couched in white supremacy, it is a systemic, intentional process of uprooting communities. It’s been on the rise, increasing at a frantic rate in the last 20 years, but the roots stretch back to the disenfranchisement that resulted from white flight and segregationist policies. Real estate agents dub changing neighborhoods with new, gentrifier-friendly titles that designate their proximity to even safer areas: Bushwick becomes East Williamsburg, parts of Flatbush are now Prospect Park South. Politicians manipulate zoning laws to allow massive developments with only token nods at mixed-income housing.

    Beyond these political and economic maneuvers, though, the thrust of gentrification takes place in our mythologies of the hood. It is a result, as Park and Leonard explain, of a “discourse that imagines neighborhoods of color as pathological and criminal, necessitating outside intervention for the good of all.” Here’s where my pistol-whipped patient’s revelation about his cinematic experience kicks in. The dominant narrative of the endangered white person barely making it out of the hood alive is, of course, a myth. No one is safer in communities of color than white folks. White privilege provides an invisible force field around them, powered by the historically grounded assurance that the state and media will prosecute any untoward event they may face.

    With gentrification, the central act of violence is one of erasure. Accordingly, when the discourse of gentrification isn’t pathologizing communities of color, it’s erasing them. “Girls,” for example, reimagines today’s Brooklyn as an entirely white community. Here’s a show that places itself in the epicenter of a gentrifying city with gentrifiers for characters – it is essentially a show about gentrification that refuses to address gentrification. After critics lambasted Season 1 for its lack of diversity, the show brought in Donald Glover to play a black Republican and still managed to avoid the more pressing and relevant question of displacement and racial disparity that the characters are, despite their self-absorption, deeply complicit with. What’s especially frustrating about “Girls” not only dodging the topic entirely but pushing back – often with snark and defensiveness against calls for more diversity – is that it’s a show that seems to want to bring a more nuanced take on the complexities of modern life.
    […]

    For groups facing economic and cultural marginalization in the U.S., community means much more than just a residential area. In a country whose institutions historically fail or deliberately erase us, community constitutes a central pillar in surviving hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Technology has brought new possibilities for collective action and resistance, but the centrality of physical community remains crucial. What becomes of community organizing, which is responsible for our continued survival here, when communities are increasingly uprooted and scattered?

    The shifting power dynamics of today’s urban neighborhoods are reflected even in issues of food and nutrition. “Once-affordable ingredients have been discovered by trendy chefs,” cultural critic Mikki Kendall writes, “and have been transformed into haute cuisine. Food is facing gentrification that may well put traditional meals out of reach for those who created the recipes. Despite the hype, these ingredients have always been delicious, nutritious and no less healthy than other sources of protein.” Writing about this phenomenon at B*tch Media, Soleil Ho stated that food gentrification takes “the form of a curious kind of reacharound logic wherein economic and racial minorities are castigated for eating ‘primitively’ and ‘unhealthily’ while their traditional foods are cherry picked for use by the upper class as ‘exotic’ delicacies.” […]

    These power plays – cultural, political, economic, racial — are the mechanics of a city at war with itself. It is a slow, dirty war, steeped in American traditions of racism and capitalism. The participants are often wary, confused, doubtful. Macklemore summarized the attitudes of many young white wealthy newcomers in his fateful text to Kendrick Lamar on Grammy night: “It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.” But as with Macklemore, being surprised about a system that has been in place for generations is useless. White supremacy is nothing if not predictable. To forge ahead, we require an outrageousness that sees beyond the tired tropes and easy outs that mass media provides. This path demands we organize with clarity about privilege and the shifting power dynamics of community. It requires foresight, discomfort and risk-taking. It will be on the Web and in the streets, in conversations, rants and marches.

    We need a new mythology.

    Man refused entry to club ‘because they’d filled their black quota’

    Kosi Orah, 19, was celebrating his birthday with friends when they queued to get in to Leicester’s Ghost nightclub at around 2am on Sunday.

    But according to Kosi, who is a first-year economics student at Leicester University, the bouncer turned the group away, allegedly saying there was ‘a quota of the number of black people allowed in the club.’ […]

    ‘He was almost apologetic,’ Kosi, who filmed the exchange, told the Sun.

    ‘But it was sickening. It left us devastated. It was like the kind of incident you heard about happening in parts of America in the 1960s.’

    Kosi, who plans to work in asset management once he leaves university, made a statement to police alleging a race hate crime. [….]

    ‘We feel very strongly that racism has no part in the night-time economy and we feel that this security employee acted out of character.’

    Police said: ‘We can confirm that the incident has been reported to Leicestershire Police, it’s been recorded as a racist incident and enquiries are ongoing into the report.

    ‘Leicestershire Police takes reports of racism extremely seriously and would encourage anyone who has been a victim of such a crime to contact them. Recent figures suggest that 82% of hate crime victims who were surve

  182. rq says

    (repost, fixing some HTML errors)
    Some catch-up (but holy shit, HappyNat, I was afraid of that :( ).

    @OlyPD deployed 6 flashbangs into crowds of people next to city hall #olympia #blacklivesmatter, this from night before last.

    Time, Topless Women Stage #SayHerName Rally Against Perceived Police Brutality

    The demonstration was part of a nationwide day of action to protest the deaths of Aiyana Jones, Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Rekia Boyd and other women and girls killed by law-enforcement officers, reports USA Today.

    The rally followed the release of a report Wednesday by the African American Policy Forum named Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, which highlights the stories of black women who have suffered from alleged police brutality. […]

    Campaigners said rallies raising awareness of police brutality in the wake of the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others had focused on black men who had died, and overlooked the many black women who have suffered the same fate.

    Protests and vigils took place in cities across the country including New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, two months after an officer was acquitted for the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Boyd.

    Darnisha Harris. Tanisha Anderson. Shelly Frey. Rekia Boyd. Yvette Smith. Shantel Davis. Alesia Thomas. Alberta Spruill. #SayHerName.

    Hundreds protest Washington State police shooting of shoplifting suspects, that’s Olympia again.

    Hundreds marched peacefully in Washington state’s capital city to protest a police shooting that wounded two unarmed stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store.

    The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting that left a 21-year-old man in critical condition and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive.

    The stepbrothers are black, and the officer is white, but Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said, “There’s no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all.”

    Protesters who turned out Thursday evening held signs that read “Race is a Factor” and “We Are Grieving.”

    The two men were identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, both of Olympia.

    “It was terrible,” the young men’s mother, Crystal Chaplin, told KIRO-TV. “It’s heartbreaking to see two of my babies in the hospital over something stupid.”

    The shooting is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies. Brad Watkins, chief deputy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department, said two skateboards were recovered from the shooting scene and an investigation will likely take three to six weeks. The young men had no guns, investigators said.

    The crowd of demonstrators rallied first at a park, then marched about a mile to a building that houses the Olympia police headquarters and City Hall. Protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” ”No Justice, No Peace” and the names of the young men who were shot.

    Olympia police tweeted their thanks to marchers “for keeping the event nonviolent.”

    “We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult circumstance and help us understand this tragic event,” the police chief told a news conference Thursday afternoon. […]

    The shooting follows a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, which set off weeks of protests and a national “Black Lives Matter” movement that has gained momentum across the country.

    Olympia Mayor Stephen H. Buxbaum called for calm in the community.

    “It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law,” he said. “Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive.”

    Merritt Long, a retired chairman of the state’s liquor control board, was one of several residents to attend the news conference Thursday.

    “Does the punishment fit the crime?” he asked afterward. “Given the seeming epidemic of this happening not only here but in our country, it makes you pause and wonder what’s going on.”

    Gentrification’s insidious violence: The truth about American cities

    While film narratives of white folks in low-income neighborhoods tend to focus on how endangered they are by a gangland black or brown menace, this patient was singular in that he was literally the only victim of black on white violence I encountered in my entire 10-year career as a medic.

    “What is distinctively ‘American’ is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history,” Richard Slotkin writes, “but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced, the forms of symbolic violence we imagine or invent, and the political uses to which we put that symbolism.” Slotkin was talking about the American frontier as a symbolic reference point for justifying expansionist violence throughout history. Today, we can see the mytho-political uses of symbolic violence in mainstream media portrayals of the “hood.”

    It’s easy to fixate on physical violence. Movies sexualize it, broadcasters shake their heads as another fancy graphic whirs past sensationalizing it, politicians build careers decrying it with one side of their mouths and justifying it with the other. But institutionalized violence moves in far more insidious and wide-reaching patterns. “Gentrification,” Suey Park and Dr. David J. Leonard wrote in a recent post at Model View Culture, “represents a socio-historic process where rising housing costs, public policy, persistent segregation, and racial animus facilitates the influx of wealthier, mostly white, residents into a particular neighborhood. Celebrated as ‘renewal’ and an effort to ‘beautify’ these communities, gentrification results in the displacement of residents.”

    Gentrification is violence. Couched in white supremacy, it is a systemic, intentional process of uprooting communities. It’s been on the rise, increasing at a frantic rate in the last 20 years, but the roots stretch back to the disenfranchisement that resulted from white flight and segregationist policies. Real estate agents dub changing neighborhoods with new, gentrifier-friendly titles that designate their proximity to even safer areas: Bushwick becomes East Williamsburg, parts of Flatbush are now Prospect Park South. Politicians manipulate zoning laws to allow massive developments with only token nods at mixed-income housing.

    Beyond these political and economic maneuvers, though, the thrust of gentrification takes place in our mythologies of the hood. It is a result, as Park and Leonard explain, of a “discourse that imagines neighborhoods of color as pathological and criminal, necessitating outside intervention for the good of all.” Here’s where my pistol-whipped patient’s revelation about his cinematic experience kicks in. The dominant narrative of the endangered white person barely making it out of the hood alive is, of course, a myth. No one is safer in communities of color than white folks. White privilege provides an invisible force field around them, powered by the historically grounded assurance that the state and media will prosecute any untoward event they may face.

    With gentrification, the central act of violence is one of erasure. Accordingly, when the discourse of gentrification isn’t pathologizing communities of color, it’s erasing them. “Girls,” for example, reimagines today’s Brooklyn as an entirely white community. Here’s a show that places itself in the epicenter of a gentrifying city with gentrifiers for characters – it is essentially a show about gentrification that refuses to address gentrification. After critics lambasted Season 1 for its lack of diversity, the show brought in Donald Glover to play a black Republican and still managed to avoid the more pressing and relevant question of displacement and racial disparity that the characters are, despite their self-absorption, deeply complicit with. What’s especially frustrating about “Girls” not only dodging the topic entirely but pushing back – often with snark and defensiveness against calls for more diversity – is that it’s a show that seems to want to bring a more nuanced take on the complexities of modern life.
    […]

    For groups facing economic and cultural marginalization in the U.S., community means much more than just a residential area. In a country whose institutions historically fail or deliberately erase us, community constitutes a central pillar in surviving hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Technology has brought new possibilities for collective action and resistance, but the centrality of physical community remains crucial. What becomes of community organizing, which is responsible for our continued survival here, when communities are increasingly uprooted and scattered?

    The shifting power dynamics of today’s urban neighborhoods are reflected even in issues of food and nutrition. “Once-affordable ingredients have been discovered by trendy chefs,” cultural critic Mikki Kendall writes, “and have been transformed into haute cuisine. Food is facing gentrification that may well put traditional meals out of reach for those who created the recipes. Despite the hype, these ingredients have always been delicious, nutritious and no less healthy than other sources of protein.” Writing about this phenomenon at B*tch Media, Soleil Ho stated that food gentrification takes “the form of a curious kind of reacharound logic wherein economic and racial minorities are castigated for eating ‘primitively’ and ‘unhealthily’ while their traditional foods are cherry picked for use by the upper class as ‘exotic’ delicacies.” […]

    These power plays – cultural, political, economic, racial — are the mechanics of a city at war with itself. It is a slow, dirty war, steeped in American traditions of racism and capitalism. The participants are often wary, confused, doubtful. Macklemore summarized the attitudes of many young white wealthy newcomers in his fateful text to Kendrick Lamar on Grammy night: “It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.” But as with Macklemore, being surprised about a system that has been in place for generations is useless. White supremacy is nothing if not predictable. To forge ahead, we require an outrageousness that sees beyond the tired tropes and easy outs that mass media provides. This path demands we organize with clarity about privilege and the shifting power dynamics of community. It requires foresight, discomfort and risk-taking. It will be on the Web and in the streets, in conversations, rants and marches.

    We need a new mythology.

    Man refused entry to club ‘because they’d filled their black quota’

    Kosi Orah, 19, was celebrating his birthday with friends when they queued to get in to Leicester’s Ghost nightclub at around 2am on Sunday.

    But according to Kosi, who is a first-year economics student at Leicester University, the bouncer turned the group away, allegedly saying there was ‘a quota of the number of black people allowed in the club.’ […]

    ‘He was almost apologetic,’ Kosi, who filmed the exchange, told the Sun.

    ‘But it was sickening. It left us devastated. It was like the kind of incident you heard about happening in parts of America in the 1960s.’

    Kosi, who plans to work in asset management once he leaves university, made a statement to police alleging a race hate crime. [….]

    ‘We feel very strongly that racism has no part in the night-time economy and we feel that this security employee acted out of character.’

    Police said: ‘We can confirm that the incident has been reported to Leicestershire Police, it’s been recorded as a racist incident and enquiries are ongoing into the report.

    ‘Leicestershire Police takes reports of racism extremely seriously and would encourage anyone who has been a victim of such a crime to contact them. Recent figures suggest that 82% of hate crime victims who were surve

  183. Pteryxx says

    Follow-up on trailer parks also at the Guardian: Trailer park king sued by residents in Texas for raising rents

    Multimillionaire Frank Rolfe boasts of buying up trailer parks and sharply increasing charges to low-income tenants faces lawsuit for doing just that

    Rolfe’s residents, who are facing eviction from their homes, said Rolfenearly doubled their combined rent and utility bills almost immediately after buying the North Lamar mobile home park in an immigrant neighbourhood in northern Austin.

    The residents have clubbed together to take legal action against Rolfe, who owns about 160 trailer parks across the country and runs Mobile Home University, a school for would-be trailer park owners that instructs its students to make money by raising the rents on “day one”.

    Natalia Santiago, one of the North Lamar park residents facing eviction for not paying the higher rent Rolfe demands, said: “I have lived in this community for about 24 years. I have four living children, and we truly enjoy living here. I have worked all of these years cleaning homes and buildings and I want to continue doing so to provide for my family.”

    […]

    Abel Trujillo, who has lived in the park with his family for eight years, said Rolfe’s company increased his overall rent and utilities bill from $390 to $608 when it bought the park for $1.5m in January.

    Trujillo, who was also ordered to leave his home within 72 hours, said many of the residents cannot afford to pay the higher rents – and have no way of raising the thousands of dollars it will cost to move the trailer, which most of the families own. “This is causing an outrage within our community,” he said. “It is unfair to be charged such high rental fees for just a lot – we own the mobile homes.”

    During a recent Mobile Home University bootcamp weekend Rolfe explained to his students, who are charged $2,000 to learn his tricks of the trade, that: “Raising the rent is typically part of the day one purchase, because often the ‘mom and pop’ [previous, family-run owner of a park] has not raised the rent in years so it’s far below market.”

    Rolfe, and his business partner Dave Reynolds, typically raises rents by 10% a year – far above inflation which is running at an annualised rate of 1.8% – and Rolfe boasts that their “world record” rent increase went “from $125 to $275 in one month”.

    He tells his students that tenants are more likely to be encouraged to put in a few more hours at Walmart or other low-paying jobs than find the $3,000-$5,000 it costs to move their trailer to another park. Most of the North Lamar tenants are Spanish-only-speaking Latino immigrants working manual labour jobs.

    […]

    Casar said he would demand policy changes to better regulate trailer parks in Austin, but in the North Lamar case legal action could be taken because the rent increases breach signed yearly rental agreements.

    “These are hard-working, working-class and working-poor families – the mechanics, farmers, nursing aides of our city. They are facing homelessness or being forced to find places to live with family members,” he said. “It seems to be what they [Rolfe and Reynolds] describe as their business model – banking on the fact that people are going to be poor and be desperate for affordable housing.

    “They hope that people with less resources aren’t going to fight back, but this community knows their rights.”

  184. rq says

    Some cartoons: Looters. (Police looting equal justice.)
    See. (Cop and black man seeing reflections of each other in glasses.)
    Rough Ride. #FreddieGray (Police van bouncing over the letters of racism.)

    Women Go Topless To Protest Killings Of Unarmed Black Women By Police, by BuzzFeed.

    Houston’s Learning Curve

    In a city with such wealth and promise, and more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere but New York, the school system preparing the next generation of Houstonians is performing a delicate dance of highs and lows: a reputation for bold, impressive innovation, and a student body that’s increasingly poor and challenging to teach.

    Eighth grader Sabrin Haile, second from left, chats with a friend between classes at Las Americas; she once lived in an Ethiopian refugee camp. Last year’s wave of migrant children fleeing from Central America has balooned Las Americas’ enrollment this year to triple capacity. | Mark Peterson/Redux

    Two years ago, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) became the first two-time winner of the Broad Prize for Urban Education. The prize is a high honor for school districts, often called the Nobel Prize of school reform, and comes with $550,000 in college scholarships for the winner’s graduating seniors. The Council of Great City Schools—a consortium of the largest urban school districts—named Houston’s superintendent, Terry Grier, its urban educator of the year for 2014. Onstage at a recent school district event, Grier recalled a visit to the White House, when President Obama told him, “You know, I don’t think anyone innovates quite like HISD.”

    It’s hard to disagree. HISD, for example, has 52 “dual language” schools, where students spend at least half of the school day learning in Spanish; the district boasts more such schools than Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso combined. HISD also has one dual language school for Arabic and another for Mandarin Chinese and soon plans to open Texas’s first Hindi dual language school. Through its fledgling “Emerge” program, Houston public schools last year sent 64 low-income, minority students to Ivy League or top-tiered schools; it’s on track to matriculate 91 this year. The district began “Home Field Advantage” recently after it realized that 13 of its schools had mobility rates of 40 percent or more with students changing schools multiple times throughout the year because of family financial stresses. To maintain continuity and stability, students are provided free transportation to the school where they started the year, regardless of where they currently live.

    In the schools as in the city, the free market rules: Teachers who are deemed effective receive bonuses; principals are paid to take marketing classes at Rice University to better pitch their schools to prospective students who can choose to go to any school in the district, space permitting. There are also—as in most school districts—teacher/edu-preneurs and Teach for America grads like Adeeb Barqawi and Rick Cruz who go beyond their classroom lessons to build new systems to support students.

    As a result, the district has achieved some impressive results: The “achievement gap” in high school math and science between white and minority students has been cut in half; HISD has the country’s highest rate of minority participation in SAT and Advanced Placement tests; passage rate for AP exams has increased by 80 percent since 2007, according to Grier.

    Listen to Drake and Beyoncé get slow ‘n’ brooding on leaked track ‘Can I’ , for an interlude of music.

    This collaboration between Drake and Beyoncé leaked on Tumblr yesterday, and to be honest, we can’t decide whether it’s unfinished or just an incredibly sparse and moody track. Knowing Drake, we’re betting on the latter. Thought to be a cut off his upcoming album Views From the 6, “Can I” sounds like a soon-to-be-ex-lover serving you a lavishly cooked banquet in bed that you know is poisoned but you eat anyway. “Before I turn the lights out, tell me who the fuck you wanna be?” asks Drake, passive aggressively.

    Unfortunately, for people expecting a repeat of “Mine” — a Beyoncé ballad from 2013 which Drake appeared on — this isn’t really much of a duet. Beyoncé’s contribution comes mainly in the form of the words “can I” and “baby” repeated throughout the track with a metronome-like tick-tock quality. Yes, we love that she manages to pull off such a seductive mix of soothing and threatening, but we also could’ve done with a bit more, you know, vocals. See what you think and listen above via Okayplayer.

  185. rq says

    . @CityofCleveland :You say this was written the night Tamir was shot. It mentions his death. He died the next day.

    Oscar Grant Plaza taken over by sea of names. #JusticeForRekia #SayHerName #BlackWomenMatter

    Violence surges on the Westside and elsewhere – a closer look at the numbers

    Crime data also show that the increased violence did not start with the Freddie Gray incident. Across the city, shootings gathered momentum during the winter months for so far unexplained reasons.

    Top police officers, in fact, had suggested that crime would drop after January’s introduction of a new contract with the Fraternal Order of Police that traded higher officer pay (a 13% wage boost over three years) in return for more flexible work schedules and reportedly more “boots on the street.”

    Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake promised, in her March 2015 “State of the City” address, that the new contract would produce “real results for residents: more officers during peak times [of crime] and a faster response to citizen calls.”

    Statement by Olympia Police Chief, Ronnie Roberts

    Statement by Olympia Police Chief, Ronnie Roberts
    May 21, 2015

    The Olympia community experienced a tragedy this morning: a police officer shot two young men while responding to a 9-1-1 call about an assault. The two men are expected to survive and the officer was not injured. An investigation of the event is underway. It is being led by the Thurston County Critical Incident Team, an investigative team made up of detectives from five local jurisdictions. The Critical Incident Team investigates independently of the Olympia Police Department. While the Department receives some general details, the precise facts of the event cannot be known until the investigation is completed. It is essential that an investigation into this kind of event is fair, thorough, and timely for everyone involved. I appreciate the community’s patience as the investigation moves forward.

    I invite you to access all the information on this page. We are posting information as it comes in and information that may be helpful in understanding the process of investigating an officer-involved shooting. Information about community meetings will also be posted here. I hope that you will attend a community meeting if you have questions or concerns about the event.
    Statement by Olympia Mayor, Stephen H. Buxbaum
    May 21, 2015

    This is a tragic event. It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as the result of an altercation with an officer of the law. Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive. Let’s take the path of consciously addressing our questions of what happened as best we can, seek justice and healing.

    Our community is a strong, caring and compassionate community. We deeply value non-violence and justice that is restorative. This is a challenging time that I know we will move through together, learn from and be stronger as a result.

    We are committed to looking hard at what happened. By investing in an investigation that focuses on the facts, as they emerge, we will ensure that our response will be responsible and just.

    I have personally spoken with the Presidents of The Evergreen State College and South Puget Sound Community College, as well as members of our Faith Community. They have all agreed to set up places where members of our community can gather.

    The Generation Gap Behind the Waco Biker Shootout. IS IT THE MISSING FATHERS? TELL MEEEE I want to know!

    This is from December 2014, but considering a lot of things together, worth a re-read: My Son Is Black. With Autism. And I’m Scared Of What The Police Will Do To Him.

  186. rq says

    Not not not a good precedent. The Supreme Court Decided Its First Cop-Shooting Case Since Ferguson. Cops Won.

    Everything should’ve ended there. Except San Francisco v. Sheehan, a police-brutality case, made it all the way to the Supreme Court because the cops’ next move was to go back into Sheehan’s room, guns drawn, without regard for her mental condition. The case matters because it’s the first police-shooting incident the court has confronted since Ferguson put policing and excessive use of force on the map. And, as the Supreme Court is wont to do in these cases, it handed the cops a win. (And the city of San Francisco a sort of loss.)

    But the facts in Sheehan are a mess. It turns out that upon reentry, one of the officers pepper-sprayed Sheehan, hoping to subdue her. But she wouldn’t let go of her knife. The other officer then opened fire twice, but Sheehan’s failure to collapse prompted the first officer to unload “multiple” rounds on her. When Sheehan was finally on the ground, a third officer arrived on the scene and, like in the movies, kicked the knife from her hand.

    Never mind her disability: To the responding officers, that was a “secondary issue.” What truly mattered, one of them testified, was that they were “faced with a violent woman who had already threatened to kill her social worker.” Sheehan survived her injuries, and later sued the city of San Francisco and the shooting officers for violating her civil rights. She also faulted the city for disregarding her disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

    You might hope that, in writing the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito would use language that would place the decision in the context of Ferguson. Or at least recognize one of the many instances, caught on video, where police shot and killed a mentally ill person — Jason Harrison, Anthony Hill, and Lavall Hall all come to mind. Or perhaps acknowledge that, according to one estimate, more than half of those killed by police are suffering from mental illness.

    Instead, Alito and five other justices ruled that the officers were entitled to a blanket shield from liability, under a doctrine known as qualified immunity. The doctrine is nowhere in the Constitution, yet officers and municipalities invoke it all the time when sued for constitutional violations. And more often than not, courts agree that immunity is proper, so long as the officers’ blunders were “reasonable” under the circumstances. What counts as reasonable? A lot of things, some real, others largely exaggerated. Split-second decision-making. Fear for one’s life. How “dangerous,” “recalcitrant,” and “law-breaking” the victim was. Alito actually used those words to describe Sheehan and found no fault with anything the two officers did in their interactions with her. She was basically asking for it. […]

    None of that mattered to the rest of the court. The majority went ahead and spared the cops anyway. And with that, the court’s first true opportunity to address police shootings in the wake of Ferguson came and went, with a victory for two officers who shot and nearly killed a woman who maybe just wanted to be left alone. We don’t really know whether the lives of the mentally ill matter to the justices, but from this and prior cases, we do know that the lives of police do — so much that they’re willing to give them a pass even when the case doesn’t really call for it.

    219 years ago today, Ona Judge Staines escaped from George and Martha Washington. She was never caught.#americanhero

    A tale of 2 Americas: where they explain away white violence & erase documented state violence against Black women (see two contrasting headlines within).

    Calm urged as Olympia investigates police shootings of 2 men

    Police and public officials urged civility while promising a thorough and unbiased investigation into Thursday’s early-morning shooting of two African-American shoplifting suspects by a white officer.

    Police and Olympia Mayor Stephen Buxbaum provided little information about the confrontation except to say there was no early evidence that race was a factor in the shooting. They also warned it could be weeks before the investigation is completed.

    “It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law,” Buxbaum said. “Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive.”

    Despite the call for calm, the evening ended with a violent confrontation between protesters and police.

    A few dozen demonstrators gathered near City Hall around midnight in Olympia, chanting, “This won’t end until the last cop dies.”

    Officers eventually dispersed the crowd with flash-bangs and protesters responded by throwing rocks before leaving the area. No injuries were reported.

    Demonstrations earlier in the evening had remained peaceful.

    Remember this girl in her ‘revealing’ dress? School Backs Down After Receiving Online Backlash For Suspending Plus Size Student Over ‘Revealing’ Prom Dress. Good.

    My classmate cap (“I did it because they didn’t have a chance to”, with photos of black young men killed by police).

  187. rq says

    Customer called the N-word on racist receipt from New Orleans restaurant, in case you thought that it was okay to go out for dinner while black.

    The daughter of a member of The Neville Brothers, a famous musical family in New Orleans, was appalled to see the N-word printed on her receipt Thursday after dining at Huck Finn’s Café in the French Quarter.

    The phrase “N—– 100% dislike” was typed into Liryca Neville Branch’s check, weaved in between the woman’s itemized food orders.

    “This is unacceptable. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Branch told the Daily News. “It’s 2015. You would think that we wouldn’t have to deal with this stuff right now. It just shows that racism is alive and well.”

    Despite Advances, the Trans Struggle for Justice Behind Bars Is Just Beginning. This would be almost tangential in the discussion re: racism if it weren’t for all those black trans men and trans women who have been killed and murdered, both by the authorities and the general population.

    Diamond and Arnold’s experiences of constant violence and harassment are not exceptional. Rather, in men’s prisons, they seem to be the rule. Trans women sent to male prisons are at high risk for sexual assault – one study found that 59 percent of trans women in California’s male prisons had been sexually assaulted while incarcerated compared to 4 percent of the cisgender male population. As Diamond’s story demonstrates, staff often blame them for the assaults; the solution offered is to place them in “protective custody,” a form of solitary confinement in which they are confined to their cells nearly 24 hours a day without access to programming or human contact. Staff often perpetuate other forms of violence, such as harassment, humiliation and excessive strip searches as well as the refusal to recognize their gender identity.

    Jenni Gann, currently incarcerated at California’s Kern Valley State Prison, can attest to that. After renouncing her gang membership in 2002, she was sent to one of the Sensitive Needs Yards in California’s prison system, where former gang members are sent ostensibly to avoid retaliation. The yard also holds people vulnerable to violence for other reasons, such as their sexuality or gender identity. Gann, who had quietly been struggling with her own gender identity for years, recalled in a recent letter, “I was so encouraged and inspired by the beauty and strength of some queens [a term used to describe flamboyant gay men] in particular that I said, ‘Fuck the haters!'” She came out as trans in 2006 and began her gender transition; the following year, she began estrogen hormone therapy and connected with the trans community inside and out.

    Gann has endured repeated sexual harassment during strip searches, with guards ridiculing her anatomy, threatening her and exposing her to incarcerated men. She notes that other trans women have experienced similar abuse from staff. Staff hostility could also be fatal: In November 2013, Carmen Guerrero, a trans woman at Kern Valley, was killed by her cellmate. The cellmate, who was housed in the yard for renouncing his gang membership, had repeatedly and openly told staff that he would murder Guerrero. Neither he nor Guerrero were moved. Then he strangled her. While prison officials launched an investigation into Crespo’s actions, Gann reports that the officer whom he had told about his planned murder remains on duty and has faced no consequences.

    Gann and others have not been keeping quiet. In every letter, Gann reminds me that Carmen Guerrero’s murder could have been prevented had prison staff acted when Crespo first started making threats. “It’s not safe for trans women [here],” she wrote, adding that she and another trans woman have been pressing for policy changes so that trans women can be housed in California’s women’s prisons where they are less likely to face the brutal transphobic violence that occurs daily in men’s prisons.

    Gann has reached across the bars to help organize and alert people about trans women’s incarceration. For the past five years, she was a member of the leadership circle of Black and Pink, an organization of incarcerated queer and trans people and their non-incarcerated allies, and started the California chapter. Through Black and Pink’s newsletter, as well as a blog on Between the Bars, she’s reminded people about Carmen’s murder and the lack of accountability, as well as the everyday injustices trans women face behind bars. Recently, she has also joined the leadership team of the TGI Justice Project, a group of trans people inside and outside of prison fighting for change, as well as the Gender Anarky Collective, a group of trans women incarcerated throughout California’s prison system.

    She and others have also reached out to support each other inside the prison. To combat the lack of information and trans-specific health care, they contact outside groups for up-to-date information and then share it with each other. “Because of the complex interdisciplinary treatment of gender dysphoria, which involves both mental health and medical care aspects, it’s very important for us to be aware of the process of transitioning and to be an active participant in making the decision to proceed with each stage of triadic therapy,” she explained in a recent letter. “For someone just coming out as trans, the support and advice of other queens is most important.”

    And then they get put into men’s prisons, because law enforcement and the justice system are fucking stupid.

    Video: cops assault, use flash grenade on #OlympiaShooting demo. Headline: Violent protests.

    Violent protests in Washington state after police shooting, with video – those protests that turned violent once police decided to get involved.

    NLG Condemns Oakland’s Attack on the Right to Assemble and Protest

    Responding to a peaceful protest on the evening of May 21st, the Oakland Police Department immediately forced demonstrators off the street, aggressively encircling them and using amplified sound and other intimidation tactics to interfere with the march against police killings of Black women and trans persons. They appeared to be implementing a new City policy of banning nighttime protests. The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) is disturbed by this illegal restraint on the right of people to assemble and speak out about serious political issues.

    The NLGSF believes such preemptive restrictions on protest are both unconstitutional, and in violation of OPD’s own Crowd Control Policy, which was adopted as part of the federal court settlement orders in NLG litigation over 2010 mass arrests of Justice for Oscar Grant protesters and 2011 police attacks on Occupy Oakland. The City of Oakland has paid out more than $10 million in civil rights settlements as a result of unlawful restraints on those and other protests over the last ten years. The Crowd Control Policy spells out when police may lawfully stop a demonstration, and how, and gives OPD the tools they need to protect persons and property, while upholding the right to demonstrate and avoiding further liability to the Oakland taxpayers. NLGSF is prepared to take immediate action to enforce the Crowd Control Policy.

    Prohibiting demonstrations at night leaves few alternatives for people, especially working people and students, to speak out about police violence and racism. There is no legitimate justification for such a limitation, and the unlawful policy change being implemented by Mayor Libby Schaaf serves little purpose but to suppress free speech.

    seems like he dropped the beers when he got caught, the report says he “threw” it at the clerk. (Olympia)

  188. Pteryxx says

    NBC News on Brelo’s acquittal, because so much of it is rage-inducing: Cleveland Officer Michael Brelo Found Not Guilty in Car Hood Shooting

    Michael Brelo, 31, who is white, was charged with killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams — both of whom were black — after a car chase in November 2012. Brelo rubbed his face and nodded his head as the judge read the verdict, and then wept.

    Shortly after, the Department of Justice announced it would review Brelo’s case.

    The high-speed pursuit started after Russell’s 1979 Chevy Malibu backfired while driving past police headquarters. Officers thought the noise was a gun going off inside the car, and 13 cops responded by firing shots.

    Brelo, who joined the Cleveland Police Department in 2007, was the only officer to face criminal charges. Prosecutors say he waited until the car had stopped moving and no longer posed a danger to fire 15 rounds into the windshield, firing a total of 49 rounds into the car.

    Defense attorneys claimed Brelo was fearful for his life, believing Russell and Williams had a gun. The judge agreed that he acted accordingly.

    “Brelo reasonably perceived a threat,” said Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge John O’Donnell.

    Altogether, the officers fired 137 shots. Experts testified at the trial that Russell had 23 bullet wounds and Williams had 24, reported NBC affiliate WKYC.

    […]

    The verdict was read on a Saturday because of the possibility of protests afterwards, WKYC reported. Judge O’Donnell asked for calm across Cleveland, and a crowd gathered peacefully outside the courthouse holding signs and American flags after.

    […]

    Racial tensions in Cleveland got even more strained after Russell and Williams’ death when police shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, also black, to death last November. Tamir was playing with a pellet gun that police thought was a real weapon. His family has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the police department.

    O’Donnell acknowledged those strained relations on Saturday.

    “Every week, I pass a mountain of stuffed animals left in memory of a 12-year-old that many people believe was murdered by the police,” he said.

  189. rq says

    Cut the Check

    Confrontation about economics, the long avoided and ignored method of addressing a system built on the exploitation of black people. When we have conversations about systemic violence towards black people, for some reason finances are always ignored in the conversation. This is odd given that capitalism and the love of money is a direct root of the violence experienced in this nation.

    Think about how much money is earned and saved, due to black pain, in music, movies, city-revenues, wage-inequalities, etc. Think about how black people are periodically told around the first of the month to “be careful, you know the cops are out they have that quota to meet”. I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ve overheard these exchanges as a child. As an adult, I now understand; there is a reliance on black money to keep this system running as intended.

    The dependence on black people does not stop just at black pockets, no. This system also relies on black labor. Everyone in this nation stands firm on black backs, which is why some people say, “I don’t see color”; it’s kind of hard to see something you’re standing on. This of course is nothing new; we’re all well aware of how this nation was built. The issue is that people are unaware that it’s the same method for how this nation continues to be built. According to the constitution, slavery and indentured servitude is still in affect: [… thirteenth amendment …]

    Most people read this as “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States” and completely miss “except as punishment for crime”, which means that slavery is fine under certain conditions. And once they finish ignoring that, they then ignore the racial disparity of incarceration. When they finish missing those important words, and the racial disparity, they then miss how black people are often falsely accused for a crime or over punished for a crime. And when they finish ducking and dodging everything listed above, they hurdle, hop, and skip, over the fact that millions are earned from the prison industrial complex. In fact, the ties the industrial prison complex has with slavery runs so deep, that incarcerated men and women are even referred to as “property”.

    In other words, there is still financial incentive to put people of color in shackles; there is still a profit earned on black and brown bodies. There are still people being called “property”. […]

    Since August, there has been money poured into the city of Ferguson. And with that funding, came misinformation, an increase of distrust both across the nation and sparked some intra-group disagreements. In the words of Biggie Smalls, “mo’ money, mo’ problems”. This was due to poor communication about how funds would be used to help the family of Mike Brown and the community of Ferguson. There was also poor application of who received funding and the amounts of funding. People made false assumptions based on the hyper-visibility of certain organizations and certain people within the movement.

    Action on May 14th at the World Community Center, opened the door for the conversation that everyone has been waiting for: What’s happening with the money in Ferguson?

    Well the answer is simple, most donated funds are sent to established non-profit organizations, such as Operation for Black Struggle, Hands Up United, and Missourians Organizing for Reform & Empowerment. However, people who follow organizers on twitter often seen posts encouraging donations to the newly established organizations and events that have been developed in direct response to the senseless state-sanctioned killing of Mike Brown, i.e. Millennial Activists United, Black Souljahz, Operation Help or Hush, etc.

    So naturally, on the outside looking in, everyone is confused. After all, why would activists reach out for funds if George Soros sent $33 million, right? The faux conclusion that most people have formulated is somehow the newly developed, grassroots organizations and leaders on the ground have received ALL of this money. They haven’t. One issue is no one really knows how much Soros has contributed to the movement. There are sources that say that his donation amounted to $600 thousand, not $33 million. I’ve yet to see more than one source report $600 thousand, but it’s worth noting just how much misinformation there is about funding in Ferguson. It’s also important to understand that this money [Soros’ donation], whatever it amounts to, did not go to the hyper-visible, innovative, grassroots organizations and people that are considered “high profile” on twitter. This funding went specifically to Organization for Black Struggle and M.O.R.E., which then developed the Hands Up Coalition, along with Dream Defenders. M.O.R.E. also received another $35 thousand in funding for jail fund from Talib Kweli’s Ferguson Defense Fund. It’s worth noting where exactly funds are going because these headlines have created an atmosphere of distrust and confusion. This atmosphere impacts the public’s perception of the integrity of grassroots organizations being led by the hyper visible demonstrators. And that perception, not only impacts the relationships among demonstrators, but it also impacts donations that have been essential to sustaining the movement. […]

    Cut the check was no different from past actions. The motive was increasing the value of black life in this nation. This action was inspired because demonstrators, who were employed by M.O.R.E., were having issues. The initial issue was planning disagreements. According to demonstrators, they wanted to develop healing and empowerment spaces; the organization felt that direct actions and intentional arrests, at the expense of black people would have been more valuable. After all, who would continue to contribute towards a non-profit organization’s jail fund if no one would get arrested, right? Basically, there was financial incentive for these large non-profits when black people in Ferguson were arrested.

    And like any employer-employee disagreement, termination became a potential solution. The activist community wanted to support demonstrators during the review with Jeff Ordower, the executive director of M.O.R.E. According to activists, it was during the meeting that Ordower disclosed that he had thousands in funding money that he had no idea what to do with. Organizers recommended that he breakdown the funds and distribute it to everyone in the community, since so many have been lacking financially. They expressed that this was the best solution due to the arguments and lack of understanding that funding has created, elaborating that people read misleading and ambiguous headlines, and don’t comprehend fiscal sponsorship. They also expressed that funding has been used to divide people within the movement. When headlines regarding finances in the movement are released, people aren’t informed that large, historically established organizations have been the recipients of those donations, so demonstrators with newly established organizations are being blamed for capitalistic violence, i.e. pocketing the donations. Distribute the money to the community was their [demonstrators] recommendation. […]

    Misapplication of the words like “greed” and “selfish” is not where the negativity ends. Some of the responses were people outraged when they found out a couple demonstrators were actually hired to do organizing work. Ahistorical understanding of past human rights movements is a threat to the current movement. Many leaders of our past were paid/compensated for their work. In fact, there were people specifically paid to travel and start protests in racially tense cities following white-on-black violence events. That’s not to get “paid for their service” confused with the motive being money. The motive is and always will be love. However, past leaders were taken care of financially because in this society, money is how you pay for a meal. You cannot pay your rent in “revolution”. You cannot go to the grocery store and write “revolution” on a piece of paper and hand it to the cashier at the checkout line. You cannot open your gas tank and shout “revolution” in to it and expect your vehicle to be fueled. You cannot tell Ameren you’re putting “revolution” on the bill this month. Revolution is beautiful, but basic needs are not met on “revolution” alone. Vilifying demonstrators for having human needs, such as food, gas, and shelter, is not only ridiculous, but also contradictory. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement are frequently referred and paralleled to current events. There is a hypocrisy to reference a man who also addressed poverty and classism, while simultaneously responding negatively to an action designed to put a halt to revenues earned on black labor.

    The negativity is not only hypocritical, but it’s exploitation. Many of the same protestors involved with this pro police-accountability movement, are actively involved with fighting to increase the minimum wage. People want to benefit from their work to increase wages for people across the nation, while demonizing their efforts to distribute funds to an entire community. Surely, people withholding those contradicting thoughts should be suffering from some form of cognitive dissonance.

    The worse response to “Cut the Check”, was the loud silence towards how the organization handled “cut the check”. Hours after the action ended, a document was posted on social media listing the names of people and how much the organization supposedly gave to those “people”. The issue is some of the funds listed on the document, according to sources, were reportedly not given by the organization, yet the document was presented as such. The document did not limit to listing just the “cut the check” funds, but it incorporated past action funding as well. Many people have read this under the impression that funding from past events, is the same thing that people received via check on May 14th. Another issue, the document listed individuals in the first column instead of small organizations and direct actions. This was a subtle form of propaganda. Readers subconsciously received the message that individuals, instead of associating the funds with movement supplies, pocketed those funds. As someone that has a history with working in finance and non-profits, I can confidentially say that this is not how financial documentation is normally typed up. Normally, a document would state an organization or business as a beneficiary, not a person’s name. One would think that maybe this was intentional. Why on earth would “Elizabeth Vega” be listed as a recipient in the first column, when the “Artivists” were funded for the trip? Also, why not at least indicate the number of people that were funded on this trip. Otherwise, it just appears that one person was given $2,000. The column is clearly titled “Person/Group”, however when given the option to name a group, one specific person was still named. […]

    One could argue that the intent was to create further confusion. More importantly, to surround a much needed conversation and aspect of oppression, with so much negativity that no one will have the audacity to address capitalistic violence in this nation ever again.

    Cut the Check was deeper than 17 people receiving an average of approximately $2000 each, Cut the Check was about taking back the finances that were generated at the expense of black trauma. After all, there is nothing revolutionary about free black labor and exploiting black pain.

    Peaceful Action & Police Pepper Spray

    I am acting on conscience. I believe our country is participating in a systemic genocide of people of color and I believe the police are too often the executioners. In this country, every 23 hours someone is killed by the police. Statistically it is impossible that all of these deaths are “justified.”

    In October, I wrote about VonDerrit Myers who was shot and killed by an off duty police officer acting in the capacity of a security guard for one of the richest neighborhoods in St. Louis. The officer, was chasing someone else when he mistakenly stopped VonDerritt who was coming out of a store with friends. VonDerrit ran and there are allegations he had a gun. The officer shot at him 19 times. All the bullets hit VonDerrit in the back of his body indicating he was fleeing meaning the officer’s life was no longer threatened. One of the early shots completely shattered VonDerrit’s femur leaving him unable to run or defend himself. The officer continued to shoot and still CHOSE to shoot this young man in the head. Witnesses on the scene described Flannery standing over Myers and shooting him directly in the head. In any other country this would be considered an execution. In America it is considered “legally justified” but this does not mean morally right. Which is why after, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce decided not to charge Jason Flannery with ANYTHING, protesters cried FOUL.

    We held an action on Tuesday at her office. She refused to come out. The building was put on lockdown, effectively once again shutting us out of our own democracy. On Tuesday night we decided to visit her at home. We brought creative night lights constructed out of cardboard boxes. […]

    In that moment he showed his lack of humanity and fear. He used his only weapon — his diminishing power. He then lied to the media and said I rubbed my pepper sprayed face on his shirt.

    I am so grateful to all the folks who came together to post my $8000 CASH bond. Even in that moment and so ready to get out I felt the pain of my own privilege embedded within that gratitude. I can’t help but think about the young woman who was in jail with me who got pulled out of her car in front of her house because of Hot Spot policing. Her partner had a permit to carry his gun which he had in his lap because he was going into his home. He was slammed on the ground all the while screaming that he had a permit. The police searched their car and found weed. Hauled both of them off to jail. I watched her process how her life could get so uprooted in 24 hours because even though she wasn’t charged she had a five year old traffic warrant from a small municipality. This meant 24 turned into 48 hours because she had to wait for them to come get her and then figure out how to pay the fines. That is not just or fair.

    I also can’t stop thinking about the woman who was in jail for shoplifting. I asked her point blank what she took and why. She said she took two cardinal jerseys so she could sell them because she needed bus fare to go to work. Think about that for a moment. Working full-time and still not having bus fare to get to work!!

    I think about the numerous white police officers who laughed while they pepper sprayed us, and contrast this with the jail the only public institution where most everyone within it both working and imprisoned are people of color. This is why we fight. The whole system is broken and the cost for this brokenness is our own humanity. And still even while they try to bury us we tenaciously show our weedy strength. My sisters in jail, these beautiful strong women showed so much resilience, sharing stories, sharing food off their plates and even braided each others hair while sharing stories of children, struggle and poverty. They are not criminals. They are mostly poor folk trying to get by in a system that continually oppresses them and marginalizes them. So even as my lungs hurt from the pepper spray, and my body aches from being dragged I feel this in my bones!

    It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. All we have to lose is our chains.

    Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf Institutes Ban On Nighttime Street Protests (the reason for the NLG response listed upthread).

    Police forced a peaceful march that was organized by Black women off the streets of Oakland last evening in an unusual show of force that heralds the first enforcement of a nighttime prohibition on street demonstrations. Last night’s protest was part of a national day of action called #SayHerName focusing on police violence against women and transgender people.

    The rally began just before sunset in Frank Ogawa Plaza where about 200–300 people had gathered. After several speeches and recitations of poetry, the protesters announced their intention to march to the Oakland Police Administration Building seven blocks away. Demonstrators had not yet stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway when OPD addressed the crowd through an amplified sound system, stating that the march was “unpermitted.” As demonstrators walked into the street, police immediately ordered them back onto the sidewalk, citing California Vehicle Code Section 2800, which makes it an arrestable offense to not comply with orders of a police officer.

    “The fact is we were threatened with arrest for marching,” said Cat Brooks, one of the facilitators of the protest. “This was a Black women’s and children’s rally saying to the police, please stop killing us, and our woman mayor organized the harshest response we’ve seen yet.”

    “There clearly is a shift in tactics by the police,” said attorney Anne Weills, who was in last night’s march.

    In an interview today, Mayor Libby Schaaf acknowledged that she ordered the prohibition on nighttime street marches in Oakland. However, she argued that it was a not new city law, but rather a reinterpretation of an existing one.

    “There have been no changes to any city policy or enactment of any new ordinances in any way to prohibit peaceful protests,” Schaaf told the Express. “We are making better use of our existing policies to prevent vandalism and violence. Our intent is to ensure that freedom of expression is not compromised by illegal activity and that demonstrators, bystanders, and property are kept safe.”

    However, one of the authors of Oakland’s law governing OPD’s response to protests said the new ban is illegal. “My general impression is the police took an unduly aggressive approach that not only violated their own crowd control policy, but also the First Amendment,” said civil rights attorney Rachel Lederman. Lederman helped draft Oakland’s existing crowd control policy. She said that OPD is not supposed to stop a march simply because it does not have a permit or because it enters the street.

    “This was an unreasonable interference with the demonstration given that there had been no serious crimes committed,” said Lederman. […]

    On social media during and after the march, people speculated that the city is implementing some new ban or curfew on demonstrations, perhaps by implementing an ordinance. City officials said there is no new ordinance, and no rules or policies have been changed.

    “That demonstration was never declared unlawful and never ordered to disperse,” said Schaaf. “My understanding is that protesters were told that once it became dark they needed to get off the roadways.”

    Mayor Schaaf said that Oakland’s crowd control policy allows for time, place, and manner restrictions on political speech, and that her administration’s intent is to maintain a peaceful environment in which everyone feels safe to come out and express themselves.

    “Our intent is that by using better crowd management, not control, but management, that we can get demonstrators into safe spaces after sunset, once it’s dark, and this will better protect everyone’s safety, freedom of speech, and assembly,” the mayor added.

    Under the mayor’s new tactic, OPD will block demonstrators from marching in the streets after dark, and marchers will only be allowed on sidewalks.

    But Lederman said the new ban is clearly unlawful. “A local government can impose a reasonable time, manner, and place restriction on speech,” said Lederman, “but the Oakland crowd control policy specifically states that OPD will facilitate marches in the street regardless of whether a permit has be obtained as long as it’s feasible to do so.”

    Lederman also said it is unconstitutional for the city to prohibit nighttime street marches. “The reasonableness is determined by what’s actually happening there,” said Lederman. “You can’t ban street marches at night because on some past occasions some people broke windows. That’s completely unconstitutional.”

    White Supremacist Confronts Speakers During ‘Black Lives Matter’ Press Conference

    Video cameras captured a heated exchange at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati between a group of angry whites and black activists at a press conference Wednesday. A group of ministers in Cincinnati organized the event, using the upcoming Major League Baseball All-Star Game in their city to call on MLB to join the fight against racial injustice.

    As Cincinnati.com reports, the press conference quickly degenerated into a verbal brawl when several furious white people began voicing their anger.

    The report says that Robert Ransdell did “most of the shouting.” He’s identified as a member of the National Alliance, a white supremacist organization.

    “How many decades are we going to accommodate the behavior of black criminals?” he shouted at Bishop Bobby Hilton, senior pastor of World of Deliverance Ministries in Forest Park, Ohio.

    Hilton responded: “If you can’t have an intelligent conversation, move on. Let’s come together. Can we come together?”

    The Rev. Damon Lynch, pastor of New Prospect Baptist Church in Cincinnati, said that the protesters were like the Southern segregationists decades ago. “What we saw today is nothing new,” he told Cincinnati.com. “It’s what we’ve seen in the civil rights movement from the beginning: angry white people espousing their views, trying to stop us from moving forward.”

    Hilton said that his group was not at the baseball stadium to demand a boycott of the All-Star Game. “We’re asking Major League Baseball to stand with us,” he said.

    Lynch noted that major-league sports have taken a stance on LGBT rights, domestic violence and a number of other issues. He’s urging MLB to use its voice and stand with #BlackLivesMatter.

    Kansas Republicans Have Come Up with a Disgraceful New Way to Screw the Poor because we really really needed that.

    Starting in July, a new law in Kansas will restrict the amount of cash a welfare recipient can take out of ATM’s to just $25 a day—a move that critics say introduces a whole new host of financial burdens—including high ATM fees and travel costs—when they access cash.

    Max Ehrenfreund at the Washington Post explains:

    Since most banking machines are stocked only with $20 bills, the $25 limit is effectively a $20 limit. A family seeking to withdraw even $200 in cash would have to visit an ATM 10 times a month, a real burden for a parent who might not have a car and might not live in a neighborhood where ATMs are easy to find.

    The law, backed by a GOP-dominated Kansas legislature and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, will benefit the pockets of large banks while taking money from poor families who rely on food stamps.

    In Kansas’s system, every withdrawal incurs a $1 fee, and if the beneficiary doesn’t have a bank account, they will have to pay the ATM fee, too. Those fees might be worth it for some families, though, because the card issued by the state of Kansas isn’t like a debit card from an ordinary bank. Ordinary debit cards allow their holders to make purchases for free in stores. In Kansas, beneficiaries get two free purchases a month. After that, they pay 40 cents every time they use the card to buy something.

    The ostensible rationale for this redistribution of wealth is to minimize waste and prevent low income residents from spending their money on non-essentials like alcohol and the much-feared lobster feast. This is the demonizing-the-poor trope that Republican lawmakers frequently deploy to justify punitive control over how low income people spend their money. In addition to the limit on withdrawals, the state’s new law carries restrictions to ludicrous levels by prohibiting spending on items such as swimming pools and fortune telling sessions.

    As Mother Jones has written in the past, such concerns are wildly misplaced and seriously hurt the poor. President Obama recently addressed this conservative characterization, calling out Fox News for portraying the poor as lazy “leeches” eager to waste government funds.

    Fortunately, Kansas’ controversial new provision may actually turn out to be illegal, violating federal law that mandates welfare recipients “have adequate access to their cash assistance” without enduring high fees.

    No big purchases for you, poor people!

    Michael B. Jordan: Why I’m Torching the Color Line A

    You’re not supposed to go on the Internet when you’re cast as a superhero. But after taking on Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four—a character originally written with blond hair and blue eyes—I wanted to check the pulse out there. I didn’t want to be ignorant about what people were saying. Turns out this is what they were saying: “A black guy? I don’t like it. They must be doing it because Obama’s president” and “It’s not true to the comic.” Or even, “They’ve destroyed it!”

    It used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. I can see everybody’s perspective, and I know I can’t ask the audience to forget 50 years of comic books. But the world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961. Plus, if Stan Lee writes an email to my director saying, “You’re good. I’m okay with this,” who am I to go against that?

    Some people may look at my casting as political correctness or an attempt to meet a racial quota, or as part of the year of “Black Film.” Or they could look at it as a creative choice by the director, Josh Trank, who is in an interracial relationship himself—a reflection of what a modern family looks like today.

    This is a family movie about four friends—two of whom are myself and Kate Mara as my adopted sister—who are brought together by a series of unfortunate events to create unity and a team. That’s the message of the movie, if people can just allow themselves to see it.

    Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, “I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.” I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that “it has to be true to the comic book.” Or maybe we have to reach past them.

    To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It’s okay to like it.

  190. rq says

    Moderation on purpose, lots of stuff to go through tomorrow:
    NAACP announces Operation Bike Week Justice. If you meet unfair treatment during #BlackBikeWeek, call (888) 362-8683.

    Today in 1863, U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops is created-allowing more than 170K free blacks & freedmen to join army.

    This is your brain on Whiteness: The invisible psychology of white American ignorance explained

    Earlier this week, outlaw motorcycle clubs engaged in a daylight gun battle in Waco, Texas. This combat involved hundreds of people. The mall where the riot occurred was left resembling a war zone, with hundreds of spent bullet cartridges strewn about, broken bodies everywhere, and police and other local municipal services overwhelmed. By the end of melee, nine outlaws were dead, 18 wounded, and at least 165 people were arrested; 120 guns were recovered at the crime scene.

    In late April and early May, African-American young people protested the killing of Freddie Gray by the Baltimore police. Those peaceful protests escalated into a local uprising against the police. This was neither random nor unprovoked: The Baltimore uprising was a response to the long-simmering upset and righteous anger about poverty, racism, civil rights violations, and abuse by the police. No one was killed during the Baltimore protests or subsequent uprising.

    The gun battle chaos in Waco was a result of rivalries between outlaw motorcycle clubs, in competition with one another for the profits from drug and gun traffic, various protection rackets, and other criminal enterprises. The Baltimore uprising was a reaction to social, economic, racial, and political injustice; a desperate plea for justice in an era of police brutality and white-on-black murder by the state.

    The participants in the Waco, Texas gun battle were almost exclusively white. The participants in the Baltimore Uprising were almost all black. Quite predictably, the corporate news media’s narrative frame for those events was heavily influenced by race. News coverage of these two events has stretched the bounds of credulity by engaging in all manner of mental gymnastics in order to describe the killings, mayhem, and gun battle in Waco as anything other than a “riot.”

    As writers such as Salon’s own Jenny Kutner keenly observed:

    I use the terms “shootout” and “gunfire erupted” after reading numerous eyewitness reports, local news coverage and national stories about the “incident,” which has been described with a whole host of phrases already. None, however, are quite as familiar as another term that’s been used to describe similarly chaotic events in the news of late: “Riot.”

    Of course, the deadly shootout in Texas was exactly that: A shootout. The rival gangs were not engaged in a demonstration or protest and they were predominantly white, which means that — despite the fact that dozens of people engaged in acts of obscene violence — they did not “riot,” as far as much of the media is concerned. “Riots” are reserved for communities of color in protest, whether they organize violently or not, and the “thuggishness” of those involved is debatable. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Texas.

    The dominant corporate news media have used the Baltimore uprising and other similar events to attack Black America’s character, values, and culture. The argument is clear: The events in Waco were committed by white men who happen to be criminals; the Baltimore uprising was committed by black people who, because of their “race” and “culture,” are inherently criminal.

    Racial bias in news reporting has been repeatedly documented by scholars in media studies, critical race theory, political science, and sociology. As anti-racism activist Jane Elliot incisively observed, “People of color can’t even turn on the televisions in their own homes without being exposed to white racism.” The centuries of racism, and resulting stereotypes about the inherent criminality of Black Americans, are central to why the events in Waco and Baltimore have received such divergent news coverage. […]

    In a society like the United States, one that is structured around maintaining white (and male) privilege, a type of logic is created where some groups and individuals are deemed to be more valuable and privileged than others.

    Language, as a way to describe the world around us, is pivotal in this process; it locates a given person relative to others, describes relationships, and both acknowledges and reinforces differences in power. Language also evolves. It is not fixed. And it reveals a great deal about changing norms about identity. As such, language is inherently political.

    In America’s public discourse, the knee-jerk and instinctive move to refer to black people as “thugs”, and the parallel impulse to resist any such marking of white individuals with the same language, is a function of how the “I” and the “ego” are structured in a race-stratified society. Thus, the divergence in language used by the corporate new media to frame and discuss the events in Waco may actually reveal much more about how white Americans see themselves than it does about people of color, and black youth in particular.

    White racial logic demands that whites and blacks engaged in the same behavior are often described using different language. (White people have a “fracas,” while black people “riot”; during Hurricane Katrina white people were “finding food,” while black people were “looting.”)

    In the post civil rights era, White racial logic also tries to immunize and protect individual white folks from critical self-reflection about their egos and personal relationships to systems of unjust and unearned advantage by deploying a few familiar rhetorical strategies, such as “Not all white people,” “We need to talk about class not race,” or similarly hollow and intellectual vapid and banal claims about “reverse racism.” Ego, language, and cognition intersect in the belief that Whiteness is inherently benign and innocent.

    Whiteness is many things. It is a type of property, privilege, “invisibility,” and “normality.” Whiteness also pays a type of psychological wage to its owners and beneficiaries. While its relative material value may be declining in an age of neoliberalism and globalization, the psychological wage wherein Whiteness is imagined as good and innocent, and those who identify themselves as “white” believe themselves to be inherently just and decent, still remains in force. One of the most important psychological wages of Whiteness remains how white folks can imagine themselves as the preeminent individual, the universal “I” and “We,” while benefitting from the unearned advantages that come with white privilege as a type of group advantage.

    Non-whites in the United States, and the West more broadly, do not have the luxury of being individuals. If a “Black” person commits a crime, it is somehow a reflection of the criminality of Black people en masse. Similarly, when a person who happens to be marked as “Arab” or “Muslim” commits an act of political violence, an obligatory conversation on the relationship between “terrorism” and the “Muslim community” ensues.

    However, white folks can commit all manner of murder and mayhem, and there is no national conversation about the meanings of “Whiteness” or of “White America’s” particular problems. In many ways, being white is the ultimate marker of radical autonomy and freedom: Its members rarely feel the obligation — nor are they made to by the media or the state — to be held accountable for each other’s behavior.

    So it is that white people who do “bad” things are “bad” individuals; while black and brown people who do “bad” things are representative of a type of collective or group problem and pathology.

    During those rare public moments of intervention, when the particular problems and pathologies of White America are discussed white denial is immediately deployed as a type of defense shield (the response to any rigorous or critical discussion(s) of Whiteness and white privilege is especially toxic and hostile from white conservatives). Ultimately, white denial is the immune system of a white body politic that is averse to critical self-reflection about its own poor behavior and shortcomings. […]

    Against all of these examples of malfeasance, black people must be deemed thugs who uniquely “riot” and constitute a natural “criminal class” for the many lies of Whiteness to solidly cohere. The cognitive mapping, language, and sense of ego that support a belief in the inherent goodness and nobility of Whiteness cannot withstand rigorous and critical self-examination.

    The contradictions in how Black Americans and other people of color are discussed by the mainstream media, as compared to white folks, are glaring and obvious for those who choose to see them. Those who choose to speak truth to power about white supremacy, white privilege, and white racism are forcing White America to confront what the latter has by choice deemed as somehow illegible and unseen. To force White America to realize that, yes, it too has a criminal class of people, is pathological, and neither inherently noble nor benign, is a type of ideologically disruptive moment that has and will continue to be met with rage, anger, denial, and dismissal.

    Why? Because such observations and facts are too challenging for many white individuals to process, because they have been socialized by a society that deems them better than the Other by virtue of belonging to a semi-exclusive club of people who are categorized as being members of the “white race.”

    But white denial does not make the aforementioned facts any less true.

    When white folks, whether among the pundit classes, or in day-to-day interactions, are confronted with the gross contradictions of their language — why black people in Baltimore are called “thugs,” while white outlaw bikers who kill people somehow did not engage in a “riot” — they may appear confused, frustrated, or perhaps even willfully stupid as they try to evade and explain the distinction between the two examples.

    I have come to the conclusion that many white folks are legitimately confused when confronted by such examples, that their inability to process this data is sincere; those who have not disowned their Whiteness and white privilege are unable on a cognitive level to process many aspects of empirical reality. Units of speech such as “white crime,” “white pathology,” and “white thugs” have no meaning in the cognitive schema and conceptual grid of Whiteness.

    Such concepts “do not compute.”

    As great American thinkers such as Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, and others have suggested, Whiteness and white privilege have damaged the cognitive, intellectual, ethical and moral processes of White America (as distinct from any given white person). The challenge thus becomes: Is it possible to help those white individuals who are still loyal to Whiteness and White racial logic, to see the world as it actually is, and to transcend the White Gaze?

    One of the existential questions that have repeatedly confronted Black America is: “what does it feel like to be a problem?”

    White America needs to begin to ask itself the same question.

    A truly excellent article.

    #SayHerName National Day of Action for Black Women and Girls, a storify with pictures.

    Showing racists that the #BlackWomenMatter nude protest has origins in Africa only makes them angrier. 2 birds, 1 stone, so to speak.

    This evening the Family of #TyroneWest will gather at NE BPD for a vigil, where the #KillerCops remain on active duty

    And some things for the calendar, Black Chicago 2015 Summer Events

    The Summer Solstice is just round the corner and that’s when Chicago comes alive. Summer in Chicago offers an array of festivals, concerts, events, parties, and outings in every neighborhood. Here’s my list for Summer 2015 hot happenings that showcase the diverse array of ethnicity, heritage, and culture of my city. Grab your red cups and get ready for more amazing advertures in #SummerTimeChi!

    The list will be updated throughout the summer so bookmark this page and check back often for updates. And make sure to scroll to the bottom to check out the list of events throughout the summer.

  191. Pteryxx says

    Fusion: How racist housing laws are keeping New Orleans white

    An estimated 228,000 occupied housing units were flooded after Hurricane Katrina- accounting for more than 45% of all available housing. When President Bush came to New Orleans in September 2005 and addressed the nation, he claimed the goal and hope of rebuilding efforts was to rebuild New Orleans for all residents interested in returning. Contrary to this rhetoric, the rebuilding of the New Orleans area post-Katrina was a tool used to further entrench systematic segregation and discrimination. In 2007, nearly two years after the storm hit, the Census Bureau estimated the city’s population represented approximately 63% of the pre-hurricane total of 455,046, suggesting more than a third of the pre-hurricane residents of New Orleans had not returned to the city. Those who returned first were overwhelmingly white, wealthier and without children. But this was not an accident or coincidence.

    In 2005, Republican Congressman Richard Baker from Baton Rouge captured the opinions of housing policy makers by jubilantly declaring, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” While Baker maintains his comments were misunderstood (he said the comments were about improving the conditions for residents), the opportunity to remake New Orleans in a whiter image proved to be irresistible. No one enacted a direct ban to keep poor, black residents from returning – instead, decision-makers stealthily leveraged zoning laws that excluded minority groups from desirable neighborhoods with better services and amenities. By restricting pre-fabricated housing and multifamily dwellings – particularly public housing projects – and increasing the cost of single-family residences, housing discrimination diminishes the options of many minority households and contributes to continuing intergroup disparities in income, home ownership, wealth, education and employment.

    On September 29, 2006, just thirteen months after Katrina, St. Bernard Parish (county) passed the infamous “blood relative” ordinance. This novel discriminatory tool restricted home rentals to blood relatives of the owners defined as “within the first, second or third direct ascending or descending generations.” To rent to anyone else, landlords would need to obtain a Permissive Use Permit from the St. Bernard Parish Council. Violators of the ordinance, including both lessors and lessees, were subject to criminal prosecution and civil penalties, including a misdemeanor charge, a fine of between $50 and $250 per day for each day they were in violation of the ordinance, and a civil penalty of $100 per day for each day of unpermitted rental, plus administrative costs, court costs and attorney fees for investigation and prosecution of the civil matter. Clearly, the Parish Council wanted this law to stick.

    The council justified the ordinance citing the “need to maintain the integrity and stability of established neighborhoods.” Since roughly 93% of St. Bernard’s housing units were owned by Caucasians at the time, the practical effect of the blood-relative ordinance was to make single-family rentals unavailable to non-whites. This and the many other barriers to entry erected by St. Bernard Parish Council seem not merely designed to preserve the racial and socioeconomic homogeneity that pre-existed Katrina, but even to reduce the number of ethnic minorities in the Parish.

    […]

    The failure to enforce fair housing laws alongside other governmental issues left minority residents of affected areas trapped in unsafe dwellings with no other housing alternatives immediately following the storm which lead to unnecessary deaths. But even after escaping Katrina, African-American residents found a much tougher path to return than white residents. A 2006 National Fair Housing Alliance study showed a 66% rate of discrimination against African‐American hurricane evacuees resulting in a systematic failure to provide African-American residents with information about available apartments – or even to return their phone calls.

    Even federally mandated programs to increase low-income and affordable housing were legislated against after the hurricane.

    On October 18, 2006, councilman Christopher L. Roberts sponsored a resolution making it clear to agencies charged with overseeing the housing recovery post-Katrina that Jefferson Parish objected to any applications by developers to build apartment complexes or single-family homes in the cities of Gretna or Terrytown using low income housing tax credits. Council members unanimously approved this district-specific measure without discussion. This ordinance, banning housing programs that serve low-income households, effectively excluded a disproportionate number of poor minority households from living in this area. People with disabilities, African Americans, Latinos and low income families disproportionately rely on multi-family housing. Thus, the parish’s resolution may have an illegal, discriminatory effect on these populations.

    Despite the councilmen’s resolution, one housing project succeeded in obtaining tax credits from the state. The Council then succeeded, via surprise resolution, in imposing an 18-month land use study that would halt development on the site while the Parish considered changing the zoning of the site from multi-family to single-family residential. This zoning change resulted in Volunteers of America’s decision to abandon the project.

    attn dot com: Why Protestors Turn Violent or, summarized by BB: Why do we support Katniss but not Baltimore protestors?

    When you saw “The Hunger Games,” who did you root for? Katniss and her beleaguered community? Or people in the Capitol wearing pink eyelashes and obliviously eating until they vomited, while the people in other districts starved? I’m going to assume the former, because the movie makes it clear. The government is oppressing the people in District Twelve, and we are supposed to cheer for them as they attempt to overthrow an unfair structure.

    OK, next question: When you saw the protests in Baltimore, who did you feel for? Because if you looked down on the protestors for disturbing the peace, break out the rainbow wigs and sparkle mascara because you might be from the Capitol.

    Much more about systemic oppressions, from birth through school to adulthood, and demolishing the excuses given for not caring.

    The uprising in Baltimore is ultimately a response to racism. To suggest otherwise is victim blaming. And just like we have learned not to blame the woman in the cute outfit for her rape or the wife for her husband’s choice to beat her, eventually we will learn to stop blaming Black people for the decades of systemic oppression they have suffered at the hands of the American government. Black people did not enslave themselves, make themselves sharecroppers, redline themselves into poor neighborhoods and then systematically pull funding, investment, and services from those neighborhoods. Black people did not segregate themselves into bad schools and then pull funding from those schools, and they did not create legal loopholes like stand your ground laws to make it easy for law enforcement officers and citizens alike to escape punishment for murder. Black people did not create racism. And Black people’s response to that abuse will never be an adequate reason for why it happened. The reason is white supremacy, and until we have eradicated it from our country there will continue to be uprisings like this one. Because whether or not you have found empathy for Black people, we are human. And you can only push a human being so far before something breaks. And I think we have proven, that what breaks will not be our spirit.

    Ignorance is no longer an excuse. The Internet is full of articles about wealth and opportunity disparities found in the United States. The only question left to ask yourself is, are you so invested in the status quo that you will look down on the people who are suffering the most? Or will you have at least as much empathy for them as you would a character in a movie?

  192. Pteryxx says

    Truth-Out interviewing Matt Taibbi about Baltimore, regarding an article so new that it isn’t yet available on Rolling Stone’s site: Matt Taibbi on Baltimore, Freddie Gray and How Legal System Covers Up Police Violence

    AMY GOODMAN: Baltimore is the focus of Matt Taibbi’s latest article in Rolling Stone. It’s headlined “Why Baltimore Blew Up: It Wasn’t Just the Killing of Freddie Gray – Inside the Complex Legal Infrastructure That Encourages and Covers Up Police Violence.”

    So, take us inside that, Matt. In fact, you’re writing a book on this subject right now.

    MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I first came onto the subject because of the other subject we were just talking about. I was – I had been writing a lot about why people from Wall Street don’t go to jail, and I was interested in who does go to jail in this country, and I wanted to make that comparison. And in doing so, I had to learn a lot about community policing, stop and frisk, you know, what they call zero-tolerance policing tactics.

    And a lot of that, I think, is behind the anger that we’re seeing spill out in places like Ferguson and Baltimore, because these new modern policing strategies that we’ve instituted in the last couple of decades, most famously beginning here in New York with Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton, you know, the “broken windows” theory – what happens with these policing strategies is that it forces police to go out into neighborhoods and do what one police officer described to me as self-initiated contacts. In other words, you have a different neighborhood, you have the affluent white neighborhood, where police only showed up – show up when they’re called. You know, if somebody falls out of a window, somebody shoots a gun in a building, they’re going to show up. But in Bed-Stuy or in the South Bronx, police are getting out of their squad cars, they’re stopping people on the street, they’re questioning them, they’re patting them down, and it creates this endless stream of hostile interactions that over time become more – that creates more and more animosity and more and more room for corruption of the process. And I think that is definitely the background for what we see in places like Baltimore.

    […]

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you talk in your piece about a number of the people who have been subjected to these policies. Could you say what happened, in particular, the story that you conclude with, Makia Smith?

    MATT TAIBBI: Yeah.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: The mother, and how she was – what happened to her?

    MATT TAIBBI: So, Makia is – she was driving back from a Wendy’s. She had her two-year-old in the back of her car. And she saw police arresting somebody, and among other things, she saw them putting their knees on the person’s head, a young African-American man. She got out of her car and started to film the incident, and because of her getting out of the car and filming, the police got upset. They focused their attention on her. They dragged her out of her car by her hair. They eventually arrested her. They took her away to jail. And they left her baby in the back of the car. She ended up having to get a stranger at the side of the road to take the baby. And she was, you know, calling out her mother’s cellphone number, so that the stranger and the mother could connect.

    A jury found the police, in the civil case, not negligent in that instance. But it’s the kind of thing – I mean, you know, when I talked to her, she said her whole conception of the police, the government, everything changed after that incident. I mean, it’s going to be changed forever now. She says she will never call the police, you know, for any reason. And I think that’s what goes on a lot in these neighborhoods, is that people have a bad experience, it colors their perception of law enforcement and the government forever, and then when something like Freddie Gray happens, it gets people worked up into a frenzy, that is totally understandable.

    Looking forward to that article in its entirety.

  193. Pteryxx says

    Starkly animated music video just turned up on Cartoon Network: “Early” by Run The Jewels (youtube link)

    It be feelin’ like the life that I’m living man, I don’t control
    Cause every day I’m in a fight for my soul
    All hands below, high seas in a rickety boat
    Smoke o’s, so the kid might cope
    You want cash or hope, no clash, matter fact get both
    Go without get turnt to ghosts
    You know that’s the law, deal done by the shake of claws
    It ain’t a game if the shit don’t pause
    And I find you odd, so convinced in the truth of y’all
    That the true truth’s truly gone

  194. rq says

    Here’s two Canadian media on the Freddie Gray indictment:
    Freddie Gray: Grand jury indicts 6 officers in police-custody death (CBC);
    Grand jury indicts six officers in police-custody death of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, prosecutor says (Toronto Star).

    And the CBC on Cleveland and Brelo:
    Cleveland officer Michael Brelo not guilty in deaths of 2 unarmed suspects

    Judge John O’Donnell said Officer Michael Brelo, 31, acted reasonably in shooting the two suspects while standing on the hood of their car and firing through the windshield after it was surrounded. Brelo was also found not guilty of aggravated assault in the case.

    I am sick. More:

    “Brelo was acting in conditions difficult for even experienced officers to imagine,” O’Donnell said during the roughly hour-long reading of the verdict.

    “He was in a strange place at night surrounded by gunfire, sirens and flashing bulbs. Brelo did not fire too quickly or at a person who was clearly unarmed or unable to run him over. He did not fire at somebody running away,” he added.

    Really sick.

    Michael Brelo acquittal sparks protests in Cleveland

    Police in riot gear made more than a dozen arrests as crowds protested the acquittal of a white Ohio patrolman who fired through the windshield of a suspect’s car at the end of a 137-shot barrage that killed the two unarmed black occupants.

    A judge said Saturday that he could not determine the officer alone fired the fatal shots.

    Michael Brelo, 31, put his head in his hands as the judge issued the verdict. Angry, but mostly orderly, protests followed. Some held a mock funeral, carrying signs asking, “Will I be next?”
    […]

    Prosecutors argued they were alive until Brelo’s final shots, but medical examiners for both sides testified they could not determine the order in which the deadly shots were fired.

    Russell’s sister, Michelle Russell, said she believed Brelo would ultimately face justice.

    “He’s not going to dodge this just because he was acquitted,” she said. “God will have the final say.”

    Authorities never learned why Russell didn’t stop the car. He had a criminal record including convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery. Williams had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction. Both were described as homeless. A crack pipe was found in the car.

    In a case of answering their own questions, there in that last paragraph… More:

    Brelo could have been convicted of lesser charges, but O’Donnell determined his actions were justified following the chase, which included reports of shots fired from Russell’s car, because officers perceived a threat.

    Brelo’s lead attorney, Patrick D’Angelo, said Brelo had been unfairly prosecuted, saying he had risked his life in the incident.

    Brelo has been on unpaid leave since he was indicted last May. Police Chief Calvin Williams said it will continue during disciplinary reviews for him and the other 12 officers.

    And Cleveland expects people to trust the PD now, yes? Trust the justice system, trust law enforcement to be fair and unprejudiced? What a laugh. What a sick, disgusting laugh.

    Here’s some audio that won’t open for me right now, but could be interesting: Former cop builds database on fatal US police shootings. I’m not sure which former cop is being discussed as all media is blocked at work, but I know of an activist who is also building such a database, and I wonder if there’s any collaboration there or if it is the same person. Anyway. Funny how the authoritehs themselves aren’t doing it, neh? Funny.

  195. Pteryxx says

    ugh…

    “[Officer] Brelo was acting in conditions difficult for even experienced officers to imagine,” [Judge] O’Donnell said during the roughly hour-long reading of the verdict.

    “He was in a strange place at night surrounded by gunfire, sirens and flashing bulbs. Brelo did not fire too quickly or at a person who was clearly unarmed or unable to run him over. He did not fire at somebody running away,” he added.

    Russell and Williams were surrounded by gunfire, sirens and flashing bulbs, too, and neither did they fire at clearly unarmed or fleeing persons who posed them no threat. They didn’t fire at all, being unarmed, and by this point had been shot by something like a dozen bullets each. All because of a huge car chase involving 60 police cruisers, because Russell’s car backfired near police headquarters. (Source)

    The judge said in his ruling that he wouldn’t “sacrifice” Brelo to the wave of anti-police sentiment that has swept across the nation in the wake of other police in-custody deaths.

    …No words.

    Four of the 23 gunshot wounds to Russell and seven of Williams’s 24 wounds were believed to have been fatal. O’Donnell said that while testimony showed Brelo fired some of the fatal shots, other officers fired kill shots as well.

    A grand jury charged five police supervisors with misdemeanour dereliction of duty for failing to control the chase. All five have pleaded not guilty and no trial date has been set.

    Prosecutors had argued that when Brelo stood on the hood of the Malibu that he meant to kill Russell and Williams instead of containing a threat to his and other officers’ lives. O’Donnell ruled that even the last 15 shots were justified based on Brelo’s belief that someone inside the car had fired at police at the beginning, middle and end of the chase.

    “Officer Brelo risked his life on that night,” Brelo’s lead attorney, Patrick D’Angelo, said after the verdict.

    Yeah, he risked his life. He might’ve been killed in a car crash during that 60-cruiser chase, or he might have been struck by friendly fire among those 88 shots fired that weren’t the 49 he fired himself. Because an entire swarm of police officers (a murder? an adjudication?) had bang-bang noises in their ears and assumed they must be coming from the hands of two black people in a car.

    Tamir Rice was shot to death in this same neighborhood.

    A larger protest of around 200 people gathered at noon near where Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty lives. Both protests later merged at a recreation centre where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a rookie patrol officer last November. While that demonstration became boisterous, with Eugene Rice angrily calling for justice for his grandson, it remained peaceful.

    An investigation into the Tamir Rice shooting is nearly complete and will be given to the prosecutor’s office to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.

    Alicia Kirkman, 47, of Cleveland, said she joined the march in honour of her son, killed in a police shooting eight years ago.

    “I’m just so mad we never get justice from any of the police killings,” said Kirkman, who said she settled with the city after her son’s death but no charges were filed.

  196. Pteryxx says

    Pardon, link in my #195 there is the same rq is quoting in #194.

    rq, that CBC link that won’t open for you: CBC Radio

    Eric Garner, of Staten Island.

    Tamir Rice, of Cleveland.

    Michael Brown, of Ferguson.

    Those are some of the names we know. Unarmed, African-American men, shot dead by police officers. They are deaths that have made “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” an all-too-common refrain across the United States this past year.

    And last month, Freddie Gray’s name joined that list, in Baltimore.

    But if you were listening to our documentary, “Screaming In The Dark” on yesterday’s program, then you know there are also lesser-known names… such as Tyrone West. He also died in Baltimore… two years ago, after resisting arrest. His family is still fighting for accountability today.

    All these cases have raised some troubling questions about just how often police kill people in the line of duty, and what it takes for those officers to face criminal charges. But the answers are surprisingly difficult to come by.

    Philip Stinson is trying to change that. He’s a former police officer who is now a criminologist at Bowling Green State University. He has compiled what many people believe is the most comprehensive data set about police shootings in the United States. Philip Stinson was in Perrysburg, Ohio.

    Philip Stinson’s site at Bowling Green State U: Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested

    Bowling Green State University has been awarded a National Institute of Justice Grant to conduct a research study on police officers who are arrested for committing crimes.

    The grant funds the work of criminal justice faculty members Dr. Philip Stinson, principal investigator, and co-investigators Drs. John Liederbach and Steven Lab.

    They are studying the arrest records of on- and off-duty police officers by reviewing archived news articles and records from 2005 to 2011 in an effort to develop the first national profile of police integrity. Additionally, they are using federal court records to investigate the connection between police crime and other forms of police misconduct.

    Interview with Stinson at Five Thirty-Eight: An Ex-Cop Keeps The Country’s Best Data Set On Police Misconduct

    When Talking Points Memo, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post needed data on how often police officers are charged with on-duty killings, they all turned to the same guy: Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip M. Stinson.

    Stinson, 50, has become an indispensable source for researchers and reporters looking into alleged crimes and acts of violence by police officers because he has built a database tracking thousands of incidents in which officers were arrested since 2005. His data has shown that even the few police officers who are arrested for drunken driving are rarely convicted and that arrests spike for cops who have been on the force 18 years or longer, contrary to prior research showing it was mostly new officers who were acting out.

    […]

    CB: Many who quote your stats use them to make larger points: Too many police officers break the law, or too few are punished for it, or police are too violent with citizens, or are biased against black people. Do you have a larger view based on the data you’ve collected?

    PS: What we’ve seen is that courts are just very reluctant to convict cops who are charged with crimes. We see some interesting patterns with that. So juries, and even judges in bench trials, are not comfortable for prosecutors to prosecute cases.

    We do look a lot at what gets them arrested, what gets them convicted or not convicted, and what gets them to lose their job. Two things that have come out that have just sort of blown me away:

    1) Many cops are arrested for crimes that are serious and don’t lose their jobs. We have cops who were arrested in 2005 or 2006, and we’re startled to see they are still a cop — maybe still with the same agency, maybe not. That just blows me away. John Lewis in Schenectady, [New York,] is one example.

    2) The other is, from prior research, it looked like if cops get in trouble, it will be early in their careers. What we found is that almost 20 percent of these cases involve officers with at least 18 years of experience.3

    CB: The Washington Post investigation you contributed to found that in the last decade, just 54 officers were charged with fatally shooting someone while on duty. One open question is, what’s the denominator? How many people do you think police have killed overall in that time?

    PS: I think it’s such a huge number. I don’t know how you could manage it. How do you verify it? We can at least go back and get the court records [for officer arrests]. It’s an impossible thing to do all of that [for the cases in which no one was charged].4

    But we do have this file, that’s getting bigger, where we put articles that we come across where we’re just convinced they’re going to arrest the officer but they don’t. And the file just keeps growing. And we kind of scratch our heads. How does that happen?

    That previous CBC Radio episode, Screaming in the Dark: Police brutality far from over in Baltimore, meet Tyrone West

    This documentary from Baltimore is produced by The Current’s Pacinthe Mattar. It is called “Screaming in the Dark.”

    Joan Webber is The Current’s documentary editor.

    Video at the link.

  197. Pteryxx says

    Philip Stinson’s research site also has numerous sidebar links to articles featuring or arising from the arrested-police database. For example:

    Boston Globe: Heavy Toll, Light Penalties for Police who Drive Drunk

    Simpkins is one of at least 30 Massachusetts law enforcement officials who have been charged with drunken driving while off-duty since the start of 2012, a Globe review has found. The crashes collectively killed three people and injured more than a half-dozen others.

    Though some officers resigned or were placed on unpaid leave after the charges, a majority kept their jobs, sometimes after a short suspension.

    ‘[It is] customary practice when a stop is made on a fellow police officer . . . [to] not call in the stop.’ — Massachusetts Civil Service Commission report

    The drunken driving tally is almost certainly low because not every arrest is widely reported and officers sometimes let their peers off the hook, a practice known as “professional courtesy.” Massachusetts police departments have launched internal reviews at least four times in the last three years after learning that an officer or former officer was accused of drunken driving but was not arrested.

    The Globe also found the vast majority of officers, like Simpkins, refused to take a breath test, making it harder to prosecute them criminally for drunken driving. And departments frequently went out of their way to accommodate them — keeping officers on the payroll even after they temporarily lost their licenses for refusing the test and could no longer do their regular duties.

    and this research abstract from Police Chief Magazine: Research in Brief: Officer-Involved Domestic Violence

    The problem of violence within police families—commonly referred to as officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV)—has been recognized as an important issue. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) promulgated a model policy on OIDV in 1999 and a revised policy in 2003. The IACP characterized OIDV as a problem that exists at some serious level and deserves attention.1 There are no comprehensive statistics on OIDV.

    The purpose of the research is to provide data on violence within police families. Our research identifies incidents in which police were arrested for criminal offenses associated with an incident of violence within the family, domestic violence, or both.2 Our primary goal is to provide information on actual OIDV cases to further initiatives designed to mitigate the problem.

    […]

    Findings

    The study identified 324 cases in which police were arrested for a criminal offense associated with an OIDV. The cases involved the arrest of 281 officers employed by 226 police agencies. Most of the cases involved a male officer (96 percent) employed in a patrol or other street-level function (86.7 percent). There were 43 supervisory officers arrested for an OIDV-related offense.

    One-third of the OIDV victims were the current spouse of the arrested officer. Close to one-fourth of the victims were children, including a child or a stepchild of the officer or children who were unrelated to the arrested officer. There were 16 victims who also were police officers. Simple assault was the most serious offense charged in roughly 40 percent of the cases, followed by aggravated assault (20.1 percent), forcible rape (9.9 percent), intimidation (7.1 percent), murder/non-negligent manslaughter (4.6 percent), and forcible fondling (3.7 percent).

    Data on final organizational outcomes were available for 233 of the cases. About one-third of those cases involved officers who were separated from their jobs either through resignation or termination. The majority of cases in which the final employment outcome was known resulted in a suspension without job separation (n = 152). Of those cases where there was a conviction on at least one offense charged, officers are known to have lost their jobs through either termination or resignation in less than half of those cases (n = 52).

    More than one-fifth of the OIDV cases involved an officer who had also been named individually as a party defendant in at least one federal court civil action for depravation of civil rights under color of law pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 at some point during their law enforcement careers.

    Actionable Items

    1. Persons convicted of a qualifying misdemeanor crime of domestic violence are prohibited from possessing any firearm or ammunition pursuant to the Lautenberg Amendment (1996). There are, however, no effective processes to record, track, or verify domestic violence convictions, especially in regard to incomplete records and the lack of integration among local, state, and federal databases. Policy makers need to work to develop initiatives to document and track convictions pursuant to the goals of the Lautenberg Amendment. Police executives should collaborate with prosecutors and judges to ensure that information demonstrating the use or the attempted use of physical force or threatened use of a deadly weapon is reflected in the charging document, any plea agreements, and the final court records of OIDV cases.

    2. The study demonstrates how some officers escape appropriate penalties because of loopholes, preferential charges, and organizational failures to adequately punish convicted officers. Police executives should be cognizant of the potential for preferential charges in cases of OIDV that mitigate provisions in federal law designed to identify and sanction police convicted of a domestic violence offense. As such, chiefs must ensure that disciplinary proceedings involving officers convicted of violence within the family, domestic violence, or both are consistent with federal law and the IACP’s model policy on OIDV.

    3. The finding that roughly one in five of the officers identified in our research also were named as defendants in civil rights lawsuits may indicate the need to include information on OIDV arrests among other performance indicators presently used in these systems or at least the need for further scrutiny of the relationship between the perpetration of family violence and other forms of police misconduct.

  198. rq says

    Wow, Pteryxx, thank you so much for that follow-up!
    Well, he’s not the same person as the activist I know putting together a police brutality database, perhaps they should discuss.
    @195 Yeah, it just makes me sick. Justified. Seriously, he got up on the hood of that car after about a 100 shots had already been fired. (a) He put himself in danger (cross-fire, anyone?) and (b) what is the point, considering the circumstances? He committed first an act of absolute stupidity (jumping into a clearly visible and open position during a barrage of gunfire), then an act of absolute malice (firing through the windshield at two most-likely-probably-already-injured people who were in a defenseless position). As you say, not enough words for the reaction I have to that. Justified. *spits* Well, fuck. I haven’t been through my twitter feed yet from just before the verdict and on (work), but I’m sort of dreading the reactions there…
    And I wonder how they’re going to justify Tamir Rice’s murder. :(

  199. Pteryxx says

    rq, thank *you* for doing so much collecting and posting so I even have an idea where to focus my instances of in-depth digging. I’m also trying to follow up on Tyrone West from that CBC piece, but at some point I do have to eat. <_<

    It's increasingly obvious that police in a situation don't have any idea what is or is not real gunfire, or whether it's coming from a suspect, third party, or their own or colleagues' weapons. (Nor do they much care, because black people.) It ties into the discussion about random bystanders with guns not knowing who instigated a shooting, or being mistaken for shooters themselves if they pull out their own weapons to try and help. And the more common guns become among *everyone* in the vicinity of people interacting, the more potential for *any* situation to escalate from harmless to perceived-as-life-threatening to actually life-threatening. Car backfires? OMGWHATIFIT’SASHOOTING *grabs own handgun* *threatening gesture achieved*…

    But “understandable” (in the sense of a cognitive fallacy) as that confusion might seem, overkill of bullets just doesn’t seem to happen to white suspects, even armed ones. I think there was an article at the Grio or Colorlines about how black victims shot dead by police tend to get hit by 8 or 14 or 20 bullets, while white victims get hit by 2 or 3. Somewhere in there, police just need to fire that many more bullets before they can feel their lives are no longer in danger from a black victim.

    So Officer Brelo bravely leaped up onto that car hood smoking-gun first as if Russell and Wilson were some sort of armor plated velociraptors instead of terrified, bleeding, possibly semiconscious human beings who’d just been chased down and shot at by half the police force of Ohio because their car backfired. If even one of those cops had the impulse to check whether their targets were no longer a threat, they were too slow, because Brave Officer Brelo got to them first.

  200. Pteryxx says

    Greta Christina being awesome at Alternet: 7 Things People Who Say They’re ‘Fiscally Conservative But Socially Liberal’ Don’t Understand (and at her blog)

    “Well, I’m conservative, but I’m not one of those racist, homophobic, dripping-with-hate Tea Party bigots! I’m pro-choice! I’m pro-same-sex-marriage! I’m not a racist! I just want lower taxes, and smaller government, and less government regulation of business. I’m fiscally conservative, and socially liberal.”

    How many liberals and progressives have heard this? It’s ridiculously common. Hell, even David Koch of the Koch brothers has said, “I’m a conservative on economic matters and I’m a social liberal.”

    And it’s wrong. W-R-O-N-G Wrong.

    You can’t separate fiscal issues from social issues. They’re deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm. That’s true even for the mildest, most generous version of “fiscal conservatism” — low taxes, small government, reduced regulation, a free market. These policies perpetuate human rights abuses. They make life harder for people who already have hard lives. Even if the people supporting these policies don’t intend this, the policies are racist, sexist, classist (obviously), ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise socially retrograde. In many ways, they do more harm than so-called “social policies” that are supposedly separate from economic ones. Here are seven reasons that “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” is nonsense.

    Typically brilliant, hard-hitting writing with tons of references, including many I haven’t seen before, such as this one at IFL Science: Deprivation And Poverty Leave Visible Marks On The Brain

    Gabrieli led a team that used MRI machines to study the brains of 23 students from lower income families and 35 raised with more wealth. All were aged 12 or 13, with low income defined by eligibility for the subsidized school lunch program.

    The children were also given the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Unsurprisingly, the lower income children performed worse on average, with 57% achieving proficiency compared to 91% of the wealthier students.

    However, Gabrieli was also able to see the differences in the children’s brains, noticing that the richer students had thicker temporal and occipital lobes, which is responsible, among many other capacities, for vision and storing knowledge. Important as these skills are in general, they are particularly emphasized in standardized tests. Differences in cortical thickness could account for almost half the difference in the students’ MCAS scores, the researchers report in a paper published in Psychological Science.

    Previous studies have linked environmental conditions to changes in the brain, and many more have associated the same conditions with lower academic outcomes, but this is the first to put the three together.

  204. rq says

    Pteryxx
    re: police and gunfire
    Well, there’s talk that Brelo has served in the Marines, and that he himself described the shooting as reminding him of Afghanistan… I think that’ll be in an article coming up.

    +++

    First going to back up a bit and have some pictures from Saturday night, plus a few of the initial articles on the Not Guilty verdict.
    There were, in fact, two main reasons for protest – the Brelo verdict, but also a curfew imposed by the Mayor of Oakland in response to protests for black women killed by police. They went out and defied that, so there’s pictures of that, too.

    Killing 9ppl in #Waco gets you handcuffed but still have cell phone. Car chase gets you 137 bullets #BreloVerdict

    Some protesters sit in the streets on Lakeside and W. 6th. Arguments about where to take the #BreloVerdict protest.

  205. rq says

    Pteryxx
    re: police and gunfire
    Well, there’s talk that Brelo has served in the Marines, and that he himself described the shooting as reminding him of Afghanistan… I think that’ll be in an article coming up.

    +++

    First going to back up a bit and have some pictures from Saturday night, plus a few of the initial articles on the Not Guilty verdict.
    There were, in fact, two main reasons for protest – the Brelo verdict, but also a curfew imposed by the Mayor of Oakland in response to protests for black women killed by police. They went out and defied that, so there’s pictures of that, too.

    Killing 9ppl in #Waco gets you handcuffed but still have cell phone. Car chase gets you 137 bullets #BreloVerdict

    Some protesters sit in the streets on Lakeside and W. 6th. Arguments about where to take the #BreloVerdict protest.

    Statement of County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty on today’s verdict in the Michael Brelo trial

    Following today’s verdict in the manslaughter trial of Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty released the following statement:

    Although profoundly disappointed with today’s verdict, I respect the legal process we have followed here and we accept the Judge’s decision. I urge everyone else, especially those who shared our hope for a different outcome, to do so as well. The rule of law, so fundamental to our American society, demands nothing less.

    Second, I want to thank the prosecutors and staff in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office who formed a team and worked with enthusiasm and dedication to achieve justice:

    [list of team members]

    I was extremely proud of their efforts and of the case we presented.

    A series if tragic errors on November 29, 2012, and the subsequent trial of Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo forced all of us, the City, the community and the police to confront some tough issues that many would have preferred to postpone.

    The trial forced us to examine how and why so many errors and flawed assumptions could have led to the deaths of two unarmed people – a totally innocent, trapped and essentially kidnapped mentally ill passenger and a panicked and disturbed petty criminal – after a chase of more than 20 minutes and 20 miles that involved more than 100 officers and was led by a group of supervisors who ignored their training and Division of Police rules.
    To highlight the danger that the out-of-control police also posed to the innocent public and to one another, one only need examine the heavy “friendly fire” they inflicted on their own police cars. Only by the grace of God did we not have a number of police deaths.

    If we all listen to the powerful and indisputable lessons that the Heritage Middle School shootout has taught us, there will never have to be another Brelo trial. If we correct the failures that made this tragedy possible, the City and its citizens do not have to suffer through another fiasco.

    Those lessons include:

    1. I believe the police department has developed a new appreciation of the necessity of real training for chases, when and if they are to permitted.
    2. Far more training in understanding the proper use of deadly force and in methods of de-escalation before the last resort of killing a fellow citizen are obviously needed.
    3. Discipline within a police department is absolutely necessary to maintain control and professionalism. If the rules are routinely disregarded, penalties must be imposed or history will repeat itself. In this case, Cleveland has disciplined, suspended or fired dozens of officers, and this will discourage future disregard for the rules. Civilian review and oversight from outside the department’s insular culture would benefit the city and the department’s performance.
    4. This case also points out that retraining is needed for returning combat veterans who serve in police departments. Soldiers are trained to kill the enemy. In high stress situations, a veteran can easily revert to what he has been taught by the military unless properly retrained as a civilian officer. In civilian crises, de-escalation and patience are to the police’s advantage, and minimal level of force necessary to calm the situation is preferred.
    5. Better equipment and coordination such as inexpensive road spikes or the productive use of a helicopter could help when chases are necessary. But one piece of equipment that is about to change our world in Cleveland and create absolute accountability is the video camera. Body and dashboard cameras will become the unblinking, credible eyewitness to all that happens when police and citizens interact. Complaints of police misconduct will fall dramatically and this recorded evidence will aid in the prosecution of criminals.
    6. The mentally ill account for a disproportionate number of problematic use of force and use of deadly force encounters. Many people who once would have been in an institutionalized setting now have no place to go. They cannot be controlled or treated at home, and so they end up in homeless shelters, under bridges, or on the streets — unmedicated, paranoid, schizophrenic and dangerous. Add the drugs and alcohol many use to self-medicate, and they become even more difficult to control. The police now are the ones forced to deal with them daily. Exhaustive, specialized training protocols and additional police officers are needed. Recent cases and lawsuits have shown us all the need to improve our performance.
    7. In the aftermath of this incident, Mayor Jackson wisely invited the Department of Justice back to Cleveland to evaluate the Division of Police. Those discussions continue, but the end result should be a better-trained police force that looks to de-escalate dangerous situations, builds bridges to the community and embraces a new culture of accountability.
    8. Cleveland has agreed to have an independent police agency handle future use of deadly force investigations, and this office encourages all cities in the county to do likewise. The Cuyahoga County Sheriff Cliff Pinkney has agreed to assume this important responsibility for Cleveland, and a task force has been formed to handle these use of deadly force investigations. The City of Cleveland agreed to use the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to independently investigate the Heritage Middle School case. BCI did a tremendous job at great time and expense, and Attorney General Mike DeWine’s commitment to justice is greatly appreciated. He has stepped in in other cases as well, and BCI has done a very professional job.
    9 Better laws can discourage felony, high-speed, failure-to-comply chases by imposing higher and mandatory penalties. We also need laws that mandate safer policies and more accountability from police departments in high-speed chases. These laws will reduce the dangers to innocent motorists and to other police officers.
    10. Strong leadership and sound decision-making within the police department by those sergeants and lieutenants who are actually in the field and have responsibility to call off unduly dangerous pursuits is absolutely essential. These supervisors must carefully weigh the risk to the public versus the real danger posed by a fleeing suspect. Can police identity the offender via license plates or other means? Is it a traffic ticket or a murder he is fleeing? Is it day or night? Light or heavy traffic? And most important, is this offense worth a real risk of killing innocent civilians or other police? Each individual police officer can call off his or her own chase, and in this case many officers did. It should be noted that police leaders in the First, Fourth and Fifth Districts refused to allow their zone cars to join the chase on November 29.

    Going forward, the policy of this office will continue to be:

    All use of deadly force cases by police in Cuyahoga County will be reviewed and decided by the Grand Jury. After a complete and thorough investigation, the results will be presented to the Grand Jury and any additional evidence that Grand Jurors desire will be obtained and presented to them. If they believe that the civilian death at the hands of the police was not a justifiable use of deadly force under Ohio law and the guidelines created by the Supreme Court of the United States, then the Grand Jury will bring charges against those involved.

    Thus, ultimately in all cases, the decision will go back to the people. It is also the policy of this office to make public the independent investigations of the police actions. We did it in this case and we will continue to do so in the future.
    Our pursuit of justice for Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams is not over. Five Cleveland Police Supervisors have been charged with dereliction of duty for failing to control the reckless and potentially deadly police chase. We look forward to presenting another vigorous prosecution on behalf of the State of Ohio and people of Cuyahoga County.

    Today’s verdict is part of a sea change that began two years ago with this case and continues across the nation. This case prompted the United States Department of Justice, Governor John Kasich, and Attorney General Mike DeWine to investigate the patterns and practices of the Cleveland Police Department and others police departments around the state. These investigations have highlighted numerous deficiencies, including training, accountability, and transparency. Although not yet fully implemented, changes for the better have already begun. The Department of Justice investigation continues and we are confident practices will improve and benefit the citizens of Cleveland.

    Our goal is to improve the quality of justice that our citizens receive. This tragic experience has already forced a culture change within the Division of Police and a needed reexamination of the use of deadly force. The end result will be less secrecy, additional transparency and accountability. Citizens and the police themselves will be safer for it.

    This was a challenging case, but I would not hesitate to do it again if the facts and the law demand it. I was proud our efforts to seek justice in this case.

    He sounds willing to fight on, which is good to hear.

    NBCBLK, designed to super-serve the African American news audience, was launched in early 2015, and joins the Latino and Asian American diverse news verticals on NBCNews.com.

    NBCBLK provides comprehensive digital news and coverage and information, leveraging the power and scope of NBCNews.com to reach a large and engaged audience.

    “I’m excited to bring new voices to NBCNews.com, from millennials with a passion and talent for original storytelling, to veteran reporters that can really elevate a news story,” said Amber Payne, NBCBLK’s Managing Editor. “I have writers from Denver to Denmark because the ‘BLK perspective’ is global. We are children of immigrants, we are multiracial, we are multicultural.”

    “We’re developing partnerships with nonprofits, freelancers, and foundations to bring important stories that expand on America’s conversation about black identity, social issues, and culture. We hope our stories engage, inspire, and inform communities of color.”

    Previously a 10-year veteran producer of NBC Nightly News, Amber will also focus on original video. “The response has been tremendous on video. From a conversation with Beyonce’s drummer to a Baltimore barber, to fathers and sons discussing the way they engage with the police, we are bringing a new perspective.”

    Read the latest stories on NBCBLK, Latino, and Asian American today.

    #DearElders “We appreciate you, but your way is not the only way.”

    And this one’s touching: They See Us as Hulks

    “They see us as Hulks, and paint us as so, not realizing or refusing to acknowledge that we are more so David Banners…brilliant minds, searching for answers and peace…while we continue to be attacked and prodded by the powers that be…in a world that doesn’t understand that our powers help to save it time after time…”

    To say that there was a multitude of emotions and extensive thought that went into the creating of this piece would be an injustice—not to me, the artist—but to the nations of people who witnessed the coverage surrounding the death of Mike Brown and the many other killings that preceded and succeeded it, and the wealth of heartache, turmoil, incomprehension, reasoning, interpreting, and misinterpreting that spawned from it all.

    As an artist, I never create from a dark place mentally or spiritually; it is in my nature to avoid or flee from these internal atmospheres. In the words of Andre 3000, “I’m like why? The world needs sun, the hood needs fun, there’s a war going on and half the battle is guns…” The world/’hood is now all-encompassing: every nation, every culture, every race. That has been my approach artistically, to provide these dark days with glimmers of light. However, I felt compelled to venture into a more solemn state of mind to paint “They see us as Hulks, and paint us as so” not out of desire, but out of necessity. I needed to be a voice for those who were/are dying and who look like me physically, mentally, and circumstantially.

    In the United States of America, we are born into a culture, legal system, and government structure that was built on the premise that we were lesser beings—livestock if you will—assets only in the sense of labor to help build the World’s Greatest Nation for the true beneficiaries of this land, the white privileged. This truth is forever etched into the American psyche, whether consciously or subconsciously, and whether on the privileged or unprivileged side of the fence. It is an irrevocable way of thinking that is passed down generation-to-generation, and that is confirmed and cultured through life experience, with the media as the greatest catalyst. I applaud and appreciate those, of all cultures, who acknowledge this truth and do whatever is in their powers to combat this thought process. There is no progress in denying it or overlooking it.

    The ramifications of this psyche are historically and currently fatal to the black male. When you are not valued, you are disposable. When you know that you are disposable, your self-value—and values as a whole—consequently become muddled. This is compounded by the projections of the black male in American culture and the media. We must also factor in the large amount that is now self-imposed. We have become infatuated with the persona that has been given to us, and we have internalized it. In a great sense, we have been Frankensteined. We have been built, through oppression and control, and are now seen as monsters. Now, the pitchforks and torches have become pistols wielded by law enforcement and authorities.

    What was once viewed as brilliant minds with immeasurable potential and accomplishments has become the inverse. We are now heralded for our undeniable physical prowess and accolades. The value of our genetic aesthetics has surmounted our intellectual limitlessness in the world’s eye, in a world that values knowledge and intellectual advancement most. Not to mention, there are the countless cases of stolen intellectual property, discrediting of inventions and discoveries, and denial of advancements that have come from the minds of black males. Our perception is now our package, not the invaluable contents within. The Hulk in us is the Main Attraction. The brilliance that is the David Banner in us is an after thought. Our physique is admired—the biceps, chest, abs, thighs, calves, penis—and what we can do with them entertains, gratifies, and exponentially increases the pockets of the privileged to no end.

    We are legendary for our strength and build, the size of our sexual organs, and our capabilities with both. David Banner cannot be marketed and lucrative on a day to day basis, but the Hulk…he is what sells and leaves the masses in awe. The problem with this is that the Hulk becomes a threat when he is uncontrollable and not confined to certain parameters. He then becomes a threat, a danger and a menace, not only to those trying to harness and profit off of his superpowers, but to society as a whole. Cue all major networks.

    […]

    What is even more unsettling is the fact that in most instances, confrontation is completely avoidable and unnecessary. If George Zimmerman had never followed or approached Trayvon Martin, if police officers had simply kept their hands off of Eric Garner, if Mike Brown was never approached or confronted for simply walking in the street, if we were just… left… alone. I am not talking about the outliers where crimes have been committed and authorities need to act (and even in those cases, violence and brutality is not necessary most of the time). The gentlemen mentioned lost their lives because someone chose to interrupt their daily routine. Their daily walk was intruded upon, and they lost their lives as a result. If the authorities and military were not bothering, hunting, antagonizing, or prodding David Banner, the world would never see the Hulk. If Mr. Banner were able to work and perform his life’s calling as a scientist and live in a safe neighborhood and not worry about being profiled or targeted, there would be no Hulk.

    As in the case of David Banner, the great majority of us want to simply live…to simply enjoy the same “unalienable rights,” on a day-to-day basis, that were promised to those descending from the “founders” of this nation. We want peace, good jobs, and the ability to provide for our families. We want quality education, descent housing, and laws that protect us and not oppress us. It does not seem like much to ask for, or too far out of reach. Yet, this is what we have been yearning for and denied of since our chained and battered bodies first stepped foot on this land. While access to higher education, greater opportunity in the job market, and political activism have helped a certain margin of us “achieve” the American Dream, the great majority of us still suffer while looking up at Mount Olympus. The constant reminder of how great life is when you have resources and power is projected down the mountain in the form of “celebrity” and entertainment. These projections become knives to those without resources: slashing and ripping apart hope, optimism, self-esteem, peace of mind, contentment, etc. This becomes the Inner Hulk of the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. Having to burden this beast on a daily basis is already a tumultuous task, but then to be antagonized or preyed upon becomes too much. We get loud, we yell back, we lash out, we become the Angry Black Man, we become Hulks, we defend ourselves, we get murdered.

    […]

    My depiction of Officer Darren Wilson is neither an attack on him personally nor an attack on the police force as a whole. It is, however, an open depiction and illustration of the unacceptable approach to dealing with police brutality and murder by our judicial system. It is an open attack on the way the media portrays law enforcement officers, as opposed to the murdered victims in these cases. It is a direct challenge to the thought process that leads people to believe that there are no “bad” cops, or to the “officer was probably in the right” mentality. We depict police officers as heroes who abide by the laws of this land at all cost, and who live to serve and protect our well being. The fact of the matter is, police officers are normal human beings with normal problems and flaws like the rest of us. Some are brave, some are not. Some are noble, some are not. Some are law abiding, some are not. Some are kind, some are not. Some are rational, some are not. To treat men and women of the law as blameless defenders of the law is a disservice to them and the citizens who they are sworn to protect. It gives a cloak and shield to some individuals who are reckless, arrogant, careless, malicious, racist, prejudiced, irrational, fearful, and so on. I do not think that this represents the majority of those who don the uniform, but there is definitely enough of these cancerous individuals in the force to cause alarm.

    To be an officer of the law is a career choice. At the base level, it is a job, a means to provide financially for oneself and/or one’s family by way of labor. The risk that is involved with the nature of being an officer is what separates it from the norm and justifies our level of respect and reverence for the position. However, like in any other career, there are those who are not fit for the job. There are those who will make crucial mistakes during the course of their tenure. There are bad employees. Not everyone applies for a job because they believe it will help them make the world a better place. Many apply out of the necessity to make a living. Some choose careers because it is their last and only option. Some will seek certain employment in a certain field simply because they fit the criteria. We must recognize and accept that this is true when it comes to law enforcement as well. We must hold officers accountable for their actions, as we would expect for it to hold true in any other profession. Just as those who save lives deserve to be honored and praised, those who take lives unjustly need to be tried and judged accordingly.

    In the case of Darren Wilson, poor decisions on his behalf cost a young man his life. I am hard-pressed to believe that any unarmed individual would just attack a police officer; again, why would an unarmed individual (no matter race or age) with no violent criminal record attack a police officer, who is known to be well-armed, for no apparent reason? Officer Wilson, in my opinion, made a bad employee decision to even bother Mike Brown, and once the situation got confrontational, he acted in a deadly, irrational manner. I was not there, and I will never claim to know the true details of what transpired that day. However, life experience has unfortunately provided me with this narrative far too often. This is “just my interpretation of the situation.” My prayers go up for the family and friends of the victim, and the family and friends of the shooter. Although the pain that they are experiencing is different, it is pain nonetheless. We are witnessing the loss of devalued life too consistently.

    I ask that you not be entertained.” I ask that you be moved.

    It’s all rather long, but worth a read.

  206. rq says

    Family of Melissa Williams emotional outside the justice center@19actionnews

    Police on the ground & on top of buildings still keeping a watchful eye outside justice center@19actionnews

    Judge acquits Cleveland police Officer Michael Brelo in 2012 killings

    Saying he would “not sacrifice” a Cleveland police officer to appease a public frustrated with law enforcement, a judge on Saturday acquitted Officer Michael Brelo of manslaughter charges after he shot two unarmed people at the end of a wild 2012 car chase, during which officers fired 137 shots.

    “I will not sacrifice him to a public frustrated by historical mistreatment at the hands of other officers,” Judge John P. O’Donnell of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court wrote in the opinion.

    Television footage showed Brelo, 31, bursting into tears when the judge declared him not guilty. He was accused of manslaughter for jumping onto the hood of the car and unleashing a barrage of gunfire on Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, the vehicle’s unarmed occupants. Police fired so many rounds that a crime scene investigator ran out of rods to mark the bullet holes.

    An in-house investigation of Brelo and 12 other officers involved in the shooting will continue, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Saturday, as he urged calm before the release of findings in another potentially explosive case, that of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed last year by police while holding a toy gun.

    After Saturday’s verdict, police said about 9:30 p.m. they had made several arrests on suspicion of felonious assault, aggravated riot and obstructing justice. The department said it would give more detail Sunday about the arrests and any other incidents that took place during the demonstrations.

    The case against Brelo began years before the death of Tamir and those of a litany of unarmed black men at the hands of police across the country: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray. Since then demonstrators in city after city have marched in protest and vented their frustration on social media, helping this relatively little-known Cleveland case become the top trending topic worldwide Saturday morning on Twitter.

    I love that phrase, ‘aggravated rioting’. It’s certainly aggravated – aggravated by the police reaction! More via the LA Times:

    O’Donnell said it would be impossible to determine that Brelo was directly responsible for the deaths, given the number of shots fired. Autopsies revealed that Russell and Williams were each shot nearly two dozen times, and both suffered multiple fatal wounds.

    O’Donnell acknowledged the fear and anger over recent deaths of black men at the hands of police in places with a majority black population, like Cleveland.

    “Some say the volatile relationship between police and the community is rooted in our country’s original sin,” he said. “Whether it is or not, that sin won’t be expiated and the suspicion and hostility between the police and people won’t be extirpated by a verdict in a single criminal lawsuit.”

    O’Donnell acknowledged the fear and anger over the recent deaths of black men in New York; Baltimore; Ferguson, Mo.; and North Charleston, S.C. That animosity has been fed “not just by stories that attract TV watchers and Internet clickers,” but by the police officers’ actions, he said.

    O’Donnell also noted the chaos of the pursuit and the police’s perception that Russell and Williams had fired upon them, and he ruled that Brelo was justified in using deadly force because he believed the pair presented an imminent threat to his life. […]

    On Saturday, the head of the department’s civil rights division said the agency was conducting a separate review of the Brelo case to determine “what, if any, additional steps are available and appropriate.”

    A slew of officers refused to testify at the trial, and others who had been subpoenaed refused to even meet with prosecutors to go over their testimony. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty accused the union of attempting to insulate Brelo from prosecution, comparing their actions to those of an “organized crime syndicate.”

    Brelo, who still faces department discipline, left Cleveland with his wife and two children after the verdict, according to Stephen Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Assn. Loomis said he feared that Brelo could be a target for violence if he returned to patrol duty in the city.

    “The lengths that McGinty went to to try to win this case are embarrassing. He should be disbarred,” Loomis said. “I can’t imagine how he’s not going to be reprimanded for his antics and the statements that he made.”

    City Councilman Jeff Johnson, who is hopeful that Brelo will be fired after the department completes its internal review of the shooting, said the verdict sent a clear message to city residents that police would not be held accountable for their actions in Cleveland.

    The argument that Brelo was justified in using deadly force because he feared Russell and Williams had a weapon, Johnson said, could be used against prosecutors reviewing the death of Tamir Rice.

    “The hysteria that the cops felt, the fear that the cops felt, was created by themselves,” Johnson said.

    Now that is an accurate summary.

    Here’s how the self-induced panic was created. This Cop Is On Trial For Firing 49 Shots At Two Unarmed Suspects

    The events of Nov. 29, 2012, began when Officer John Jordan stopped Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams for a signal violation. Jordan also suspected Russell and Williams of drug activity, originally spotting them outside the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry men’s homeless shelter, a spot known for drug dealing and often referred to as “the wall.”

    Jordan told investigators that as he approached Russell’s Chevy Malibu, Williams, in the passenger seat, became irate and started flailing and screaming. Russell put the car back in gear and took off. Jordan ran back to his car and gave chase, but he was too slow and Russell lost him.

    The episode might have been over if Russell’s Malibu, with a history of engine woes, didn’t let out a booming backfire right front of Nan — which he mistook for a gunshot.

    For the next 22 minutes, Timothy Russell led police on a chase reaching speeds of 100 mph.

    As Russell ran red lights and blew through busy intersections, 62 police vehicles and more than 100 officers joined the pursuit, according to a state investigation. A federal investigation would later determine that 37% of the Cleveland Police Department was involved.

    Russell eventually reached a dead end in the staff parking lot of Heritage Middle School. As he circled the lot looking for a way out, Officer Wilfredo Diaz took the first shots at the Malibu.

    “Shots fired, shots fired!” rang out over the police radio as Diaz pulled the trigger and fired four shots. None of the officers on the scene knew for sure, but all would later tell investigators they assumed that it was the suspects firing, not the police.

    “They’re ramming us!” an officer broadcasted as Russell’s Malibu collided with a police car blocking the only exit.

    “Watch for crossfire! Crossfire!” someone yelled as the officers unleashed a barrage of bullets.

    When it was all over, 13 officers fired 137 shots. Russell and Williams were hit more than 20 times each and died inside the Malibu. No guns were found inside the car. Every shot fired came from a Cleveland cop’s gun. Investigators later determined that during the shoot-out there were two waves of gunfire — one lasting 17 seconds and another lasting about five seconds. […]

    On the police’s actions, DeWine said a “lack supervisor command and warnings … resulted in an overall failure to control the situation” and “the large number of vehicles involved contributed to a crossfire situation … that risked the lives of many officers.”

    “It is, quite frankly, a miracle that no law enforcement officer was killed,” DeWine said. “Clearly, officers misinterpreted the facts. They failed to follow established rules.”

    Of the 62 police cars that took chase, only three had been authorized to do so. Because of the confusion and lack of organization on the radio, more than 90 police officers joined the pursuit without requisite clearance by dispatch.

    In all, 63 officers were suspended, one supervisor was fired, and two more supervisors were demoted. Days of protests and rallies in Cleveland followed. The public outcry and horrific detail surrounding Williams and Russell’s killings by police became the catalyst for a Department of Justice investigation of the department’s use of force policies — the second federal probe of Cleveland Police in less than 10 years. The families of Williams and Russell each reached $1.5 million settlements with the city.

    That might have been the end of the of the legal efforts to right the wrongs of Nov. 29, if it weren’t for Officer Michael Brelo’s role. […]

    In the immediate aftermath, local media and police portrayed Russell and Williams as dangerous drug addicts with long rap sheets who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. The police union, based on the fact that no officers were harmed, called the event “the perfect chase.” And even when no gun turned up inside the Malibu, the police continued for days to search the chase route and the Cuyahoga River, determined to find the gun that Russell and Williams had inevitably tossed. Those searches came up empty.

    Russell’s family acknowledges that Tim struggled with drugs since the mid-’90s, but they still maintain that he was no hardcore criminal hell-bent on fighting it out with the police. Rather, his sister Michelle Russell described him to BuzzFeed News as “loud, boisterous, jolly, happy.” […]

    In his interview with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation two weeks after the shooting, Officer Michael Brelo said that he and his partner heard and felt shots coming at them as soon as they drove up the middle school driveway.

    “I’ve never been so afraid in my life,” said Brelo, who did a tour in Iraq in 2005 as a Marine. “I thought my partner and I would be shot and that we were going to be killed.”

    As their own car started to take crossfire from other police shooting through the back of the Malibu, Brelo and his partner, Cynthia Moore, thinking they were being shot at by the suspects, fired through their windshield as they had been instructed to in this scenario that past summer at in-service training.

    After five or six shots, Brelo’s clip jammed. He reloaded, scurried out his driver’s side door, and continued firing at the Malibu.

    “I feel like I’m being shot at by these suspects. And I see the suspects kept on — kept on moving — and firing,” Brelo said during his interview.

    He told investigators he remembered getting on top of another squad car to get a better shot and use the lights on the hood as cover, but his memory goes fuzzy after that.

    “The next thing I remember I’m next to the suspect’s vehicle … and I remember having my weapon in my holster,” Brelo told investigators.

    Asked if he remembered jumping on the hood of the Malibu, Brelo said, “I have no recollection if I did. Absolutely none.”

    When asked if it would surprise him that shoe prints that were on the car that Brelo used for cover matched shoe prints that were on the hood of the Malibu, Brelo said, “I was so in fear for my life, it wouldn’t — I mean, I have no recollection of how I got there.”

    After a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted Brelo, County Prosecutor Tim McGinty put out a statement alleging that Brelo pulled the trigger on the kill shots.

    “After more than 100 shots were fired at Mr. Russell’s car, it was trapped by police cruisers in a narrow lane and came to a full stop. All officers at the scene saw fit to cease fire. Then Officer Brelo started shooting again and fired at least 15 shots, including fatal shots, downward through the windshield into the victims at close range as he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell’s car.”

    How McGinty plans to get the other officers involved to corroborate this story will be determined when those who did not face indictment take the stand at Brelo’s trial.

    BuzzFeed News reviewed the criminal investigation interviews of all 13 officers who shot their guns during the confrontation. Every officer who fired their weapon believed it was the proper action to neutralize the threat — and most believed that their shots hit the target. […]

    Court documents show that during the grand jury proceedings that followed the state’s investigation, all officers who shot their weapons on Nov. 29 invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to testify for fear of self-incrimination.

    Then Sabolik and Farley were granted immunity and testified.

    Sabolik and Farley’s grand jury testimonies remain sealed. However, during his interview with investigators, Sabolik’s recollection of how he learned the identity of the shooter on top of the hood contradicts Brelo’s explanation that he lost time between when he took cover and holstered his gun.

    “You said later on you found out what was up on the hood of the car?” investigators asked Sabolik. “How did you find out?”

    “Because he was talking about it,” the rookie replied.

    “He was talking about?” investigators probed. “Who was that?”

    “Mike Brelo,” Sabolik said.

    There was so much police gunfire that Brelo couldn’t be sure who was shooting, but instead of everyone stopping the shooting, he insisted on jumping up on the car and getting closer to the people he thought were shooting at him. (I don’t get that ‘using the lights as a cover’ bit, I thought the lights on a car were down in front not up on the hood, anyone?)
    How he was acquitted so completely, I have no idea. Well I do. But let’s pretend I don’t.

    Who shit shit down? We got ppl getting out of their cars to join us. THIS is #OneCLE

    Protesters have linked arms and are blocking the WB Shoreway near the 44th Street exit right now. #BreloVerdict

  207. rq says

    Cleveland officer acquitted in killing of unarmed pair amid barrage of gunfire (Washington Post)

    Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson on Michael Brelo verdict: ‘This is a moment that will define us as a city’

    Mayor Frank Jackson and Police Chief Calvin Williams asked for calm Saturday following the not guilty verdict in the case of Officer Michael Brelo.

    “Today’s verdict … is a verdict that will have a long-lasting effect not only here in our local community but, really, in communities throughout this country,” Jackson said during an afternoon news conference at Public Auditorium.

    “This is a moment that will define us as a city, define us as a people as we move forward and address not only the issues around this verdict,” but also as the city works toward police reforms sought by the U.S. Justice Department.

    The community also awaits the results of an investigation into last year’s officer-involved shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

    “It is my expectation that we will show the nation that peaceful demonstration and dialogue is the right direction as we move forward as one Cleveland,” the mayor said. “We all understand and respect the fact that people have a right to protest and let their voice be heard. However, while we encourage and support peaceful protest, I want to make sure that those who are here that have a different agenda understand that actions that cross the line, whether by police officers or citizens, cannot and will not be tolerated.”

    Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell found Brelo not guilty of two charges of voluntary manslaughter in connection with the Nov. 29, 2012 police chase and shooting that ended in the deaths of two people. O’Donnell said that while Brelo did fire lethal shots at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, other officers did, too.

    At Saturday’s news conference, Jackson and Williams said the disciplinary process against other officers involved will continue. Brelo will remain on unpaid suspension, pending the internal investigation.

    Jackson was not entirely surprised by the verdict.

    “I felt that the charge that was presented to the judge was one that was difficult to prove,” he said. “My expectation and that of a lot of people was that it would be a very difficult, uphill battle to get a conviction. And that has borne out.

    “My personal reaction to it is that it is difficult to accept just a legal definition or a legal analysis of something and say that should be the end of it, because I don’t believe the people will accept that. People have a right to disagree with me as mayor, and the chief as the chief, and the judge as the judge, and the criminal justice system as the criminal justice system.”

    Asked if he was disappointed in the verdict, Jackson replied: “I’m the mayor, so I will maintain mayoral posture in regards to whether or not I’m disappointed. I think I’ve pretty well explained my sentiments and you can interpret that.”

    Jackson said the city is working closely with other law-enforcement agency to keep tabs on any unrest that might arise in response to the verdict.

    I wonder if there will be something similar to the Rekia Boyd case, where the judge threw out the charges – where, due to the difficulty in proving this one charge in this case, the judge decided not to ‘sacrifice’ Brelo. Although judging from those comments, I don’t think the charge would have mattered. Got the wrong judge.

    2 unarmed black people, 13 cops,137 shots, white cop fears for life as he shoots 49 more, not guilty = America #Brelo

    Northeast Ohio Media Group crime editor arrested during Brelo verdict protest (photos)

    It was shortly after 9:30 p.m. when officers in riot gear corralled us into an alley. With their shields in hand, then chanted, “Move back.”

    I realized we were pinned in, and I didn’t have my press pass.

    Dumb move. The dumbest move.

    As I tried to make my way through the line with another group of reporters, I knew then that I was going to jail.

    “A business card isn’t going to cut it,” the officer told me.

    It didn’t matter. I didn’t have business cards either.

    They put zip ties around my wrists and sat me on a sidewalk in an adjoining alley. On my right was a young black man who went by Moop.

    The officers were polite. We asked what kind of rounds they had.

    “Bean bags,” the state trooper said.

    “You ever been shot by one?” I asked.

    “Yeah.”

    “Really? Does it hurt?”

    “Oh, man.”

    Soon I was joined by another group of protesters. A couple of white guys, but mostly young black men whose only crime seemed to be failing to get out of the street when police asked them to move.

    They never told us why we were being detained. At least they didn’t tell me. [..]

    They took us to what was once known as the Aviation High School. Shuttered for decades, it was once a vocational school for Cleveland students who could learn how to fly and fix planes. It’s run down and now a staging area for protesters, and some of the same young men and women who might benefit from such a training program.

    The irony also struck me that we were all being detained in a place that was once a place of hope, on the edge of an airport used mostly by the Cleveland’s wealthiest.

    As we sat there, I started talking to some of the young men who stood angry against a perceived injustice. They stared down a line of police officers steadfast in their resolve that they were doing in the right, jailing mostly young men and women who believed the same thing.

    Adam Ferrise, one of my reporters, brought my press pass to a police commander. Once they had my credentials, they let me go.

    Photos at the link, too.

    Baltimore Police Chief on decreased number of arrests. There’s a very interesting BuzzFeed headline on this later on, unless they’ve changed it already.

    Anderson Cooper speaks with Baltimore Police Chief Anthony Batts about a jump in the city’s homicide rate and reports of a work slowdown by officers.

    CNN video.

    Also CNN, Protests, arrests follow acquittal of Cleveland police officer

    Police arrested demonstrators in downtown Cleveland on Saturday night following the acquittal of a police officer who stood trial in the 2012 shooting death of two unarmed people.

    CNN video showed police in riot gear moving down East Fourth Street, a strip of restaurants, and pushing back protesters. The officers yelled, “Move back!” in unison as they advanced.

    A CNN crew saw at least 15 people being taken into custody by police in riot gear, accompanied by troopers. They were loaded into vans and taken away.

    Three people were arrested for aggravated riot, felonious assault and obstructing justice after an object was thrown through a restaurant window, injuring a patron, police said in in a tweet.

    Multiple arrests were made at East Fourth Street because of “unlawful behavior by large crowd,” another tweet said. Police appeared to greatly outnumber protesters.

    Protesters took to the street immediately after Judge John P. O’Donnell acquitted Officer Michael Brelo on charges of voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault.

    The crowd assembled outside the judicial center in Cleveland for two hours following the announcement of the verdict.

    Some chanted “no justice, no peace” and “black lives matter,” words heard in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, where sometimes-violent demonstrations occurred after African-Americans died at the hands of white police officers.

    Law enforcement officers formed a line and kept them from entering the judicial center. The protesters marched through parts of the city. Some formed a line on the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway, a freeway through town, and blocked traffic briefly.

    As a precaution, two schools, Shaker Heights High School and St. Ignatius High, relocated their weekend proms out of downtown, CNN affiliate WOIO reported.

  208. rq says

    Chronologically backwards, but here’s a few photos from Cleveland and Oakland.
    Cleveland PD on loudspeaker: this is an unlawful assembly. If you do not disperse you will be arrested #BreloVerdict I get the feeling that for that to be true, they just have to say it’s an unlawful assembly, and it becomes such.

    There are no less than 200 officers out here. And no more than 50 protestors. #BreloTrial #TamirRice

    Peace to the squad of Black Medics handing out care packages #oakland

    One arrest already. Woman snatched for no reason. #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter #Oakland I think the Oakland protest ended with 3 arrests.

    March arrives at @oaklandpoliceca building. Hundreds defying bullshit curfew. #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter #Oakland

    Police are using chemical weapons against protesters breaking #Oakland’s new protest curfew #BreakTheCurfew

  209. rq says

    Hundreds march in Oakland to protest curfew and police brutality against black women. #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter

    Cops pushed everyone back, sealing off entire 300 block of Washington. Protesters dispersed or on sidewalk. #Oakland

    Group of about 40 circled up back at 14th and Broadway “tonight was for Rekia. Tonight was for Oscar” #BreakTheCurfew

    St. Louis Cardinals’ Mascot in Photo Holding ‘Police Lives Matter’ Sign. Want to Guess How That Went Over With the Team? Says a lot about the fan-base, too.

    A couple approached St. Louis Cardinals’ mascot Fredbird at a home game last Sunday for a photo op. Then a sign was handed to Fredbird — and the team said he wasn’t aware of its contents.

    It read, “Police Lives Matter.”

    In the thick of the region that spawned the Black Lives Matter movement after the shooting death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last August, the image was bound to get some attention.

    Sure enough it appeared on the St. Louis Police Officers Association Facebook page a day later, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday.

    With that Cardinals’ brass got involved — but not to pump the image.

    Instead the team asked the POA on Tuesday to take down the photo from its Facebook page, and the Dispatch said the request was granted.

    The reason the team spokesman gave, the paper said, is because Fredbird shouldn’t be involved in any political activity or social commentary.

    But in our social media-driven world, images like this don’t ever die. Deadspin took note on Wednesday, criticizing the Cardinals for Fredbird holding the “Police Lives Matter Sign.”

    The image lives on via the Twitter account of Fiery Mad Redhead, although it isn’t clear if she’s the owner of the photo:

    From the Cleveland NAACP, Our council feels deeply about the outcome of this trial. Here’s our address on this modern day lynching. #BreloTrial Disappointment, concern, a call to the DOJ, and organization.

    Why the judge found Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo not guilty. Yes, tell us!

    But Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell ruled that Brelo is not guilty of either count of voluntary manslaughter, nor is he guilty of the lesser included offense of felonious assault.

    While some protesters took to the streets of Cleveland, Brelo cried tears of relief in the courtroom.

    So how, exactly, did O’Donnell arrive at his conclusion?

    It took him nearly an hour to meticulously explain his reasoning before a courtroom packed with the supporters of Brelo on one side, and the friends and family of Russell and Williams on the other.

    He also released his 34-page verdict, which you can read for yourself below.

    Here are the main points O’Donnell made when announcing his decision.

    Why Brelo was not guilty of the voluntary manslaughter of Timothy Russell

    Russell was shot 23 times. O’Donnell found that based on the testimony at trial, four of those shots were lethal. Those shots came from three different directions. Two were to the top of Russell’s head, but one was to the right side of his chest and another to the left side.

    “It is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that during that less than 8 seconds Russell was positioned, then repositioned, then repositioned again so that all four wounds came from the same gun in the same place,” O’Donnell said.

    In other words, O’Donnell concluded that Brelo fired at least one of those shots, but could not have fired all four.

    To prove voluntary manslaughter, prosecutors would have had to show beyond a reasonable doubt that “but for” Brelo’s actions, Russell and Williams would have lived.

    “I have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo fired a shot that by itself would have caused Russell’s death. But proof of voluntary manslaughter requires a finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, either that his shot alone actually caused the death or it was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back,'” O’Donnell said.

    While Brelo fired at least one lethal shot at Russell, other police officers also fired lethal shots that contributed to his death. Because medical examiners were unable to determine the order of the shots and ballistics could not tie individual bullets to shooters, there is no way to know which lethal shot came from which shooter. It is also impossible to establish which shot actually killed Russell.

    In a footnote in his opinion, O’Donnell brought up an analogy to a baseball game made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Basically, if a baseball game’s final score is 1-0, it’s obvious which was the winning run – there was only one. But in a game that ends 5-2, none of those runs can be deemed the wining run.

    In the Brelo case, his shot was one of many and it was impossible to determine which was the fatal shot.

    Why Brelo was not guilty of the voluntary manslaughter of Malissa Williams

    Malissa Williams was shot 24 times. Of those, O’Donnell concluded that based on the medical examiner’s testimony, seven were lethal.

    O’Donnell said that those seven shots came from three different directions, so there was no way Brelo could have fired all of them.

    “The high improbability that Williams’ body was contorted in such a way that she was exposed to those five downward shots and an upward shot to her lower abdomen and a straight-in shot to the left side of her head leads me to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo caused at least one fatal wound to William’s chest and maybe all five, but that one or two other officers inflicted two other fatal wounds,” O’Donnell said.

    Therefore, just like with Russell, O’Donnell said he could not conclude that Brelo’s shots alone caused the death of Williams.

    O’Donnell also forcefully challenged the testimony of Dr. Joseph Felo, a pathologist with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office. Prosecutors tried to use Felo’s testimony to prove the shot to Williams’ head came after she was already dead and therefore should be excluded as a potential cause of death.

    The defense used its own expert to try to refute that. It was important because the shot came from a different direction than another grouping of lethal shots to the chest.
    Do you agree with the judge’s reasons for acquittal? Answer in the comments section below.

    O’Donnell determined Felo was wrong.

    All this addresses “causation;” the idea that Brelo – and Brelo alone – caused the deaths of Russell and Williams. O’Donnell concluded that prosecutors failed to prove in both cases that Brelo’s shots were the ones that ultimately killed the two people.

    Why Brelo was not guilty of the lesser included offense of felonious assault

    O’Donnell also addressed the issue of whether Brelo committed felonious assault, a lesser included offense in the case. He concluded that prosecutors proved Brelo “knowingly caused serious physical harm to both victims” by the mere fact of shooting them.

    But Brelo was not found guilty of a single count of felonious assault. Because…

    The affirmative defense

    The question of whether or not Brelo was reasonable in his actions played a pivotal role throughout the month-long trial and in O’Donnell’s verdict.

    Police officers are held to a different standard than the public when it comes to the use of force. If an officer believes there to be a reasonable threat to himself, another officer, or the public, the officer is justified in using force.

    Several police officers testified throughout the trial that they believed Russell and Williams were armed, pointed a gun at police, fired off shots, led police on a 22-minute chase, and evaded arrest. All of the police officers said they perceived Russell and Williams as a threat, were in fear for their lives, and retaliated in kind.

    No gun was ever found in Russell’s car, and the sound officers thought was gunshots coming from the car turned out to be the clunker backfiring.

    But none of that matters, O’Donnell said, because 20/20 hindsight cannot be used in assessing an officer’s use-of-force.

    “His initial decision to use force was constitutionally reasonable,” O’Donnell said. “He was reasonable despite knowing now that there was no gun in the car and he was mistaken about the origin of the gunshots. It is Brelo’s perception of a threat that matters.”

    The affirmative defense part 2: the last 15 shots

    Prosecutors acknowledged throughout the trial that officers were justified in their use-of-force. That’s why the 12 other officers who fired shots at Russell and Williams were never charged.

    W. Ken Katsaris, a use-of-force expert for the prosecution, testified that Brelo’s first 37 shots fired from the ground were justified.

    But the prosecution said Brelo crossed the line when he jumped on top of Russell’s 1979 Malibu and fired the final 15 shots.

    Katsaris said this was unreasonable because it was not proper police protocol, and because it put Brelo and his fellow officers into more danger.

    O’Donnell rejected this argument. He said given the length of the chase, the collision between the Malibu and a police car as it tried to leave the shooting site, and the fact that Brelo was afraid a police car could be pushed on top of him justified his final 15 shots in those last 7.392 seconds from the car’s hood.

    O’Donnell pointed out that the Malibu was not wedged tight enough to be immobile, and could still have been used to push a police car on top of Brelo.

    Read all of it. Some of it makes sense, and some of it doesn’t. Seriously? Could have used the car to push a police car on top of Brelo, at that point, at the end of that chase, in that situation? Sure, desperate people do desperate things, but still… rewarding (or at least, not punishing) such reckless and dangerous behaviour by Brelo seems… irresponsible. To me.
    And there you have it, this is why he was acquitted.

  210. rq says

    Outrage Over Brelo Verdict Sparks Protests

    After a four week trial, Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was found not guilty for the 2012 shooting deaths of Malissa Williams, 30, and Timothy Russell, 43. Brelo and 12 other officers fired 137 shots into the Chevy Malibu they pursued, killing Russell and Williams. Brelo fired 49 of those shots.

    Cleveland, a city already rocked by the senseless murder of 12yr old Tamir Rice has responded to the verdict by taking to the streets. 100’s of people were outside of the courtroom when the verdict was announced. A rally at the park where Tamir was gunned down was held all afternoon and is currently marching, a group of a hundred or more successfully blocked both directions of the 4 lane Shoreway Highway and shut down traffic as they marched on Memorial Bridge.

    Lots of great pictures (which means I’m probably going to skip some of my tabs) plus a full verdict in pdf available about halfway down.
    Also, there’s a lot of mounted police there. I have really, really mixed feelings about horses in crowd control situations.

    Three Cleveland demonstrators arrested during protest in front of Quicken Loans Arena (video)

    Cleveland police officers took at least three people into custody during protests following the Michael Brelo verdict.

    Northeast Ohio Media Group reporters and photographers witnessed at least three people taken into custody following a clash with police about 6:20 p.m. outside Quicken Loans Arena.

    Cleveland police confirmed one arrest. They said a man threw an object through a window, injuring a woman at a bar. It’s unclear if that exchange led to the skirmish between police and protestors.

    Police officers showed pepper spray cans to others who rushed towards the fight.

    Most protestors quickly dispersed and marched down Huron Avenue towards Progressive Field, where the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds just ended their game.

    Officers followed the group in three lines: a line of mounted police officers, another with batons out and bulletproof vests and a third with riot gear.

    Black women challenge new ordinance for evening curfew in Oakland with peaceful protest, on the Oakland protest.

    On May 21st, Oakland’s Black Youth Project called for a peaceful march in downtown Oakland to protest the stealing of Black women’s lives by state sponsored violence. This march was met with unprecedented repression as the Oakland police department immediately kettled the crowd of mostly Black women and children while threatening citation and arrest and pushing women, childen and disabled bodies. BLACK WOMEN WILL GATHER WITH THEIR ALLIES AT 7:00 TONIGHT AT OSCAR GRANT PLAZA FOR A RALLY AND NIGHT MARCH.

    “Mostly white marches have been allowed to take place in the Oakland streets at various times a day with no problem,” said Cat Brooks of the ONYX Organizing Committee/Anti Police-Terror Project. “We had a reasonable expectation to enact our constitutional rights to peacefully assemble. But Mayor Schaaf instructed her police department to terrorize us instead. This new enforcement is nothing short of a sundown law.”

    The National Lawyers Guild immediately condemned this act by OPD by saying:
    “The NLGSF believes such preemptive restrictions on protest are both unconstitutional, and in violation of OPD’s own Crowd Control Policy, which was adopted as part of the federal court settlement orders in NLG litigation over 2010 mass arrests of Justice for Oscar Grant protesters and 2011 police attacks on Occupy Oakland. … The Crowd Control Policy spells out when police may lawfully stop a demonstration, and how, and gives OPD the tools they need to protect persons and property, while upholding the right to demonstrate and avoiding further liability to the Oakland taxpayers. NLGSF is prepared to take immediate action to enforce the Crowd Control Policy…There is no legitimate justification for such a limitation, and the unlawful policy change being implemented by Mayor Libby Schaaf serves little purpose but to suppress free speech.”

    “We called for a peaceful demonstration and were met with violence,” said Wazi Davis of Black Youth Project. “We are going back into the streets peacefully tonight to stand against repressive forces that don’t value Black lives and instead choose to harass, incarcerate and kill it.”

    Protestors will gather at 7:00 pm at Oscar Grant Plaza at 14th & Broadway and enter the streets at Sunset.

    “Mayor Libby Schaaf likes to appropriate our cultural norms and language, but she doesn’t actually like us very much,” said Mollie Costello of the Alan Blueford Center for Justice. “We hope she sees tonight as a message from the people that we will not be bullied into silence.”

    This march is being called by the Black Youth Project – Oakland and supported by Black Lives Matter – Bay Area, ONYX/APTP, The Alan Blueford Center for Justice and the Black Out Collective.

    Defying curfews, man, these people are so violent! Definitely requires a massive police presence and shoving and pepper spray.

    NY Times, Cleveland Police Officer Acquitted of Manslaughter in 2012 Deaths. Introduced via tweet with the text, “Read this headline as many times as you need to.”

    A police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase in 2012 and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants, both of them black, was acquitted of manslaughter on Saturday by an Ohio judge.

    The trial of the white officer, Michael Brelo, following harrowing episodes in communities such as Baltimore, Staten Island and Ferguson, Mo., played out amid broader questions of how the police interact with African-Americans and use force, in Cleveland and across the country.

    For greater puke-value, read this paragraph:

    Patrick A. D’Angelo, one of Officer Brelo’s lawyers, said his team was “elated” with the verdict, and he blamed an “oppressive government” for bringing the charges. “We stood tall; we stood firm,” Mr. D’Angelo said, “because we didn’t do anything illegal. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

    We didn’t do anything wrong. We stood tall. Oppressive government. FUUUUUUCK YOOOOUUUUU. More:

    But the verdict does not mean the end of scrutiny of the case or of police issues in Cleveland.

    Federal officials will review the trial testimony and evidence, and a city panel is investigating Mr. Brelo’s actions and police conduct in the episode. Five supervisors face misdemeanor charges for their oversight of the case.

    There are also two ongoing investigations of police shootings in November. One is looking into the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was holding a replica gun when a white Cleveland police officer shot him. That shooting, captured on video, has also garnered national attention and resulted in protests.

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    Continue reading the main story

    In the other, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office is investigating the death of Tanisha Anderson. Ms. Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman whose family said she suffered from bipolar disorder, lost consciousness and died in police custody after being placed face down on the pavement. The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide. […]

    Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said in a news conference after the verdict that the investigation had led to several changes that he believed would prevent deaths, including better use-of-force training and increased penalties for officers who disregard department policies. As a result of the changes, “there will never have to be another Brelo trial,” he said.

    Five police supervisors have been charged with dereliction of duty, a misdemeanor, for failing to bring the fatal chase under control. “We look forward to presenting another vigorous prosecution,” Mr. McGinty said.

    In a statement, the United States attorney’s office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice said they would review the testimony and evidence.

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    “We will continue our assessment, review all available legal options and will collaboratively determine what, if any, additional steps are available and appropriate given the requirements and limitations of the applicable laws in the federal judicial system,” the statement said. […]
    Before rendering his verdict, Judge O’Donnell spoke from the bench about widespread tensions between the police and African-Americans, mentioning Ferguson and Baltimore.

    “In many American places, people are angry with, mistrustful and fearful of, the police,” he said. “Citizens think the men and women sworn to protect and serve have violated that oath or never meant it in the first place.”

    But Judge O’Donnell said he would not let those sentiments cloud his verdict, and he found that Officer Brelo had reasonably perceived a threat from Mr. Russell’s car. The decision to continue firing from the hood was protected by law, he ruled, clearing Officer Brelo of all charges. The shooting was “reasonable despite knowing now that there was no gun in the car and he was mistaken about the gunshots,” Judge O’Donnell said.

    “I reject the claim that 12 seconds after the shooting began, it was patently clear from the perspective of a reasonable police officer that the threat had been stopped,” he said, contrasting the prosecutors’ claims that the justifiable action ended when Officer Brelo climbed onto the hood. […]

    Mr. Russell’s sister, Michelle, lamented that the trial had relied on the version of events told by police officers, and said her brother and Ms. Williams were never able to tell their side of the story. The police officers were angry, she said, and acted with a “mob mentality.”

    “They knew that night that once they caught up to Tim and Malissa that they were going to let them have it,” she said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

    But in closing arguments, Mr. D’Angelo said his client believed he was under attack when he fired on the car. “What would make him want to shoot through the windshield at another human being?” Mr. D’Angelo said. “Could it be that he was shot at? Could it be that he reasonably perceived that the occupants of the Malibu were shooting at him? That’s what all the other officers perceived. That’s what Officer Brelo perceived.”

    “Perceived”. There was an article I put up about women protesting ‘perceived’ police brutality against black women. Here is that word again. I do believe that it is misplaced in both cases. Especially as here, coupled with the ‘reasonably’. But my English may not be so good.

    #ThisisCLE #BreloVerdict @deray @rachology216 @ShakyraDiaz

    This is what’s following the protest now @deray @rachology216 @boycourt93 #BreloVerdict #ClevelandUprising

  211. rq says

    Judge approves settlement reached with families of Timothy Russell, Malissa Williams over deadly police chase and shooting. That’s an article from November 2014, and probably about the only justice the victims’ families will see.

    Cuyahoga County Probate Judge Anthony Russo approved the awards in a hearing in which he spelled out where the money would be distributed. He called the settlement, as well as the distribution of fees, fair and equitable.

    The city agreed to pay $1.5 million each to the families stemming from the settlement of a federal lawsuit. Attorneys will receive 40 percent of each family’s settlement, or $600,000. In total, lawyers will take in $1.2 million of the $3 million Cleveland will pay out.

    On Tuesday, Cleveland released a statement that said: “The city settled this case with (the families of Russell and Williams) to resolve the lawsuit and avoid drawn-out litigation. The settlement is not an acknowledgement of liability.”

    Some kind of justice, that.

    @deray Back at the Justice Center #BreloVerdict #Justice4Tamir #JusticeforTanisha #OneCle #ClevelandUprising

    It is our right to protest. We are gathering at 14th and Broadway at 7pm. @mrdaveyd. Wear black and bring a candle. https://m.facebook.com/events/355458084663602?ref=m_notif&notif_t=plan_admin_added&actorid=506270334&soft=search …
    (that URL may not be available, plus it’s Facebook and I’m not sure if it needs a signin).

    LeBron James urges city to remain calm and rally around Cavaliers in aftermath of Brelo verdict. Thank you, LeBron.

    LeBron James urged the city of Cleveland to remain calm and channel its energy into the Cavaliers’ playoff run in the aftermath of a judge’s decision to acquit a police officer of manslaughter in a 2012 shooting which led to the death of two African-Americans.

    “For the city of Cleveland, let’s use our excitement or whatever passion that we have for our sport tomorrow, for the game tomorrow night, bring it tomorrow night … our team we’ll try to do our best to give it back to them,” James said following the Cavaliers’ light workout today. His team leads the Hawks 2-0 in the Eastern Conference finals with Game 3 set for 8:30 p.m. tomorrow in Cleveland.

    Spokesmen for the Cavaliers and the NBA said the team and league are in touch with local law enforcement officials in the event any protests turn violent, especially near Quicken Loans Arena.

    This morning, Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell found Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo not guilty on two charges of voluntary manslaughter in connection with the Nov. 29, 2012 police chase and shooting that led to the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

    James declined to comment on the ruling itself immediately, though he said he may release a statement after he does some research. City, county, and state officials have quietly prepared for weeks to guard against violence in the aftermath of a not-guilty verdict, and as of 4 p.m. the small protests downtown were peaceful.

    Outspoken over the past few years about some high-profile incidents of force that resulted in the deaths of African-Americans, James said “violence is not the answer and it’s all about trying to find a solution for good or for bad.”

    James made similar statements in the immediate aftermath of separate decisions by grand juries not to charge police in the deaths of unarmed African-Americans in Ferguson, Missouri and New York in 2014, and of the shooting death of Tamir Rice by Cleveland police last year.

    In protest over the decision not to charge New York police in the death of Eric Garner, James and Kyrie Irving wore “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts prior to a game in Brooklyn against the Nets on Dec. 8.

    “For me, in any case, anything that goes on in our world, in our America, the only people that we should be worried about is the families that’s lost loved ones,” James said today. “You can’t get them back, you can never get them back and we should worry about the families and how they’re doing and things of that nature.”

    James said a positive development in the sporting world for a community, such as a deep playoff run for the Cavs, can help heal a community.

    “It doesn’t matter what city it is, something that’s going through a city that’s very traumatic, traumatizing or anything of that case, I think sports is the biggest healers in helping the city out,” he said.

    “Sports just does something to people, either if you’re a player, you’re a fan, if you just have something that has anything to do with that city, you just feel a certain way about rooting for a team that you love, get your mind off some of the hardships that may be going on throughout your life or maybe that particular time or period. It just does that.”

    So, let’s focus on the basketball.

    Cleveland schools tried to teach students to “manage emotions” of Brelo, Tamir Rice cases. Mixed feelings again.

    Cleveland schools closed for the summer Friday with school officials hoping students learned a key lesson before leaving for break — how to manage their emotions after events like today’s verdict in the Michael Brelo trial.

    The district has made teaching students about anger management, conflict resolution and how to deal with others a priority ever since a student shot four others at SuccessTech High School in 2007.

    It ramped up those efforts in recent weeks, as the city waited for a verdict in the controversial voluntary manslaughter trial of Brelo, a city police officer.

    “We started social and emotional learning lessons for moments like this,” district CEO Eric Gordon said. “For moments like the Brelo case, like the Tamir Rice case and like the rescue of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus.”

    “It’s for moments that our kids and families experience hurt,” he said.

    The Plain Dealer asked to sit in on some of the recent discussions with students about the Brelo case, but the district said they were informal and not usually full lessons scheduled in advance. The Cleveland Teachers Union could also not suggest classrooms to visit.

    On Friday, the evening before today’s Brelo verdict, Gordon said he couldn’t say what happened in every class. But the district suggested that teachers talk with students about the 1966 riots in the Hough neighborhood, asking students to think about why it happened and why people reacted as they did.

    They brought up recent riots in Baltimore, some involving students, and asked students to reflect on why students behaved the way they did and what issues led to those actions.

    The district also provided a lesson guide it gave teachers called “Teaching Tolerance: Promoting Peace in Crisis” from the National Association of School Psychologists.

    “People who are angry or frightened often feel that the ability to “fight back” puts them more in control or will alleviate their sense of pain,” the guide reads. “While anger is a normal response felt by many, we must ensure that we do not compound an already tragic situation and react against innocent individuals with vengeance and intolerance.”

    All of it, Gordon said, was meant to have students work through — in advance — feelings they may have about events happening in their lives and city. And it focused on helping students find ways to express their feelings in constructive ways.

    He said students were encouraged to talk about the case and administrators would have allowed students to stage silent protests or carry protest signs in school, as long as they were not attached to sticks that would pose a safety hazard.

    Actually, that sounds like a good idea – kind of like a trigger warning, that may not take away all the hurt, but can maybe prepare them for it and leave it more manageable than working completely blind. Well done, Cleveland schools, especially for letting students talk about it:

    Teachers, he said, were prepared to have immediate discussions about the verdict to help students process their feelings right away.

    “School is a place for kids to talk about it in a safe, moderated place,” Gordon said. “We teach kids to think about how they manage emotions and this is the right place to apply those skills.”

    He said discussion could continue at the few schools that have different schedules and will remain open for the summer, or at the district’s summer schools.

    Click here for a parents guide on Talking to Children about Violence.

    Here are the “Key Messages” in the lesson guide teachers received:

    1. Violence and hate are never solutions to anger. Perpetrators of violence — against fellow students or against our country — cause tremendous harm because they act violently against innocent people out of blind hate. We must not act like them by lashing out at innocent people around us, or “hating” them because of their origins, their appearance, or their choice of dress.
    2. Groups of people should not be judged by the actions of a few. It is wrong to condemn an entire group of people by association of religion, race, homeland, affiliations, or even proximity. No one likes to be blamed or threatened for the actions of others.
    3. America is strong because of our diversity. Known as the great “‘melting pot” of the world, American democracy is founded on respect for individual differences. Those differences in culture, religion, ideas, ethnicity, and lifestyle have contributed to the strength and richness of our country.
    4. All people deserve to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity. Certainly individuals that are proven to be guilty of a crime should be punished.
    5. Vengeance and justice are not necessarily the same. Justice means punishing the real perpetrators, not innocent people. Hurting other children and neighbors will not make us safer, resolve conflict, or help punish students who harm or harass classmates. It will only add to the hate and anger, increasing the risk of further violence.
    6. We are in this together. Regardless of their ethnicities, all members of a community are hurt by acts of senseless violence. We need to support each other, comfort each other, and work together to help those most in need during difficult times.
    7. History shows us that intolerance only causes harm. Some of our country’s darkest moments resulted from prejudice and intolerance for our own people because individuals acted out of fear. We must not repeat terrible mistakes such as our inappropriate, often violent treatment and ignorance of minority groups.
    8. We need to work for peace in our communities and around the world. By reaching out to our classmates, friends, and neighbors from diverse backgrounds, we can help heal the wounds from tragic events and build stronger, more resilient communities.
    9. Tolerance is a lifelong endeavor. Although it is critical in the immediate aftermath of a crisis to protect classmates and neighbors from harassment, the issues of tolerance and inclusion go beyond crisis recovery. We must embrace these values for all time. This includes all races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and those with special needs.

    Well, those keypoints seem to be lacking somewhat. Can’t quite put a finger on it. I hope the discussions have been more productive and more specific to students’ feelings and concerns.

  212. rq says

    The DOJ has announced that they will review the Brelo case. #BreloTrial

    We don’t do hands up in #CLE. We won’t surrender. It’s #fistupfightback

    Activist DeRay McKesson: Only Whiteness ‘Gets Nuance’ in the Media

    Ferguson activist DeRay McKesson told Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter Sunday morning that the coverage of the Waco biker shooting showed a stark contrast to that of the Baltimore unrest, one that could only be explained by racial pathology.

    “Nine people were dead, 18 people injured, and the media didn’t show any of that spectacle of blood,” McKesson said. “That context would not happen if those bodies were dark-skinned.”

    “Whiteness gets nuance in the media, and blackness doesn’t,” McKesson continued. “In Waco, it was ‘These are just bikers, it was a biker shootout.’ No, they killed nine people, shot in the presence of innocent bystanders…They are in gangs. This is organized crime.”

    “What you saw in Waco was this radical humanization of people who actually committed violent crimes, who really did violent crimes,” McKesson said. “You didn’t see that same humanization with people in Baltimore who were breaking curfew. They were treated in ways that criminalized them in really intense ways, in ways you didn’t see with actual criminals.”

    Video at the link.

    71 Arrested in Cleveland Protests Over Officer’s Acquittal, Police Say. 71!

    The police arrested 71 protesters overnight after demonstrations over the acquittal of an officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase and repeatedly shot at two unarmed black occupants, the Cleveland police chief said.

    Chief Calvin D. Williams said at a news conference Sunday that the protesters were arrested mostly on charges of aggravated rioting and obstruction of justice. Those arrested include 39 males, 16 females and a number of juveniles, he said.

    The police said on Twitter that three people were arrested after a demonstrator threw a sign through a restaurant window, injuring a patron. Two of them were detained for trying to interfere with the arrest of the person who threw the sign, Chief Williams said.

    The demonstrations began peacefully Saturday after Officer Michael Brelo, 31, a former Marine who served in Iraq, was acquitted of charges of voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault for his role in the November 2012 shooting. The demonstration turned aggressive in the evening, Chief Williams said.

    “We only moved in to make arrests when things got violent and protesters refused to disperse,” he said. “We want people to understand, we’re going to help you in this process, but if things turn violent in this situation we will take action.”

    The city streets had calmed by Sunday morning, although more demonstrations were expected over the Memorial Day weekend.

    “We continue to encourage peaceful protest and demonstration,” Mayor Frank Jackson said. “However, we will not tolerate demonstrations that cross the line.”

    Males, females and juveniles. Species, please.
    Also, there is some discussion on twitter about the police ‘moving in only when things turned violent’. Ah, the second part of that sentence seems more accurate: “when protestors refused to disperse”. Things become much clearer.

    Aside, Eyewitness accounts can be reliably unreliable

    If we had known as much about the limits of memory then as we do now, he might not have spent almost half his life behind bars.

    Since genetic testing began in the 1990s, an astonishing 73 percent of convictions overturned through DNA evidence were based on eyewitness testimony, according to the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Fully 38 percent of those cases rested on identifications made by two or more eyewitnesses.

    How can multiple people get it wrong? As my own experience shows, they’re not necessarily lying. “Memory is not like a videotape, where what goes in and what comes out is seamless and coherent,” said Rosanna Cavallaro, a professor of law at Suffolk University. “It is much more malleable, and susceptible to influences of all kinds.”

    The process of recollection alters our memories. Numerous studies show that squishiness: Subjects who view footage of a fender-bender will later recall it as a high-speed crash if an interviewer suggests it was more serious.

    Fear compromises memory, as does bad lighting, and the presence of a weapon: If you’re focused on the barrel of a gun — as were the witnesses in the Echavarria trial — you’re understandably less likely to remember details about the person pointing it at you.

    “A witness’s memory is part of the crime scene, like physical trace evidence,” said Boston lawyer James Doyle, an expert on eyewitness testimony. “It is subject to contamination . . . like blood or saliva found at the scene.”

    The memories of the witnesses at Echavarria’s trial were treated not like trace evidence, but ironclad proof. Eight days before he identified Echavarria as his brother’s killer, Isidoro Rodriguez had named somebody else. The fact of those two differing identifications would have made his testimony less credible — if the jury had ever heard about it.

    A year after the crime, police found a second witness to identify Echavarria. We now know that the way they secured the second ID — using a detective involved in the investigation — made it less reliable. Even a well-meaning officer who knows who the suspect is can give unwitting clues when showing a photo array, overwriting a witness’s memory.

    There is no sure way to tell which memories are reliable, and which are not. Which is why we need to focus on how police and prosecutors get those initial identifications. Massachusetts has been a leader here, with DAs and police following rules that reduce the risk of contaminating eyewitnesses accounts.

    And in January, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered that jurors be instructed on how memories can be compromised, and how an eyewitness’s sense of certainty may not mean their memories are more accurate.

    We are finally starting to get the hang of this, and not a minute too soon. It all comes 21 years too late for Angel Echavarria. How many others languish in prison because of the system’s blind faith in a faculty that can transform, in the blink of an eye, a maroon van into a gray one, an innocent into an inmate?

  213. rq says

    Shakeup in Baltimore mayor’s criminal justice leadership

    With Baltimore in the midst of one of its most violent stretches in years, a top criminal justice leader for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has left, marking the biggest shakeup in her administration since the recent rioting and unrest in the city.

    Angela Johnese, the director of the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice, had spent more than two years leading the office and played a key role in expanding Baltimore’s youth curfew law last year, making it one of the strictest in the nation.

    Additionally, Heather Brantner, the mayor’s Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator, has left. Both departed Friday.

    Howard Libit, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake, confirmed Saturday that Johnese and Brantner are no longer in their positions, but he declined to say under what terms they left. He said he would not comment on “the specifics of personnel actions.”

    City Councilman Nick Mosby, a member of the Public Safety Committee, said the departures come at a time that is “problematic in urban areas like Baltimore, where every summer you see a spike in violence.”

    “They are the folks who have the road map of the initiatives and programs we’re developing to really reduce crime,” he said. “Their job is to plan throughout the year for the summer. It concerns me.”

    Mosby said city officials need to share what the plan is and the reasons were that prompted the departures.

    “Was there a problem there? How can we implement the plans that should have been in place to make sure we are ahead of violence prevention as much as possible?” Mosby said.

    City Councilman Brandon M. Scott, vice chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said he learned of the departures Friday but did not know the reasons for them.

    “Angela was someone I worked closely with. To me, she was an advocate and an asset of doing things a different way,” Scott said. “I held her in high regard.” […]

    The departures of Johnese and Brantner come a few weeks after LeVar Michael, the city’s program director of the anti-violence initiative Operation Ceasefire, left his job voluntarily, according to city officials. Johnese’s office is running that program while city officials search for a new director, so her departure leaves Ceasefire in further flux.

    Ceasefire, a celebrated violence prevention program that monitors people who are considered repeat violent offenders, was brought back to Baltimore last year by Rawlings-Blake. The program began operating in West Baltimore, and by the end of the year that area had cut its homicides by half, to 21, compared with the previous year. Rawlings-Blake hailed the program as a major reason behind the decline in homicides.

    The decreases have not been replicated this year as at least 22 people have been killed in the district as of Saturday — the most of any of the city’s nine police districts.

    The Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon Sr., president of the Baltimore branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said he believes the mayor wants to rid herself of staffers who have helped craft the city’s crime strategies before she runs for re-election next year. He said Johnese’s departure sends strong signals.

    “It’s an admission that she knows the policing strategy in Baltimore City is not working,” said Witherspoon, who led many of the protests in the city over the last year.

    Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged this past week that officers have struggled to do basic police work in the Western District, saying that they have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility. […]

    “If the leaders weren’t as successful as one would reasonably expect, given the dire circumstances, and you think someone else could do a better job, you almost have to do that,” Ward said. “The citizens of Baltimore deserve the best team that can be put together. We’re all judged on outcomes.”

    The departures follow another high-level move by Rawlings-Blake. In March, she replaced Robert Maloney, the deputy mayor for public safety, with Stephanie Robinson, and restructured the position as the director of public safety.

    Maloney, who earned $136,000 last year, had overseen the police and fire departments, along with other agencies. He returned to his former job as director of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management.

    Robinson, who earns $105,000, is a liaison to the city’s public safety agencies, including the police and fire departments. […]

    Councilman Bill Henry said the moves suggest the mayor is ready to rethink her administration’s approach to fighting crime. He wants the city to take a more holistic approach that involves affordable housing, job creation and addiction treatment.

    “If the mayor is using a big broom and making a clean sweep of her internal operations in regard to dealing with criminal justice in the city, then it strikes me as we have a great opportunity to do things differently,” Henry said. “Many of us have been saying for years that we are not going to police our way out of the situation.

    “My hope would be that these moves on the mayor’s part are the beginning of a new commitment to a more holistic approach to public safety.”

    What Is Chuck Johnson, and Why? The Web’s Worst Journalist, Explained. Warning: he is an odious person. Why is this coming up now? Because he has been tweeting something awfully similar to death threats to activists, and tweets explaining how he would like to see some protestor heads cracked, over the weekend. Examples later.

    Cleveland Residents ‘a Model’ for Handling of Officer’s Acquittal, Ohio Governor Says. Can we not see pictures of Brelo trying to squeeze out some tears, please? Focus on the victims, here. The real ones.

    Ohio Gov. John Kasich praised the people of Cleveland today, calling its residents a “model” in their response to the acquittal of a white police officer charged in the 2012 shooting deaths of an unarmed black couple.

    Protests quickly followed the acquittal of officer Michael Brelo, who had been charged in the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. While the city’s police chief said the protests grew violent after earlier peaceful demonstrations, Kasich said Cleveland residents should be “proud of themselves.”

    “The verdict is the verdict, Jon [Karl]. What I will say is that I think the people of Cleveland handled this, I mean, they should be so proud of themselves and we should look at Cleveland as a model,” the Republican governor said during an appearance on “This Week.” “The mayor, former Senator Nina Turner, some of the ministers — Todd Davidson — these are people who have said it is proper to protest and — but at the same time, no violence, because violence in a community only destroys the community.” […]

    Protests began immediately after the verdict, with demonstrators outside the courthouse chanting “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” — a rallying cry that started with the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Law enforcement officers stood outside the courthouse carrying shields, blocking the demonstrators from entering.

    In a demonstration that had already been planned to mark six months since the death of Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old carrying a toy gun who was fatally shot by a white police officer, about 200 people walked in a mock funeral procession. They carried a black, plywood coffin and softly sang “I’m going up yonder, we’re marching, we’re marching.”

    The protests continued into the evening, when a crowd temporarily blocked downtown street intersections and chanted anti-police slogans. Demonstrators also marched past sports fans leaving a Cleveland Indians-Cincinnati Reds game, adding to the congestion.

    An NBA Player Is Missing the Playoffs Because the NYPD Broke His Leg—Why the Sports-Media Silence? There was a small kerfuffle about it about a month ago, but nothing since. Nothing.

    The NBA Finals may be determined by an act of police violence. This is an incendiary fact, yet a curious media silence surrounds the saga of injured Atlanta Hawks guard Thabo Sefolosha. The nine-year pro has been absent from the playoffs after a group of New York Police Department officers broke his leg in April following a late-night confrontation outside a Chelsea nightclub. The police accounts about what took place conflict dramatically, with video that emerged of a group of officers surrounding Sefolosha, with one brandishing a nightstick. Sefolosha, with assistance from the National Basketball Players Association, is planning a lawsuit against the City of New York. How this is not a continual firestorm is, frankly, bewildering. Given that there is a national movement confronting racialized police violence, and given that last winter saw the most prominent players in the NBA—LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose, even Kobe Bryant—speaking out in solidarity with this movement, it seems like a story too magnetic to ignore. It’s also unprecedented. My first editor told me, “The sun going up is beautiful, but it’s not a story. The sun not coming up, now, that’s a story.” This is the sun not coming up. It’s a narrative that would appear ripe for big-budget investigative reporting, regular updates, or even chatter. It would especially seem tailor-made for an era in sports media when everything is numbingly over-discussed; an era when Tom Brady’s vigorously rubbed footballs or the presence of adorable children at NBA press conferences qualifies as subjects of endless debate. But somehow it’s not. […]
    Yet Carroll’s injury did not provoke a re-examination of what happened to Sefolosha. This near-silence has been across the sports media landscape, so it feels churlish to pick on one example, but it was both too high-profile and too evocative to ignore. On Thursday morning, Mike Greenberg, hosting ESPN’s national Mike and Mike radio show, talked about how the Hawks could possibly be able to guard LeBron without Carroll, and mentioned Thabo’s absence as well. In describing for his audience why Thabo isn’t playing, all Mike Greenberg said was, “We all know what happened there.” That was it. No mention of the NYPD, the conflicting stories, or the fact that NBA players have gone out of their way to speak about police mistreatment. Just “We all know what happened there.” Actually, we don’t all know what happened there, and that’s the point. Instead of retelling or even illuminating what we know, this line was dead on arrival. And yet “we all know what happened there” were six words more than most sports media offered this past week. Even the notably outspoken TNT team of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal, and Charles Barkley had nothing to say about it on Inside the NBA, broadcast immediately after the Hawks lost to Cleveland and in the aftermath of Carroll’s injury. Yes, given Shaq’s history as a volunteer police officer and Barkley’s own comments about the Black Lives Matter movement, it might not have exactly been a rousing call for social justice, but to not even mention it was bizarre. Even Marv Albert discussed Sefolosha briefly during the broadcast. But to the TNT studio team, he was the invisible man.

    I spoke to nine NBA journalists, editors, and television producers on and off the record about why this story has been objectively under-discussed. One might think they would say it’s because fans either don’t care about someone viewed as a role player or because it’s a polarizing topic and the audience will rebel if sports pundits get too political. But that’s not what I heard.

    Michael Lee, The Washington Post’s national NBA writer, penned a terrific piece about the case with a series of quotes from NBA players and told me that it was his most viewed story of the entire season.

    As far as a fan backlash, Sekou Smith of NBA.com and host of their Hang Time podcast has been one of the few to discuss it at length and e-mailed me that he has received “no backlash at all. I have no idea why it has gone so far off the radar. Perhaps he’s not a big enough name for our sensationalized 24-hour news cycle? The ignoring of it is just strange.” […]

    The more I spoke to people, the clearer it was that this story has not garnered more coverage because of how the media police themselves. One person at Yahoo Sports said to me, “We censor ourselves. We’re risk-averse. White columnists feel like they’d get the story wrong, and black columnists don’t want the responsibility and risk of having to be the ones to write about it. We end up in a state of paralysis.”

    Not everyone has been paralyzed, however, and it’s not always the case that the media silence themselves. There are still those columnists willing to play police if one of the brethren gets out of line. Turner Sports sideline reporter and former longtime print journalist David Aldridge spoke lucidly and directly about Thabo case in the middle of a live telecast. In just over a minute of airtime, Aldridge managed to report on Sefolosha’s surgery and the reaction of the franchise, and had breaking news comments from the new executive director of the NBA Players Association, Michelle Roberts, who confirmed that it were conducting its own investigation and said, “The best I can tell you is that there is no video at all to justify the way the police treated them.” […]

    A more apt analysis is probably that the sports media world does not want to be perceived as criticizing or even discussing the role of police in our society, particularly in the black community. One can understand why someone in a position of authority on a newspaper or at a network could identify this as an excessively polarizing subject and, without breaking news generated by Thabo Sefolosha’s camp, unnecessarily hazardous. But not putting a spotlight on such an unprecedented set of circumstances also represents an impulse to not unnecessarily upset the police or their supporters. This impulse appears to be even stronger than the drive for ratings or page views. This impulse represents a timidity that takes a story which could act as a lens toward educating people about a national crisis and consigns it to the dustbin. Meanwhile as thousands march in solidarity with Freddie Gray’s family in Baltimore, or gather in New York’s Union Square to say that the lives of black women matter, Thabo Sefolosha is on crutches. His team needs him and the NBA Finals hang in the balance, but he has a broken leg courtesy of the NYPD. Nope, nothing to see here.

    LeBron did say to focus on the basketball… No?

    49 Shots And The Cop Goes Free

    Nine of the 13 Cleveland cops who fired 137 shots at two apparently unarmed black civilians following a high-speed chase in 2012 have filed a federal lawsuit saying they are victims of racial discrimination.

    Really.

    Eight of the aggrieved cops are white. The ninth is Hispanic. They charge that the city of Cleveland has “a history of treating non-African American officers involved in the shootings of African Americans substantially harsher than African-American officers.”

    As if their race was the deciding factor in the cops being kept on restricted duty for 16 months after a backfire mistaken for a gunshot and an ensuing cross-town chase led to police firing nearly as many shots at the unarmed Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell as were unleashed upon Bonnie and Clyde in their famous final shootout—leaving Melissa with 24 gunshot wounds to Bonnie’s 23 and Timothy with 23 to Clyde’s 25.

    Replay the last scene of the movie Bonnie and Clyde in your mind, only replace the decidedly armed and deadly pair with a homeless duo armed with nothing in the car besides a couple of crack pipes and an empty Coca-Cola can.

    The Cleveland Nine should count themselves lucky that they were returned to full duty after 16 months.

    Read those first three paragraphs again. Read them again. Then read more:

    In announcing the results of his investigation into the 2012 deaths, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine did make clear that no report would have been necessary if Russell had not sped wildly away from police in his 1979 Malibu with Williams at his side, reaching speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Russell had been pulled over for the most minor of traffic violations by a cop who had a hunch that he and Williams had been buying drugs.

    “To state the obvious, the chase would have ended without tragic results if Timothy Russell had simply stopped the car in response to the police pursuit,” DeWine said as he released the report in February 2013. “Perhaps the alcohol and cocaine in his system impaired his judgment. We will never know.”

    DeWine went on: “We do know that each officer at the scene believed he or she was dealing with a driver who had fled law enforcement. They each also believed they were dealing with a passenger who was brandishing a gun—and that the gun had been fired at a police officer. It is now clear that those last two beliefs were likely not true.”

    He said something that applies to cops of whatever race in whatever jurisdiction.

    “Police officers have a very difficult job. They must make life and death decisions in a split second based on whatever information they have in that moment. But when you have an emergency, like what happened that night, the system has to be strong enough to override subjective decisions made by individuals who are under that extreme stress.”

    He continued: “Policy, training, communications, and command have to be so strong and so ingrained to prevent subjective judgment from spiraling out of control. The system has to take over and put on the brakes.”

    As it was, the chase was accompanied and spurred on by apparently erroneous radio reports of the occupants firing and reloading a gun. And it all culminated in a middle-school parking lot with the cops mistaking gunfire from other cops as coming from inside the suspect’s car and blazing away as if they had encountered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde rather than just unarmed Melissa and Timothy.

    “We are dealing with a systematic failure in the Cleveland Police Department,” DeWine concluded. “Command failed. Communications failed. The system failed.”

    After such an indictment, you would expect the department to do all it could to remedy such failings. And that should have prominently included communications. A test came with a phone call to 911 on Nov. 22.[…]

    Whatever exactly transpired, the Cleveland Police Department had not learned some important lessons from the 2012 shooting about imagined danger and restraint.

    However the department deals with Loehmann is not likely to be directly determined by his race any more than race directly determined how the department dealt with the aggrieved nine who have filed the lawsuit.

    Race becomes a big factor when the press and the public go generic; white cops and black victims with little attention paid to the details and the individuals and the circumstances. The department responds as press becomes pressure.

    In their lawsuit, the Cleveland Nine say an unnamed black cop received only “the 45-day cooling off period” of restricted duty in the gym after shooting a black suspect.

    Had the media made an issue of the shooting, you can be all but certain that the cop in question would not have just done a little “gym time,” no matter what his race.

    One white cop who is not part of the suit is Michael Brelo, who somehow fired 49 of the 137 bullets unleashed in 2012, reloading twice. He faces manslaughter charges and is now awaiting trial. The city of Cleveland recently reached a $3 million settlement with the Russell and Williams families.

    On Saturday, relatives returned to the middle-school parking lot where Russell and Williams were killed and gathered with the family of Tamir Rice. Highway safety flares provided light as the clans joined by loss sought solace in prayer and song.

    A report by the Cleveland Plain Dealer describes balloons being released into the night sky. Williams’s uncle, Walter Jackson, spoke to Tamir’s grandfather, J.J. Rice.

    “You’re at the start, where we were two years ago,” the uncle said.

    Basically, the black cop involved got less days off and for that they’re crying racial discrimination. Maybe there’s another reason for it, eh? Idiots. Idiots.

    Here Are 13 Killings by Police Captured on Video in the Past Year. Please view only if feeling emotionally stable and strong right now. This is about as unpleasant viewing as it gets. This is a Trigger Warning.

    From Ferguson last summer to Baltimore this spring, police killings of unarmed black men under questionable circumstances have sparked outrage, civil unrest, and a heated national debate about policing in the United States. As Mother Jones and others have reported, there isn’t sufficient data available for determining how many people are shot to death or otherwise killed by police each year, or how the issue might be trending. But more such incidents appear to be getting captured on video than ever before, due in part to the ubiquity of cellphone cameras. The footage—not only from cellphones, but also surveillance cameras, dashboard cameras in police cars, and police-worn body cameras—has caused a tectonic shift in public awareness.

    Below are 13 videos of fatal police encounters recorded between March 16, 2014, and April 4, 2015. Most of the suspects killed were black. A majority of the suspects were unarmed. In three cases, the suspects killed reportedly had serious mental-health problems—which may have been known to the police in at least two of those cases at the time of the shootings.

    Mother Jones has contacted law enforcement officials about the status of these 13 cases: Investigations are ongoing in eight of them. In one case, now six months old, the two officers involved still haven’t been questioned by investigators. Officers in the five other cases have been absolved of wrongdoing via local or state proceedings. (One of those five cases is currently under review by the US Department of Justice.) Three of the 24 officers total who were involved in the 13 cases are currently facing criminal charges.
    WARNING: The videos below contain graphic footage that some viewers may find disturbing.

    It really is disturbing.

  214. rq says

    Arrests in #Oakland after @blackoutcollect + other orgs & supporters defy new protest curfew policy. #BreakTheCurfew

    Then there was a press conference in Cleveland, some excerpts:
    And the Cleveland Mayor and Police Chief did not comment on the “bystanders” who threw things at protestors. Silence.
    “We only moved in to make arrests when things got violent.” – Cleveland Police Chief There was no violence last night. This is wild.
    The Mayor literally just whispered on the mic for the Police Chief to say that there were dozens of “assaults” last night!
    And the Cleveland Police Chief just said there were “random acts of assault” last night. Y’all, this is world-class propaganda.

    National Lawyers Guild observer, NEOMG reporter and about two dozen protesters detained in this alleyway.

  215. rq says

    Arrests In Baltimore Plunge Even As The Murder Rate Soars. Read that headline. Upthread, on this very post, is an article that outlines how the murder rate has been increasing well before Freddie Gray’s death and the protests that followed. Make of it what you will, but BuzzFeed has got this one utterly misleadingly wrong.

    Across the city, 100 people have been killed so far this year, far outpacing the 71 homicides by the same time in 2014. This week alone, at least 19 people were shot, four of them fatally, according to a Baltimore Sun count.

    In the western district, the 28-day period ending on May 16 saw six homicides, up from only two in 2014, according to police data. Non-fatal shootings in the district over the same period jumped from only five in 2014 to 20 this year.

    Meanwhile, arrests are down sharply in the city. In the three weeks after Gray’s death on April 19, officers made 1,452 arrests, the data shows. By comparison, the data reveals that during the same three-week period in 2013 and 2014, police made well over 2,000 arrests:

    They’re going to blame it on fewer arrests, as if a police slow-down makes such a huge difference (see: New York).

    The uptick in violence, coupled with fewer arrests since the protests and riots that broke out last month in Baltimore following Gray’s death, has led to speculation that police are in a work “slowdown” — a technique in which workers put pressure on an employer by doing less of their job than usual.

    The police department has been under heavy scrutiny by the public, media and Justice Department, which announced a civil rights investigation into its practices in wake of Gray’s death while in police custody.

    “Morale is in the sewers,” a Baltimore police officer who wished to remain unidentified told CNN on Friday. It’s “the worst of the worst I’ve ever seen in my career.”

    “Officers stopped being proactive,” he said. “I believe this is the direct result of officers holding back.” He said officers had “stop[ped] being proactive” and claimed some calls would go hours without a police response.

    “We do not believe in [Police Commissioner Anthony] Batts or his command staff,” the officer said. “We want him to go.”

    The potential slowdown comes just months after officers in New York City staged a similar demonstration in the wake of two police assassinations. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed on Dec. 20 in Brooklyn, prompting police union leaders to say Mayor Bill de Blasio had blood on his hands.

    Arrests in New York City declined sharply after the killings, then began ticking back up in January.

    In a televised interview Friday, Batts admitted some officers on the force had been disaffected in wake of the charges brought against police in Gray’s death, but blamed gang activity for the increase in violence, including a shooting Wednesday that left 1 person dead and four others injured.

    “There are some officers here who are hurt and feel unsupported,” Batts told CNN.

    Asked if some officers may have begun a work slowdown, Batts seemed less certain.

    “I hope not,” he said. “I hope my guys have stronger character than that.”

    This isn’t Johnson, but another odious tweeter. I had comrades marching in Oakland today and some asshole wished brutality upon them. Say hi to @ProducerLos
    Also, here’s @ProducerLos’ response to @deray’s tweet.
    I know Johnson’s account has been suspended (people complained), don’t know about this one yet.

    After acquittal, Cleveland braces for another cop’s trial. Yep, Tamir Rice is still in the system.

    The streets largely remained calm Sunday morning after police in riot gear made numerous arrests overnight of protesters angered by a patrolman’s acquittal in the deaths of two unarmed black suspects in a barrage of police gunfire.

    Michael Brelo, 31, faces administrative charges while remaining suspended without pay after he was found not guilty Saturday on two counts of voluntary manslaughter, but he no longer faces the prospect of prison. The anxious city now awaits a decision on criminal charges against a white officer in the fatal shooting of a black 12-year-old boy with a pellet gun. […]

    The judge’s decision to acquit Brelo focused on which shots killed Russell, 43, and Williams, 30, two homeless drug addicts with a long history of mental illness. Four of the 23 gunshot wounds to Russell and seven of Williams’ 24 wounds were believed to have been fatal. O’Donnell said that while testimony showed Brelo fired some of the fatal shots, other officers fired kill shots as well.

    A grand jury charged five police supervisors with misdemeanor dereliction of duty for failing to control the chase. All five have pleaded not guilty and no trial date has been set.

    Prosecutors had argued that when Brelo stood on the hood of the Malibu that he meant to kill Russell and Williams instead of containing a threat to his and other officers’ lives. O’Donnell ruled that even the last 15 shots were justified based on Brelo’s belief that someone inside the car had fired at police at the beginning, middle and end of the chase.

    “Officer Brelo risked his life on that night,” said Brelo’s lead attorney, Patrick D’Angelo, after the verdict.

    McGinty said he respected O’Donnell’s decision, and added that the case would prevent police violence.

    In addition to the Tamir Rice case, the county prosecutor’s office is looking into the death of a black woman who died in police custody while lying face first on the ground in handcuffs. The family of Tanisha Anderson, 37, has sued the city of Cleveland and the two police officers who subdued her. They say she panicked Nov. 12 when officers put her in the back of a patrol car after they’d responded to a call about Anderson having a mental health crisis.

    Russell’s sister, Michelle, said Brelo would ultimately face justice, despite the judge’s decision. The city of Cleveland has paid the families of Russell and Williams a total of $3 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.

    “He’s not going to dodge this just because he was acquitted,” Michelle Russell said. “God will have the final say.”

  216. rq says

    Back in the summer and fall, Johnetta Elsie also got a lot of media time. That has since changed: “DeRay always on the news why not you?” B/c I have nothing left to say about white supremacy or it’s violence that won’t land me in jail.
    I simply don’t have it for the media anymore, or the triggering questions trying to coerce someone into sayin things they can use against us, and that in addition to the sexism she deals with, it’s not surprise that the face of activism has reverted to being ‘male-dominated’ in the media (I say this with a somewhat limited view, but I know of many other women activists who don’t get the media time even though they’re doing a heckuvalot of work on the ground – while interviews and panels go to men). This is just commentary.

    St. Louis Cardinals to local cops: Stop using our mascot to promote ‘Police Lives Matter’

    In response to a request from the St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Police Officers Association has taken down a Facebook photo of Fredbird, mascot for the St. Louis Cardinals, posing with a blue sign that reads, “POLICE LIVES MATTER,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

    The photograph from which major league baseball officials are publicly distancing themselves this week was reportedly shot by a fan before a game last Sunday at Busch Stadium. A couple had allegedly approached Fredbird and asked him to pose with the woman of the duo, along with the incendiary sign, while the male partner stood behind the camera and took a picture.

    On Monday, the St. Louis Police Officers Association posted the photographed image of Fredbird holding a “POLICE LIVES MATTER” sign on its Facebook page, though the woman in the picture had been cropped out.

    The edited picture of a politicized Fredbird appeared on Twitter as well: […]

    “Of course police lives matter,” Deadspin noted in an angry sendup, “but used as a direct retort to the non-controversial idea that black lives matter, the phrase is an at best crypto-racist way of dismissing legitimate anger about police violence in black communities.”

    By Tuesday, the Cardinals were aware that their mascot was on the internet taking a stand opposite those who protested the shooting of Mike Brown, an unarmed teenager suspected of petty theft who raised his hands in surrender to Ferguson police before officer Darren Wilson killed him.

    In a statement, the Cardinals’ vice president of communications, Ron Watermon, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that, upon learning of Fredbird’s controversial social media post, team officials “asked our friends at the police association to take it down, and they graciously accommodated our request.” Watermon further adds that Fredbird was not aware of the sign’s contents when he posed with fans last week for the now infamous photograph.

    The FBI’s Response To Another Killer Cop Set Free? More Surveillance of Protestors

    On Thursday, FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano gave a press conference about how his agency was preparing for the soon-to-be announced verdict for Michael Brelo, the white Cleveland Police Officer charged with two counts of voluntary homicide for shooting 49 bullets at two unarmed black victims, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, at least two of which were fatal shots for each victim and many of which were fired as he stood on the hood of their car.

    However, Giuliano mentioned nothing about the details of this case or how the FBI may be mandated to investigate the state agents involved depending on the outcome. Instead, he mentioned other activities in which the FBI was engaged in the lead up to the Brelo verdict that are far outside of the FBI’s mandates, and possibly in violation of those mandates, against U.S. citizens engaged in First Amendment activity.

    The FBI is charged with investigating Color of Law violations to “prevent abuse of authority” by “law enforcement officers and other officials like judges.” In November of last year, the Department of Justice announced that it had found the Cleveland Police Department guilty of “a pattern or practice of unreasonable and unnecessary use of force.” Considering this, one would think the FBI should have been preparing an investigation into Color of Law violations by Officer Brelo and Judge John O’Donnell, who yesterday announced his decision that Officer Brelo was guilty of no crime, before that verdict was announced. After all, police departments cannot establish patterns or practices of unreasonable and unnecessary use of force without the entire criminal justice system being complicit in such behavior.

    If the FBI had any such plan, Guiliano didn’t mention it at his press conference.

    What he did mention was that the FBI has been tracking the movements of people protesting these types of miscarriages of justice around the country, and that if the FBI became aware of any of those protesters going to Cleveland, they would tell the Cleveland Police:

    When asked about local law enforcement’s concerns over protesters coming to Cleveland, Giuliano said, “It’s outsiders who tend to stir the pot. If we have that intel we pass it directly on to the PD, we have worked with Ferguson. We’ve worked with Baltimore and we will work with the Cleveland PD on that very thing. That’s what we bring to the game.”

    The fact that the FBI is tracking U.S. Citizens engaged in First Amendment activity is problematic, outside of their mandate, and possibly a violation of the law. Furthermore, the methods with which the FBI has lately been caught tracking U.S. Citizens, from warrantless wiretaps, to tracking devices on vehicles, to Stingray cellphone towers and planes have been ruled unconstitutional by an increasing number of courts.

    Most concerning was an additional piece of information that Giuliano provided without solicitation:

    Giuliano added that the FBI will be a significant support role for security when the [Republican National Convention] comes to Cleveland:

    “I feel very good that this will be a well protected event. I believe Cleveland will be very well prepared.”

    In addition to the widespread monitoring of #BlackLivesMatter, it appears the FBI has admitted to using these infiltration measures as a sort of testing ground for the upcoming Republican National Convention next year. Again, despite the throw-away assertions about how the FBI respects “lawful first amendment activity” (it’s unclear what unlawful first amendment activity would be), their ethos is clear: prevent unrest at all costs and assuring Cleveland’s largely white power classes that everything will be business as usual regardless of how many killer cops go free. […]

    Anyone traveling to Cleveland to protest the Brelo verdict is seeking to gather in public space to reproach the government for civil rights grievances. For the FBI to interfere with civic act through their information-gathering techniques and by passing that information to police forces that cannot be trusted to use it without infringing on people’s First Amendment rights is a clear violation of the FBI’s own mandate.

    Had the FBI wanted to help keep the peace after the Brelo verdict, they could have lived up to their own mandates to publicly investigate the Cleveland criminal justice system for its Color of Law violations and to protect the people’s right to protest those violations against a proven, unnecessarily violent police force.

    More at the link, of course. That stuff in the middle is pretty significant.

    ‘Maybe We Differ On What True Means’: Activist Confronts CNN Host For Assuming Cops Tell The Truth

    Social activist Deray McKessan criticized the media over the weekend for the way they had handled a white biker shootout in Texas with “nuance,” but black rioters in Baltimore who did not kill anyone were not “humanized” in the same way.

    In an interview on Sunday, McKessan explained to CNN host Brian Stelter than he had quit his job as a school administrator after Michael Brown was killed.

    “The reason that I quit was that I want to figure out how to use my skills and talent to fight in this space because you just can’t kill people,” he said. “All the work that I did in education was important, but kids have to be alive to learn.”

    McKessan slammed the media for what he called “a constant pathologizing of black bodies,” which gave the impression that “when black people assemble, it’s always criminal.”

    “What you saw in St. Louis, the police were literally attacking protesters, and that wasn’t always the narrative that was put out by the mainstream media,” he noted. “What you saw in Baltimore sometimes, you saw people sort of focusing on the property damage and not actually people actually focusing on what caused the unrest in the first place.”

    “So when I see broadcasts, news articles that present the police narrative as true,” McKessan added before being interrupted.

    “But it is oftentimes true,” Stelter insisted.

    “Is it true?” McKessan asked. “I don’t know if it was true with Mike Brown. Maybe we differ on what true means.”

    “You’re talking about anecdotes as opposed to statistics,” Stelter replied. “Are you saying the majority of statement by police officers in the U.S. are not true, public statements, press releases.”

    “What I’m saying is that the police are killing people, and they’re saying that it’s justified in every case in a way that it just isn’t,” McKessan pointed out. “When I think about Walter Scott, the police gave an account that was untrue. And we would not have known unless there was a video. And there are many other cases.” […]

    According to McKessan, racism was insidious because people tended to think of it as an extreme.

    “It’s this idea that like the n-word is the only signifier of racism in America when that’s actually not true,” he said. “Racism is about how power is used to negatively impact people because issues of race. So, what you saw with Waco, you saw this radical humanization of people who actually committed violent crimes, who really did violent crimes in a way you did see that same humanization with people in Baltimore who were breaking curfew.”

    “They were treated in ways that criminalized them, really intense ways. In a way that you didn’t see with actual criminals.”

    Police are protecting the house of the officer who shot the two unarmed black men in Olympia. #OlympiaShooting

  217. rq says

    What happened to the #VonDerittMyers memorial??
    Bears from the memorial next to dumpster #VonDerittMyers

    Michael B. Jordan: Why I’m Torching the Color Line – I’m not sure if I posted this already, but here it is.

    You’re not supposed to go on the Internet when you’re cast as a superhero. But after taking on Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four—a character originally written with blond hair and blue eyes—I wanted to check the pulse out there. I didn’t want to be ignorant about what people were saying. Turns out this is what they were saying: “A black guy? I don’t like it. They must be doing it because Obama’s president” and “It’s not true to the comic.” Or even, “They’ve destroyed it!”

    It used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. I can see everybody’s perspective, and I know I can’t ask the audience to forget 50 years of comic books. But the world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961. Plus, if Stan Lee writes an email to my director saying, “You’re good. I’m okay with this,” who am I to go against that?

    Some people may look at my casting as political correctness or an attempt to meet a racial quota, or as part of the year of “Black Film.” Or they could look at it as a creative choice by the director, Josh Trank, who is in an interracial relationship himself—a reflection of what a modern family looks like today.

    This is a family movie about four friends—two of whom are myself and Kate Mara as my adopted sister—who are brought together by a series of unfortunate events to create unity and a team. That’s the message of the movie, if people can just allow themselves to see it.

    Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, “I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.” I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that “it has to be true to the comic book.” Or maybe we have to reach past them.

    To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It’s okay to like it.

    Report: St. Louis economy would gain $14 billion if racial income inequality disappeared. Diversity is financially smart.

    The St. Louis regional economy would see an increase of almost $14 billion if income were equal across racial lines. That’s according to a new report published by the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

    “That’s the kind of money that turns over in the economy to the degree that it translates into increases in property values and translates into increases available for education. There are just all kinds of implications for that level of change,” said Mark Tranel, the director of the Public Policy Research Center.

    The research center compiled the report using 2012 data from the National Equity Atlas, a resource provided jointly by a private institution called PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California.

    The report found that the median hourly wage of white St. Louisans is $5 higher than the median hourly wage of people of color who live in the St. Louis region. That trend held true across all education levels except for those with a bachelor’s degree or above. In that category, Asian St. Louisans earned a higher median wage than white St. Louisans. Across all education levels however, African Americans and Latinos earned less money in St. Louis in 2012.

    In addition to measuring equity in wages, the report compared related statistics across race and ethnic groups, including unemployment rate, education levels, homeownership and the percent of young people who aren’t in school or working.

    According to the report, there are almost twice as many young African Americans living in St. Louis without work or school than any other racial or ethnic group.

    “If they stay in school and achieve a high school diploma, achieve a college degree they are a better resource for the employers in the metropolitan area, and … they have more money to spend,” said Tranel when asked why it’s important for young people to be in school or have a job.

    “Those dollars, when spent, reverberate throughout the community. If you spend money in a grocery store that creates jobs for the people in the grocery store; that creates jobs for the suppliers of the grocery store,” he added. “There’s a multiplier effect in terms of the additional wages these individuals can earn and how that affects a whole bunch of other people.”

    Tranel said the report is not intended to recommend solutions but rather be a tool for government agencies and non-profit organizations working to bridge disparity gaps in St. Louis.

    “There’s been a lot of discussion around issues of inequity. We felt that on the aspects that we’re presenting here there wasn’t consolidated in one place a lot of specific data on this issue. So our objective was to create this hopefully as a tool where people engaged in discussions about how we make changes going forward would have access to actual data about the current conditions and about the implications for changes,” Tranel explained.

    They were. They all in jail for it RT @NBCBLK: Why Aren’t More African-Americans in the Cannabis Industry?

    #Oakland protesters plan second march http://bit.ly/1KfSCpG 8PM, 14th & B-way http://on.fb.me/1JO7Vbc #BreakTheCurfew

  218. rq says

    Cop Resigns After Using Taser and Pepper Spray on Stroke Victim

    Newly released police body camera videos show Fredericksburg police officer Shaun Jurgens use his Taser and pepper spray on a motionless, virtually silent driver who was having a medical emergency.

    David Washington was experiencing a stroke, which is why he struck another vehicle before running over a median and knocking over a city sign.

    When the car came to rest, the 34-year-old man remained motionless in his car with the seat belt strapping him in. Police responded with weapons in hand to reports of a hit-and-run and found Mr. Washington still in his car and virtually unresponsive. Instead of recognizing Mr Washington’s need for medical care officers trained with force as their only tactic reacted like they were on a battlefield.

    Officers approach Mr Washington’s vehicle barking orders for him to get out of the car and when he doesn’t respond Shaun Jurgens uses his taser to shock the unresponsive Mr Washington into compliance. When his taser makes poor contact he steps closer with pepper spray at the ready to deliver an excessive point blank spray into the face of Mr Washington that could be described as emptying the entire can and when Mr Washington still doesn’t respond Jergens threatens to kill him while he is aiming his weapon. “Get out the car or I’m going to fucking smoke you,” Jergens yelled after tasering and pepper spraying him.

    “I can’t see,” Washington responded.

    david_washington_fredericksburg_pd_296The two other officers seen in the videos Cpl. Matt Deschenes and Sgt. Crystal Hill then drag Mr Washington out of his vehicle face down on the pavement and handcuff him. Washington can be heard repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” as his vehicle that was still not parked then rolls over his foot.

    A female cop at the scene realized what was happening and jumped in the car to move it off his foot.

    By this time it is brutally obvious that Mr Washington is in dire need of medical care yet nobody even suggests taking the cuffs off or washing the pepper spray off of his face. They instead decide to interrogate Washington.

    Washington was transported to the hospital and adding insult to injury the only person facing any charges is the stroke victim. Mr Washington will be charged with hit-and-run, hit-and-run (property damage), reckless driving, and driving on a revoked or suspended license.

    Protecting the community from stroke victims. Awesome!

    Baltimore police contract hurts accountability, study says

    The contract between Baltimore and the Fraternal Order of Police contains several impediments to accountability, according to a report from a criminologist who often examines policies for the U.S. Department of Justice.

    In an 11-page report, Samuel Walker, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said the role of police union contracts has been ignored amid the nationwide debate and protests that erupted last fall over police and community relations.

    Walker said “offensive provisions” in the union contract, a three-year pact expiring next year, violate “best practices” across the country and should be revised to boost professionalism in the Baltimore Police Department.

    “In Baltimore, and in other cities and counties across the country, police union contracts contain provisions that impede the effective investigation of reported misconduct and shield officers who are in fact guilty of misconduct from meaningful discipline,” Walker wrote.

    The report comes as tension swirls around the Police Department in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death. […]

    The contract states that officers cannot be disciplined if prosecutors place them on the “do not call list” — a list of officers who are not called to testify due to credibility issues. The Maryland Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, which provides procedural protections for officers accused of misconduct, also prohibits officers from being disciplined for being on the list.

    “Police officers possess the awesome power to deprive people of their liberty through arrest and to take human life,” Walker wrote. “The highest standards of integrity and honesty must be expected of all officers.”

    Walker said the union contract also allows officers to have unfounded, exonerated or unsustained complaints expunged after three years, violating “new best practices.”

    The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 declined to comment on Walker’s report. In the past, it has said that contract provisions protect officers against frivolous complaints and ensure that they receive due process when being investigated for wrongdoing.

    Del. John Cluster, a Baltimore County Republican and retired county police officer, said officers should have the right to expunge unfounded complaints. He compared it to citizens’ ability to have criminal records cleared in certain situations. […]

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which has been critical of Baltimore police practices, plans to help disseminate Walker’s report across the state.

    Police leaders have already made changes that address perceived problems with hearing boards, another issue noted by Walker.

    The boards now consist of two command staff members and a lieutenant, instead of a command staff member, a lieutenant and a person of the same rank as the accused. Convictions have increased since leaders made that change, records show.

    Walker’s report follows Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s failed efforts this year to change the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights.

    Rawlings-Blake asked the General Assembly for legislation that would make it easier to discipline officers. She pressed for a bill that would have created a new felony “misconduct in office” charge for officers, and for another that would have made it easier to discipline officers without them having the right to appeal.

    The mayor could not overcome lobbying from the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police and groups representing police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

    General Assembly leaders recently appointed a group to study the issues, but the work has not yet started.

    Critics of existing law say it’s unfair to allow officers 10 days to remain silent before being questioned about incidents that could lead to discipline.

    Police unions have backed such delays, saying they are needed to allow officers to obtain legal advice. Cluster said it is no different than every American’s constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

    “You have the right immediately when you’re locked up as a civilian to not talk,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent. You have a right to an attorney. That’s given to every citizen when they’re charged with something.” […]

    “In the folklore of contemporary policing there is a widespread joke that the police union representative arrives on the scene before an investigator from internal affairs does,” Walker wrote.

    As police unions seek protections for officers, city and county leaders often focus on cost-saving measures, not accountability, Walker said.

    “But it also involves a concerted effort to educate the mayor of Baltimore about the relevant provisions of the contract and to obtain a commitment to seek removal of the objectionable provisions in the next round of contract negotiations,” Walker concluded.

    The union contract is a product of many rounds of negotiations, and the city has negotiated some changes to the discipline process, Libit said.

    He added, “We will review this report and see whether there are changes we might seek in future contract negotiations.”

    Watch this activist politely destroy CNN for racism: ‘Whiteness gets nuance and blackness doesn’t’, Raw Story on the CNN video above.

    Also @deray #BlackPoetsSpeakOut is happening in Bmore. If you, or your people are in town speak, come through…

    Group says it has enough names on petition for Ferguson recall election – but will it happen?

    A group that has been collecting signatures for a recall of Mayor James Knowles III says it has more than enough signatures and intends to present the petition to city officials at a council meeting Tuesday night.

    The names would need to be verified by the city clerk. If they pass muster, the City Council would be asked to set a date for an election. That would be forwarded to the St. Louis County Election Board.

    The petition was a response to the shooting death of Michael Brown, an African-American teen, by a white police officer, as well as to various city practices cited in a Department of Justice report.

    Phil Gassoway, a leader of the Recall Knowles 2015 group, said Sunday night that the group needed about 1,828 signatures of registered voters and had collected about 2,200. The city charter says that “recall petitions must be signed by 15 percent of the total number of registered voters eligible to vote for such officer at the last election for such office.”

    Knowles could not be reached Sunday night. He has said previously that an effort to push him out of office would set the city back and divide the community. Knowles told the Post-Dispatch previously about the recall effort: “I do think it is ill-conceived … But it is what it is.”

    The effort began after a resident at a town hall meeting March 13 read a letter asking the mayor to step down.

    When that did not happen, five residents filed an affidavit with the city to start the process of recall. Ground Level Support, a group of Ferguson activists, is pushing the recall.

    “We want to recall him,” Gassoway said, “because we feel he had a duty to oversee the police department, the court and the city manager and he failed to do so. He tells people he doesn’t have the power as mayor, but he has inherited power because he’s also an at-large City Council member. He has a duty to oversee departments.”

    Interlude: Basketball. Curry sets record with most 3-pointers in single postseason

  219. rq says

    And here is the law re: aggravated rioting that Cleveland police are using to charge protestors.
    “With purpose to commit or facilitate the commission of a felony; of violence; to have on their person deadly weapons or ordnance”. It’s funny, the B part specifically mentions persons in a detention facility. Is that relevant here?

    Oakland Police Enforce a De Facto Curfew on Evening Street Protests.

    On the evening of May 23, 2015, for the second time in one week, the Oakland Police, under the direction of Mayor Libby Shaaf, enforced a de facto curfew on a street protesting

    One has to question whether this is really intended to curb vandalism because windows get broken by people on the sidewalk, not people in the streets. #mayoralfalseflagop

    Video and photos at the link.

    Protestors in Cleveland, video.

    #SayHerName Atlanta. Memorial Day. 11AM, Garnett Station.

  221. rq says

    Black Lives Matter. Brown University. @TraceeEllisRoss. (via @UrbanCusp)

    Watch @deray discuss the threat he received from #CharlesCJohnson & the double standard of how words are interpreted: video within. I think there’s a bit more on Johnson later – but really, he seems to be a terrible person in general.

    You kind of have to go link-within-a-link for this one, summary at the end: Response from the #Oakland “Interfaith Challenge to Protest Curfew” to mayor @LibbySchaaf’s request for a meeting. Tomiquia Moss (chief of staff to mayor Schaaf) writes to Katie regarding an interfaith challenge to the curfew in Cleveland, proposing that she (Katie) and I presume another of the organizers meet with the Mayor and the Assistant Chief of Police in advance. Katie replies no, is responding publicly for transparency, will not meet with anyone, because the call is simple – to reverse the curfew. Stop state-sanctioned violence against black people. If they need to meet with anyone, they should meet with the leadership of black liberation groups whose marches have been disrupted; she recommends starting with an apology. They (the protestors and their allies) will not be divided, nor will they be conquered.
    It’s really quite beautiful.

    In Cleveland, protestors were charged with aggravated rioting. And here is the “required proof.” America. In short? No proof actually required to charge with aggravated rioting. No joke.

    Twitter cracks down on infamous conservative troll Chuck Johnson, there it is!

    Twitter has used new rules about violent threats to crack down on an infamous conservative troll.

    Twitter suspended the account of Charles C. Johnson on Sunday after he posted that he had begun to solicit donations that would go toward “taking out” DeRay McKesson, a civil rights activist.

    °Johnson, who runs GotNews, a blog on which he publishes stories and regularly solicits donations, is well-known for his outrageous at times hostile statements on Twitter, and his profile has risen in part on wild — and false — accusations, including the claim that a New York Times reporter had appeared in Playgirl and that U.S. Senator Cory Booker didn’t reside in Newark.

    He describes himself as a “a radical” and “a revolutionary,” and once wrote that “I’m going to enthusiastically burn down the entire political establishment for fun. It’s time someone did.”

    Twitter apparently decided that, under its new guidelines, Johnson’s tweets on Sunday constituted enough of a threat to suspend him. Twitter updated its guidelines in April to give the company greater discretion, and more tools, to combat abuse.

    Twitter had come under fire for what had been widely perceived as lax regulation of threats and abuse on its platform. CEO Dick Costolo had admitted as much before changing its policies and tripling the number of staff dedicated to dealing with abuse. […]

    Johnson claimed on GotNews that Twitter had shut down his account for looking to raise funds to investigate McKesson, and that the company was worried about his work.

    “Twitter has a serious problem with investigative journalism that breaks the mold,” he wrote.

    Is that Freeze Peach that I hear?

    I understand yesterday was Memorial Day in the US. Here’s an interesting history: We Did It, They Hid It: How Memorial Day Was Stripped Of It’s African American Roots.

    What we now know as Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day” in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a tradition initiated by former slaves to celebrate emancipationand commemorate those who died for that cause.

    These days, Memorial Day is arranged as a day “without politics”—a general patriotic celebration of all soldiers and veterans, regardless of the nature of the wars in which they participated. This is the opposite of how the day emerged, with explicitly partisan motivations, to celebrate those who fought for justice and liberation.

    The concept that the population must “remember the sacrifice” of U.S. service members, without a critical reflection on the wars themselves, did not emerge by accident. It came about in the Jim Crow period as the Northern and Southern ruling classes sought to reunite the country around apolitical mourning, which required erasing the “divisive” issues of slavery and Black citizenship. These issues had been at the heart of the struggles of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

    To truly honor Memorial Day means putting the politics back in. It means reviving the visions of emancipation and liberation that animated the first Decoration Days. It means celebrating those who have fought for justice, while exposing the cruel manipulation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members who have been sent to fight and die in wars for conquest and empire. […]

    As the U.S. Civil War came to a close in April 1865, Union troops entered the city of Charleston, S.C., where four years prior the war had begun. While white residents had largely fled the city, Black residents of Charleston remained to celebrate and welcome the troops, who included the TwentyFirst Colored Infantry. Their celebration on May 1, 1865, the first “Decoration Day,” later became Memorial Day.

    Yale University historian David Blight retold the story:

    During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some 28 black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freed people. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

    At 9 a.m. on May 1, the procession stepped off led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing “John Brown’s Body.” The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses.

    Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathered in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens’ choir sang “We’ll Rally around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture.

    […]

    In 1877, the Northern capitalist establishment decisively turned their backs on Reconstruction, striking a deal with the old slavocracy to return the South to white supremacist rule in exchange for the South’s acceptance of capitalist expansion. This political and economic deal was reflected in how the war was commemorated. Just as the reunion of the Northern and Southern ruling classes was based on the elimination of Black political participation, the way the Civil War became officially remembered—through the invention of Memorial Day—was based on the elimination of the Black veteran and the liberated slave.
    The spirit of the first Decoration Day—the struggle for Black liberation and the fight against racism—has unfortunately been whitewashed from the modern Memorial Day.

    As Blight explains, “With time, in the North, the war’s two great results—black freedom and the preservation of the Union—were rarely accorded equal space. In the South, a uniquely Confederate version of the war’s meaning, rooted in resistance to Reconstruction, coalesced around Memorial Day practice.” (“Race and Reunion,” p. 65)
    In the statues, anniversary parades and popular magazines, the Civil War was portrayed as an all-white affair, a tragic conflict between brothers. To the extent the role of slavery was allowed in these remembrances, Lincoln was typically portrayed as the beneficent liberator standing above the kneeling slave.

    The mere image of the fighting Black soldier pierced through this particular “memory,” which in reality was a collective and forced “forgetting” of the real past. Portraying the rebellious slave or Black soldier would unmask the Civil War as a life-and-death struggle against slavery, a true social revolution, and a reminder of the political promises that had been betrayed.

    While African Americans and white radicals continued to uphold the emancipationist remembrance of the Civil War during the following decades—as exemplified by W.E.B. DuBois’ landmark “Black Reconstruction”—this interpretation was effectively silenced in the “respectable” circles of academia, mainstream politics and popular culture. The white supremacist and reconciliationist retelling of the war and Reconstruction was only overthrown in official academic circles in the 1950s and 1960s as the Civil Rights movement shook the country to its core, and more African Americans fought their way into the country’s universities.

    While historians have gone a long way to expose the white supremacist history of the Civil War and uncover its revolutionary content, the spirit of the first Decoration Day—the struggle for Black liberation and the fight against racism—has unfortunately been whitewashed from the modern Memorial Day.

    So let’s use Memorial Day weekend to honor the fallen fighters for justice worldwide, to speak plainly about this country’s historic crimes, and rededicate ourselves to take on those of the present.

    WOW. Is that taught in schools at all? I had no idea. At. All.

  222. rq says

    U.S. attorney to hold meetings Tuesday about consent decree with Cleveland

    U.S. Attorney’s Steven Dettelbach’s office has invited community leaders and stakeholders to a briefing Tuesday on the negotiations of resolve issues raised by the Justice Department in an investigation of how city police use force.

    Those invited believe the Justice Department and the city have reached a settlement, called a consent decree, to transform how Cleveland police operate and repair the tattered relationship the officers and brass have with the community they serve.

    The meetings come just days after dozens of protesters spent Saturday roaming through downtown Cleveland, sparked by Cuyahoga County Judge John O’Donnell’s decision to acquit police officer Michael Brelo of manslaughter in the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams during a chase in November 2012.

    The New York Times and The Associated Press reported Monday that the city and the Justice Department have reached an agreement to address the findings of a report issued in December. The reports say the details could be publicly announced as early as Tuesday.

    The Justice Department launched its probe in March 2013. In its report, it concluded that Cleveland police officers too often used excessive force during its encounters with citizens. It also said officers are not properly trained on how to act during encounters with the mentally and medically ill.

    The report also cited the city’s failure to adequately investigate and discipline officers who used excessive force. Investigators who conducted reviews said their goal was to paint the accused officers in the most positive light, the report says.

    The negotiations have been held behind closed doors, but there have been a few signs of progress. The city and the Justice Department put out a request in March for resumes and letters of intent from those interested in being an independent monitor to ensure the city complies with a consent decree.

    Throughout the negotiation process, citizens and advocacy groups submitted recommendations to the Justice Department on what they would like to see change with police.

    Re: the Olympia shooting, Washington police neurologists have disproven science; the accuracy of memories increases over time. #OlympiaShooting Apparently officers remember incidents more clearly once at least 48 hours have passed. O.o Well, I can see how your memories might be more definite by that time (as your brain has arranged things and smoothed out inconsistencies, etc.) but I don’t see how they would be more accurate, seeing as your brian does these things within the bounds of your own biases. Get to work, science, these people are contradicting that recent-ish article I put up about eye-witness testimony!

    They got rid of Africana Studies and Women & Gender Studies at NC State! ): wow, in response to UNC cutting 46 degree programs. Article within.

    Multiple arrests as dozens rally in Oakland against police brutality

    Dozens of protesters have been arrested this weekend in Oakland, California during rallies against police brutality and a new protest policy implemented by the mayor, who called for monitoring of street demonstrations.

    About 100-150 activists marched on Sunday before the organizers ended the event, police spokeswoman Johnna A. Watson told AP. Later a smaller group of 15-20 people staged another protest.

    At least four people were arrested and 19 other received citations, she said, adding that the rally was closely watched by officers. […]

    “You can’t run roughshod over people because they’re protesting your oppression,” said Cat Brooks, an organizer of both protests. “You can’t push us off the streets.”

    According to Rachel Lederman, a lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild who helped Oakland craft its policies, the new laws violate the guidelines.

    “It doesn’t make any sense because saying that marches have to be on the sidewalk has absolutely no relationship to impending property damage that might occur,” Lederman said. “Obviously that would happen on a sidewalk, not a street.”

    Tensions have been running high in the city. On Thursday people gathered for SayHerName protest in honor of black women who face discrimination and violence at the hands of police officials across the country. The organizers say they were pushed by police off the streets, citing new policy.

    Oakland Police Department said in a statement that it will “continue to facilitate peaceful demonstrations while enforcing all laws against violence, vandalism, trespassing or other criminal activity.”

    THE BALTIMORE POLICE UNION CONTRACT AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS’S BILL OF RIGHTS: IMPEDIMENTS TO ACCOUNTABILITY (pdf file), here’s the introduction:

    The recent tragic death of Freddie Gray while in the custody of Baltimore police officers has raised serious questions about the circumstances of his death and the practices of Baltimore officers in dealing with members of the public. This tragedy has created an opportunity for reform.
    If we want to understand the long history of police misconduct by Baltimore police officers, and begin to end that misconduct, a good place to start is the police union contract and the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights.
    In Baltimore, and in other cities and counties across the country, police union contracts contain provisions that impede the effective investigation of reported misconduct and shield officers who are in fact guilty of misconduct from meaningful discipline.
    The role of police union contracts in impeding police accountability has been largely ignored in all of the protests and discussions that have consumed the nation since the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
    Police officers are, of course, entitled to the full measure of due process with respect to disciplinary matters. They should not be subject to arbitrary and unreasonable investigations or discipline. But they are not entitled to unreasonable protections against investigations of alleged misconduct.

    About the report:

    This report examines the provisions of the contract between the City of Baltimore and
    Baltimore City Lodge No 3, Fraternal Order of Police Unit 1, and also the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, which impede the effective investigation of alleged officer misconduct and shield officers from discipline.2
    The report identifies the offensive provisions and provides a commentary on how each one impedes accountability.
    The report concludes with a discussion of the social and financial costs of continued police misconduct, along with a recommended action plan for removing the offending sections from the union contract and Maryland state law.

    It’s not particularly long, and worth a read. This is how police escape the consequences of their actions. It’s sickening.

    Forgetting Why We Remember, another for Memorial Day.

    MOST Americans know that Memorial Day is about honoring the nation’s war dead. It is also a holiday devoted to department store sales, half-marathons, picnics, baseball and auto racing. But where did it begin, who created it, and why?

    At the end of the Civil War, Americans faced a formidable challenge: how to memorialize 625,000 dead soldiers, Northern and Southern. As Walt Whitman mused, it was “the dead, the dead, the dead — our dead — or South or North, ours all” that preoccupied the country. After all, if the same number of Americans per capita had died in Vietnam as died in the Civil War, four million names would be on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, instead of 58,000.

    Officially, in the North, Memorial Day emerged in 1868 when the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans’ organization, called on communities to conduct grave-decorating ceremonies. On May 30, funereal events attracted thousands of people at hundreds of cemeteries in countless towns, cities and mere crossroads. By the 1870s, one could not live in an American town, North or South, and be unaware of the spring ritual.

    But the practice of decorating graves — which gave rise to an alternative name, Decoration Day — didn’t start with the 1868 events, nor was it an exclusively Northern practice. In 1866 the Ladies’ Memorial Association of Columbus, Ga., chose April 26, the anniversary of Gen. Joseph Johnston’s final surrender to Gen. William T. Sherman, to commemorate fallen Confederate soldiers. Later, both May 10, the anniversary of Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s death, and June 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, were designated Confederate Memorial Day in different states.

    Memorial Days were initially occasions of sacred bereavement, and from the war’s end to the early 20th century they helped forge national reconciliation around soldierly sacrifice, regardless of cause. In North and South, orators and participants frequently called Memorial Day an “American All Saints Day,” likening it to the European Catholic tradition of whole towns marching to churchyards to honor dead loved ones. […]

    Yankee Memorial Day orations often righteously claimed the high ground of blood sacrifice to save the Union and destroy slavery. It was not uncommon for a speaker to honor the fallen of both sides, but still lay the war guilt on the “rebel dead.” Many a lonely widow or mother at these observances painfully endured expressions of joyous death on the altars of national survival.

    Some events even stressed the Union dead as the source of a new egalitarian America, and a civic rather than a racial or ethnic definition of citizenship. In Wilmington, Del., in 1869, Memorial Day included a procession of Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians and Catholics; white Grand Army of the Republic posts in parade with a black post; and the “Mount Vernon Cornet Band (colored)” keeping step with the “Irish Nationalists with the harp and the sunburst flag of Erin.”

    But for the earliest and most remarkable Memorial Day, we must return to where the war began. By the spring of 1865, after a long siege and prolonged bombardment, the beautiful port city of Charleston, S.C., lay in ruin and occupied by Union troops. Among the first soldiers to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st United States Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the city’s official surrender.

    Whites had largely abandoned the city, but thousands of blacks, mostly former slaves, had remained, and they conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war.

    The largest of these events, forgotten until I had some extraordinary luck in an archive at Harvard, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

    After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

    The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

    The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

    After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

    The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots. […]

    AS we mark the Civil War’s sesquicentennial, we might reflect on Frederick Douglass’s words in an 1878 Memorial Day speech in New York City, in which he unwittingly gave voice to the forgotten Charleston marchers.

    He said the war was not a struggle of mere “sectional character,” but a “war of ideas, a battle of principles.” It was “a war between the old and the new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization … and in dead earnest for something beyond the battlefield.” With or against Douglass, we still debate the “something” that the Civil War dead represent.

    The old racetrack is gone, but an oval roadway survives on the site in Hampton Park, named for Wade Hampton, former Confederate general and the governor of South Carolina after the end of Reconstruction. The old gravesite of the Martyrs of the Race Course is gone too; they were reinterred in the 1880s at a national cemetery in Beaufort, S.C.

    But the event is no longer forgotten. Last year I had the great honor of helping a coalition of Charlestonians, including the mayor, Joseph P. Riley, dedicate a marker to this first Memorial Day by a reflecting pool in Hampton Park.

    By their labor, their words, their songs and their solemn parade on their former owners’ racecourse, black Charlestonians created for themselves, and for us, the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.

  223. rq says

    ‘Hate is organized in America’: Black activist fights back after death threats from pro-cop blogger, another look at Chuck Johnson’s hate.

    Social justice activist DeRay Mckesson praised Twitter on Monday after the social network suspended a conservative blogger who threatened his life.

    According to Re/code, Charles “Chuck” Johnson tweeted over the weekend that he was accepting donations for “taking out” Mckesson, who called the remark a “serious threat.” Thanks to a new policy against trolls, Johnson’s account was quickly suspended.

    In a statement to Re/code, Johnson accused Twitter of “censorship.”

    “I was speaking metaphorically about exposing DeRay in much the same way Slate was speaking metaphorically when they talked about ‘taking out’ a Supreme Court justice,” he wrote.

    But in an interview with CNN on Monday, Mckesson said that Johnson should have known better.

    “For someone who considers themselves a journalist, I firmly believe that he understands the power of his words,” Mckesson explained. “And his words are his words. ‘Take out’ functions in a certain way. And if I got on any media outlet and said something to the effect of ‘take out the police,’ nobody would think that I was talking about an exposé.”

    “I was proud that Twitter took the action to move so quickly, and remember that racism doesn’t exist only in the extremes,” he continued. “It’s not just slavery and the n-word. It functions in these subtle ways too. He, again, knew very clearly what he was doing by using this language.”

    Mckesson speculated that Johnson made the death threat as a way to remain in denial about the way police treat people of color in the U.S.

    “Hate is organized in America, and hate has always been organized in America,” Mckesson pointed out. “Me and many other protesters have simply been telling the truth, and the truth is that the police are killing us. The police have killed about 400 people this year, and that people of color have been particular victims of police violence.”

    “It seems to be a truth that he is denying, along with the people that follow him,” the activist added. “The only thing I can think of is that hate is organized, and it has never wanted people of color to come together around state violence.”

    Interlude: Music! The Roots Aim To Expand Music Festival Following Record-Breaking Ticket Sales

    Music festival season is upon us, and that means that the legendary Roots crew will host their 8th annual Roots Picnic on May 30 at Philadelphia’s Festival Pier.

    In response to the event’s growing popularity, the group has curated a diverse lineup which includes their performance, as well as Erykah Badu, The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, electronic rock duo Phantogram and hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, to name a few.

    This year’s bill has helped the festival net its biggest ticket revenue yet, according to The Roots frontman Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter. “Eight years ago we didn’t have a sponsorship; we didn’t have that much support on a local level, either. The Roots Picnic began as something we did and said that ‘we’re going to do this and they will come,’” Trotter explained to The Huffington Post. “And so we did it and folks have begun to come around.”

    “This year is our best year for ticket sales thus far, and this is going to be the largest that we’ve ever been in the past 8 years as far as expansion. But I feel like pretty soon, we may be growing out of the festival here in Philadelphia. Because we’re close to capacity now,” he added.

    Trotter mentioned the group is looking to potentially expand the festival to places such New York, Washington D.C., Detroit and Baltimore.

    While the group’s place as the as the “Tonight Show” band has certainly helped ticket sales, Roots Picnic co-founder and group manager, Shawn Gee attributed this year’s record-breaking sales to the brand awareness surrounding the event.

    “We toured the world for countless years and played these multi-act, multi-genre festivals and wanted to provide that same experience for our hometown fan base,” Gee told HuffPost. “I think we’ve delivered on that goal and now the Roots Picnic brand itself means something, regardless of the talent that we book.”

    “People know what to expect and they know they will have a great time and discover new musical talent at our event. We have also organically grown the footprint and this year added a 3rd stage and more artists to the bill.”

    In addition to organizing this year’s 8th Annual Roots Picnic, in July the Philadelphia collective will also release a music project in conjunction with the Broadway play “Hamilton.” The special set is expected to feature interpretations of the production’s original recordings reworked by Busta Rhymes, Q-Tip, John Legend and Alicia Keys among others.

    I love this. Happy Memorial Day. #rp from @afropunk

    Happy #MemorialDay, Stanley Gibson. Killed by Las Vegas PD. U.S Army. #BlackSoldiersKilledByCops
    Ex-marine Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. activated his medical-aid alert which notified the police. He was shot to death.
    #AnthonyHill
    A small sample of military vets killed by police.

  224. rq says

    Atlanta does #SayHerName:
    Powerful. We have nothing to lose but our chains. #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter
    “Thank you all for being the strong black women who helped me walk across that stage at graduation.” #SayHerName
    We hold a moment of silence for #AlexiaChristian & all the other’s who have lost lives to state violence. #SayHerName

    Memorial Day protest on Coney Island:
    #AiyanaJones is with us here today, #MemorialDay for black people killed by cops. Coney Island, NYC.
    Panorama: 45 foot #StopKillingBlackPeople banner across the Coney Island boardwalk for #MemorialDay
    #BlackLivesMatter Memorial Day protest at Coney Island.

  225. rq says

    #NYC: Statement from groups that shut down Coney Island for black people killed by cops #MemorialDay via @KeeganNYC And I paraphrase, Memorial Day is for those lost in wars abroad, we bring attention to the war at home; systematic murder will no longer be accepted – stop killing our people; as of May 23 2015, 448 people have been killed by police this year. Here to remember the lost, unequal access to human rights in the US, how can we support a country who denies its citizens the right to live without fear, without heartbreak, without exploitation, pain and terror? We demand an end to state-sanctioned violence, we will continue to disrupt, silence is consent, we will not stop, justice is due everyone.
    Or so.

    Cleveland Reaches Settlement With Justice Department Over Police Conduct

    Cleveland has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over what federal authorities said was a pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive use of force, people briefed on the case said Monday.

    The settlement, which could be announced as early as Tuesday, comes days after a judge declared a Cleveland police officer not guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a car’s two unarmed occupants, both of them black.

    The verdict prompted a day and night of protests and reignited discussions about how police officers treat the city’s African-American residents.

    The details of the settlement were not immediately clear, but in similar talks in recent years, the Justice Department has required cities to allow independent monitors to oversee changes in police departments. Settlements are typically backed by court orders and often call for improved training and revised policies for the use of force. […]

    Cleveland’s streets have stayed calm since Saturday, when the police reported 71 arrests, some on felony charges.

    Dozens of protesters appeared in court here Monday on misdemeanor charges. Some still wore T-shirts with messages like “I Can’t Breathe,” a reference to Eric Garner, who died after being put in a police chokehold in Staten Island last year, and “Black Lives Matter.”

    For Cleveland, a settlement with the Justice Department averts a long and costly court fight and the appearance that city leaders are resisting change. Mayor Frank Jackson faces a recall petition from city activists who say, among other grievances, that he has not done enough to prevent police abuses.

    The Justice Department has called Mr. Jackson a full partner in its effort to improve the police force.

    The Justice Department has opened nearly two dozen investigations into police departments under the Obama administration. Federal investigators found patterns of unconstitutional policing in cities including Seattle, Newark, Albuquerque and Ferguson. Federal authorities recently announced they would investigate the Baltimore police after Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died of injuries he suffered while in custody.

    In Seattle, the federal inquiry led local officials to overhaul training and focus on how officers can calm tense situations without using force. In Albuquerque, city officials agreed to change the way the police are trained, outfit officers with body cameras and improve how the department investigates officer-involved shootings.

    Officials in Ferguson are negotiating a possible settlement over accusations that officers routinely violated the Constitution.

    The Justice Department’s report on the Cleveland police was among its most scathing, finding that they engaged in a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force.” […]

    The report was compiled too early to cover the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a replica gun in a Cleveland park in November when the police shot him. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to charge officers in his death or in the case of Tanisha Anderson, 37, who died after she was restrained in a prone position on the pavement.

    Most of the protesters arraigned Monday were charged with refusal to disperse, and 35 pleaded no contest to an amended charge of disorderly conduct, which carries no jail time. Twenty people pleaded not guilty and will contest the charges. More protesters are expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

    Talis Gage, 31, a Cleveland native now living in a different part of Ohio, was among those who pleaded no contest and was released Monday morning. As with others who pleaded no contest, he was sentenced to time served and was not issued a fine. Mr. Gage said he joined the Saturday protest because he believed that Officer Brelo was guilty of a crime.

    “What happened was not justice,” Mr. Gage said outside the courthouse shortly after his release. “It was unfair for this man to walk away with no jail time at all.”

    WATCH – Mother of #EzellFord says she wants charges against the #LAPD officers who killed her son. – http://youtu.be/8VtItQLppiQ

    DONATE to support Cleveland organizers bail! http://bit.ly/1eqm42q 71 got arrested on Saturday

  226. rq says

    America’s prison population, by the numbers

    Quinn Norton’s “long form data journalism” piece on the American prison system paints a bleak picture of a nation that feasts on its poorest and most vulnerable with a boundless, venomous cruelty.

    It isn’t just the prisoner who serves time. Families and communities suffer along with them. Right now, 2.3 million children have a parent taken out of their lives by the prison system. These kids deal with life disruptions, changing homes and schools. Their problems can be compounded by a “Conspiracy of Silence” between schools, churches, and neighborhoods.

    Children are often lied to about what’s going on, sometimes denied visitation, and live with shame about their imprisoned family member. They learn to lie about what’s happening to them. They often withdraw from life, and drop out of school. A child with a dad in prison has no better than a 15% chance to graduate from college, with a mom imprisoned, a 2% chance. Many of these children experience the symptoms of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) but there is no organized outreach to take care of them.

    In many places, the average women’s sentenced time of 18 months is enough separation time to terminate parental rights, and lacking in community support, some of these mothers will never be reunited with their children.

    Unity Walk. (I know y’all see my waves)

    People are gathering now in #Oakland, preparing to #BreakTheCurfew for the 3rd night. Photos via: @TruthCastersTV
    Last night in #Oakland | #BreakTheCurfew #FuckTheCurfew
    Past curfew, but not enough people here to march. People are discussing plans for next #FTP march, Friday at 8PM. #Oakland #BreakTheCurfew

    Ohio Aerial Surveillance System Moving Forward Without Having to Wait For FAA Drone Rules, and they are using it on protestors, is rumour.

    Now it appears that the city of Dayton Ohio is considering actually deploying a system that is in many respects similar to ARGUS—and although it shares many of the features that are causing so much concern over drones around the country, it is not being held back by the FAA and its well-founded safety concerns around drones.

    The reason? The surveillance at issue is based on a manned aircraft rather than unmanned drones.

    For the same reason, the program has not attracted any of the national attention that is currently swirling around drones. But according to a Dayton Police Department slide presentation obtained by Ohio activists and shared with the ACLU, the department is pursuing a program called “Trusted Situational Awareness” (such a mouthful of euphemisms for surveillance that it almost sounds like a parody). According to the slideshow, entitled “2013 Aerial Surveillance Project,” a test of the system was conducted for 8 days in June 2012 during daylight hours over Sinclair Community College. (I wonder if the students, faculty and visitors to that campus were made aware they were subjects of this surveillance experiment?)

    The program is run by a company called “Persistent Surveillance Systems,” which also makes ground-based wide-area surveillance systems, as touted in this online brochure. According to the slideshow, the program is important because it “Can be utilized to prevent and minimize acts of terrorism, crime and murder.” […]

    A group of citizen activists assisted by the ACLU of Ohio have been pushing back against this program in Dayton. The police department gave them a proposed policy to cover the program, and after meeting with the citizens and receiving their feedback, provided an updated policy with “a few small changes, but which doesn’t address the substantive concerns shared with the police department,” as my colleague Melissa Bilancini of the ACLU of Ohio put it. The policy has no warrant requirement, and it lacks clear retention and sharing policies as well as any provisions for independent oversight. The program is on the agenda for a special meeting before Dayton’s City Commission next Tuesday April 9.

    Although this issue has flown beneath the drone radar because it involves manned aircraft, the issues at stake are much the same. (Maybe we should start calling the Dayton aircraft “manned drones,” oxymoron or not, if that will help people to pay attention.)

    Although manned aircraft have never attracted the policy attention that drones have (for the reasons I outlined here), ultimately the same kinds of protections that are so vital in the face of drone technology should also be extended to manned aircraft. There’s no rational reason why adding a human being to a surveillance craft should change the privacy protections that we create against aerial surveillance.

  227. rq says

    A few arrests in Oakland protests over limit on nighttime marches

    More than 100 demonstrators — including several people in the faith community — gathered at Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza at 8 p.m., speaking their minds on a range of issues concerning oppression before marching several blocks to the Oakland Police Department, chanting along the way. They turned back toward the plaza after being blocked on Broadway by police on motorcycles.

    Arriving back where they started, the marchers declared success and said they were done for the night. The bulk of the crowd dispersed, but several hangers-on got into shouting matches with police. Officers told the stragglers to get out of the street, warning the group that if they didn’t, they could be arrested or cited. Police ended up citing 19 people and arrested four others. Officers used force twice, department officials said without elaborating.

    “Let them go! Let them go!” bystanders yelled.

    In a statement early Monday, Oakland police said, “We advise demonstrators to engage in expression that is respectful of people and property and adheres to the law. The Oakland Police Department will continue to facilitate peaceful demonstrations while enforcing all laws against violence, vandalism, trespassing or other criminal activity.”

    Earlier in the evening, Katie Loncke, with Oakland’s Buddhist Peace Fellowship, spoke to a crowd of onlookers huddling tightly together on the chilly evening. “Ironically, the mayor has responded to protests against police violence with police oppression,” she said.

    Another one on Oakland, Oakland Marches for 3rd Night to Defy Nighttime Protest Ban

    A peaceful march that was organized on Friday the 22nd as part of a national day of action called #SayHerName focusing on police violence against women of color was repressed in an unusual show of force that heralds the first enforcement of Oakland’s nighttime prohibition on street demonstrations. Tonight’s demonstration is the third in response to the violence the Say Her Name protest faced and to denounce the new night-time protest curfew.

    In an interview, Mayor Libby Schaaf acknowledged that she ordered the prohibition on nighttime street marches in Oakland. However, she argued that it was a not new city law, but rather a reinterpretation of an existing one. (Document below)

    “There have been no changes to any city policy or enactment of any new ordinances in any way to prohibit peaceful protests,” Schaaf told the Express.

    OPD Officer Johnna Watson told the Express that the march on Saturday night, which resulted in 47 citations and 5 arrests, was stopped and ordered to disperse in the Jack London district because that area is a place at which the city has decided to enforce time, place, and manner restrictions on First Amendment activities. “There are specific reasons we don’t want marches to go into Jack London Square,” said Watson. “There’s been lots of damage in past marches, broken windows.”

    Sunday night’s march was also blockaded by riot police from entering the Jack London Square district.

    On Saturday night, during the physical detainment and arrest of fifty demonstrators in the Jack London district, many OPD officers either did not wear, or did not activate their body cameras, in apparent violation of the department policy.

    And another one, After Two Nights in Jail, More Than 50 Nonviolent Protesters and Observers Released On Monday Morning

    “They trapped us in the corner. They didn’t say disperse, they said move back,” said one young man who just spent two nights locked in jail after he was arrested in a Warehouse District alleyway. “And then another riot crew came on the other side and they were saying move back. They trapped us on both sides and we were in the middle like where do we move? Where do we move? They said ‘Move back! Move back!’ But there’s nowhere to move. We got lined up against the corner, and they said ‘one by one, we’ll let you guys go.’ There were like four people gone and they said ‘stop! Everybody else is going to jail.'”

    He was one of more than 50 people released from jail Monday morning following a Memorial Day court appearance in front of judge Marilyn Cassidy. They had been arrested downtown Saturday night, charged with failure to disperse, for protesting (or being around those protesting) the not guilty verdict of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo.

    One group was plucked from East 4th Street. Another group was corralled by cops in riot gear on the small Johnson Court connecting West 9th and West 6th Streets and hauled to jail in a bus. And then they spent two nights locked behind bars — some in the jail at the Justice Center and some in the city’s “workhouse.” None of them, including a legal observer, are accused of doing anything violent.

    For those willing to plea no contest or guilty, city lawyers agreed to amend the first degree misdemeanor failure to disperse charge to a minor misdemeanor (essentially the same seriousness as a traffic citation, a defending lawyer explained). The reduced charge came with no more jail time and fines that were waived by Judge Cassidy. A majority pleaded no contest and went on their way; 20 pleaded not guilty and will fight in court to clear their name completely.

    “What do I make of the charges?” said famed civil rights attorney James Hardiman to Scene following the 9 a.m. arraignment, “They’re overly bogus. They never should have been charged in the first place. But since they were charged, we’re here to deal with it.”

    Hardiman, of the NAACP, was one of a number of high profile Cleveland attorneys — with Gordon Friedman and Michael Nelson, among others — who volunteered to represent those arrested Saturday night.

    “In the sweep that occurred on Saturday, there are a number of issues we have concerns about,” explained Michael Nelson, flanked by the other lawyers in an impromptu press conference outside the courtroom. “One, the the ambiguity of the failure to disperse. It wasn’t clear. There were a number of people that were just caught up, no differentiation from protester and non-protester. The fact of the matter is there was a significant lack of clarity whether they committed any actual wrongdoing.”

    Gordon Friedman spoke up: “A point should be made that there is absolutely no reason why the people that were arrested should be held for 48 hours without bond. They should have been released immediately. Most of them committed nothing, some of them committed minor misdemeanors.”

    Some of the recently-released protesters gathered outside the Justice Center following the arraignment, eating sandwiches and fruit that supporters brought for them, under the watchful gaze of Sheriff’s deputies who were guarding a makeshift fence in front of the entrance.

    The ones taken to the “workhouse” described being housed in filthy conditions, being given yellow water and finding cartons of expired milk underneath their broken-down bunk.

    “We were in the workhouse, it was disgusting,” one man explained. “The beds were disgusting, we were getting sick as we were sitting their breathing in that air.”

    Kansas City, Kansas Police Department apologizes after cops pose in front of sign

    The Kansas City, Kan., Police Department is apologizing for the actions of two officers who posed in front of a controversial sign.

    In photos that circulated on social media this weekend, two different officers can be seen posing in front of a stop sign with “Cops Stop murder’n” painted on it.

    The sign appeared at 14th and Hasbrook Ave.

    In a news release, the department called the photos “disappointing and inappropriate.”

    A statement from police:

    “The Police Department has spent a great deal of time building relationships with the community in order to strengthen the confidence and trust they have our officers.

    We hope the actions of these two officers will be viewed as poor judgment and will not take away from the good work being done every day by members of the Kansas City, KS Police Department in/with members of our community.”

    Along with the apology in the news release, Kansas City, Kan., Police Chief Terry Zeiger also apologized in a tweet.

    No to juvenile jail….yes to better Baltimore public schools!! ….830 MLK blvd & Washington blvd #BaltimoreUprising #OneBaltimore
    Baltimore protestors have shut down 395, Key Highway & other exits in protest of the youth jail. (via @jamalhbryant)

  228. rq says

    Traffic is at a standstill!! So must the prison pipeline…all 5 exits to Baltimore are closed! #baltimoreuprising

    Smithsonian curators chase history in search of items from Baltimore unrest

    As Bryant and Salahu-Din see it, the protests and unrest in Baltimore last month left an indelible mark on the conscience of a major American and historically African-American city — reason enough for a closer look by museum staff.

    But they also see the events as part of a broader cultural force writ large across the African-American community nationwide, one that has spread from the Florida neighborhood where Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer to Ferguson, Mo., where Michael Brown was shot by police.

    They describe the Black Lives Matter movement as a modern manifestation of the civil rights struggle — and say it must be documented as such.

    “We’re bearing witness and documenting the events that are going on,” said Salahu-Din, a former director of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore who lives in Owings Mills.

    “Many of the issues focus on police brutality, but it’s also bigger than that,” she said. “It focuses also on the social, political and economic injustices that have been with us for quite some time.”

    “As a history museum, it’s important for us within this moment to put it within a historical context,” said Bryant, who grew up and still lives in the Forest Park neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore.

    “Black Lives Matter is part of a continuum that has been a part of the African-American community, whether it’s going back to the 1960s, looking at what happened in Watts [the Los Angeles neighborhood that erupted in riots in 1965] or in other cities across the country and even farther back,” he said. “There are always going to be some social, economic ties or strings that connect what’s happening today with what happened years ago.”

    The National Museum of African American History, which is rising slowly near the Washington Monument, is set to open late next year with about 80,000 square feet of floor space for exhibits on cultural themes such as music, theater and art; community themes such as regionalism, sports, military, faith and activism; and historical themes such as slavery and the struggle for freedom.

    It will include space for events since 1968 — when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and riots broke out in cities across the country, including Baltimore.

    Plans are for the post-1968 section to mention Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter movement without going into depth on the subject. But that could change.

    Beyond the permanent exhibits, staff have been directed to take the pulse of the nation so as not to miss opportunities to collect important items from history as it unfolds.

    Contemporary items could become part of temporary exhibits in the museum, inform academic publications, be featured on the museum’s website or get wrapped into educational programs, said Bill Pretzer, the museum’s senior curator for history. […]

    Pretzer said Bryant’s and Salahu-Din’s connections to Baltimore will serve the new Smithsonian museum well — as will Baltimore’s proximity to Washington.

    “We have a close-by laboratory where we can look at the variety of things that are part and parcel of this larger moment, and we can examine it in some great detail because we have staff members who are so familiar with the community,” Pretzer said. “One can imagine that we will end up doing a more thorough job of examining the events in Baltimore — both the short-term and long-term, just as we would try to do with [events in] Washington, D.C. — than we might with a city elsewhere.”

    The curators said they could not discuss items they are pursuing from the Baltimore events, in part because the Smithsonian maintains strict rules on collections. But they say they will be looking for all sorts of things — from mass-produced buttons and signs to items that tell a more personal story.

    “We look for public expression,” Pretzer said. “We look for artifacts that are evocative of events, so something that has emotional power, something that may have been attacked or destroyed, something that was damaged in the process.”

    They will also be looking for items that show “multiple points of view,” he said, including those of law enforcement and government officials.

    Salahu-Din wants artifacts that show “the dynamics of the people in the community,” from the roles of women and men to the involvement of students.

    She wants to show “the spirit of change” and the sense of hope that she says she felt on the corner of Pennsylvania and North on the day the six officers involved in Gray’s arrest were charged.

    Bryant hopes to capture the leadership role of young people and online activists.

    “They weren’t the head of some big national organization, but they had a camera phone, and that allowed them to create a different kind of mobilization,” he said. “We’re starting to see a maturation of that today, which is another reason why Ferguson and Baltimore are historically significant.”

    A short while ago, it was hair evidence – now it’s drugs. WATCH: This Woman Just Cleared A Path To Overturn Up To 40,000 Drug Convictions (VIDEO)

    The Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court issued a ruling this week that could lead to literally tens of thousands of convictions for drug offenses to be overturned.

    Last Monday in Boston the court ruled unanimously that in cases where defendants’ convictions were based on evidence tainted by the chemist, Annie Dookhan, new trials can be sought without additional charges or more severe sentences being slapped on them as a deterrent. The chemist was found to have tainted and falsified reports that led to convictions for about 14 years according to a report from local Boston station WCVB.

    It is unfortunate that many people don’t even realize how corrupt these labs can be. Cases like this one in Massachusetts shine a bright light on what could be one of the most corrupt parts of the policing system we have today.

    Dookhan pled guilty back in 2013 to 27 counts, which included perjury, obstruction of justice, and tampering with evidence. She was sentenced to three to five years in prison along with two years of probation.
    Prosecutors successfully argued that during her nine years working at a drug lab in Boston, Dookhan failed to properly test samples, but declared them positive anyway. She also mixed up samples and forged signatures, as well as lied about her credentials on multiple occasions.

    So far, over 300 have been released from prison as a result of these revelations. According to the New York Times, another 1,200 have filed for post conviction relief. It is estimated that this 14 years of fraud and corruption could lead to as many as 40,000 overturned convictions.

    The justices stopped short in this ruling of imposing a so-called “global remedy.” That would have essentially overturned and vacated the convictions of all of the defendants that Dookham had any part in proving guilt.

    WATCH: Black Activist Politely Schools CNN on Racism—’Whiteness Gets Nuance; Blackness Doesn’t’, as seen upthread.

  229. Pteryxx says

    Briefly from Rawstory: Judge orders NC sheriff to stop interfering with attempts to call witnesses in lawsuit over brutal arrest

    A judge granted a temporary restraining order against Lee County Sheriff Tracy Carter preventing the three-term Republican and his deputies from interfering with attempts to serve subpoenas in the lawsuit filed five years ago.

    U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle found in his order that Carter and other members of the sheriff’s department were “obstructing or otherwise interfering” with attempts to call witnesses in the trial, which is scheduled to start June 2.

    […]

    The 48-year-old Carter has been dropped as a defendant in the lawsuit filed by Steven Wayne Thomas, who claims that Lee County deputies kicked him in the head and shocked him 11 times with a Taser during a 2009 arrest.

    One deputy shocked him eight times in less than three minutes, according to the suit.

    And disturbing background on outlaw biker gangs, from the Intercept: Exclusive: Leaked Report Profiles Military, Police Members of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

    A year before the deadly Texas shootout that killed nine people on May 17, a lengthy report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives detailed the involvement of U.S. military personnel and government employees in outlaw motorcycle gangs, or OMGs. A copy of the report was obtained by The Intercept.

    The report lays out, in almost obsessive detail, the extent to which OMG members are represented in nearly every part of the military, and in federal and local government, from police and fire departments to state utility agencies. Specific examples from the report include dozens of Defense Department contractors with Secret or Top Secret clearances; multiple FBI contractors; radiological technicians with security clearances; U.S. Department of Homeland Security employees; Army, Navy and Air Force active-duty personnel, including from the special operations force community; and police officers.

    […]

    The 40-page report, “OMGs and the Military 2014,” issued by ATF’s Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information in July of last year, warned of the escalating violence of these gangs. “Their insatiable appetite for dominance has led to shootings, assaults and malicious attacks across the globe. OMGs continue to maim and murder over territory,” the report said. “As tensions escalate, brazen shootings are occurring in broad daylight.”

    The ATF report is based on intelligence gathered by dozens of law enforcement and military intelligence agencies, and identifies about 100 alleged associates of the country’s most violent outlaw motorcycle gangs and support clubs who have worked in sensitive government or military positions.

    Those gangs “continue to court active-duty military personnel and government workers, both civilians and contractors, for their knowledge, reliable income, tactical skills and dedication to a cause,” according to the report. “Through our extensive analysis, it has been revealed that a large number of support clubs are utilizing active-duty military personnel and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors and employees to spread their tentacles across the United States.”

    […]

    In an interview, Edward Winterhalder, a former high-ranking member of the Bandidos who left the club in 2003, said that while military veterans have long been involved in motorcycle clubs — many of the current outlaw clubs were formed in the wake of World War II — current-duty military or law enforcement members are not generally involved in the most violent gangs.

    According to Winterhalder, biker clubs not associated with the violent one-percenters have many government employees — current military, law enforcement and firefighters — as members. Indeed, some clubs have emerged that pointedly disavow any connections to violence or lawlessness, or that specifically bill themselves as a LEMC — law enforcement motorcycle club.

  230. rq says

    There seems to be huge overlap with police and military already (e.g. Brelo), but to have that same overlap in outlaw motorcycle gangs… Is this a mentality issue? The training, the discipline, the hierarchy that they crave? The enforcement of force-as-problem-solver, the toxic masculinity, the exceptionalism (You Are A Hero!)?
    JAQing.

    +++

    Municipal court bill’s reach will extend well beyond Ferguson’s streets

    Jaquin Holmes has had his share of frustration with the way municipal courts in St. Louis County operate. During a meeting of the Ferguson Commission last year, St. Louis resident talked about being treated harshly for what deemed to be minor traffic offenses.

    Holmes said he’s encountered a broken system. And he wanted the Missouri General Assembly to step up.

    “It’s gone out of control,” Holmes said. “We really need to get to an overhaul and update ourselves to what is appropriate.”

    Some lawmakers believe the Missouri General Assembly answered the call from people like Holmes by passing a sweeping overhaul of the state’s municipal court system. It’s arguably the most significant piece of legislation to pass that was inspired by the unrest in Ferguson; several other proposals didn’t make it across the finish line.
    Sen. Eric Schmitt’s legislation limiting traffic fines could make it easier for cities to dissolve. The current process involves collecting hundreds — if not thousands — of signatures, and is only available to certain classes of cities.

    Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Glendale Republican who sponsored the legislation, contends his bill could alleviate long-standing tensions between law enforcement and residents. He also said the final product shows the legislature can seriously tackle a major issue effectively.

    “This is something that will get at the root cause, I think, of the breakdown in trust between people and their government and people and their courts – which is this ever-increasing desire by many municipalities to reach into people’s pockets with traffic tickets and fines,” Schmitt said.

    But while Schmitt’s bill passed with overwhelming margins and will likely receive Gov. Jay Nixon’s approval, some detractors question whether it will meet constitutional scrutiny. Others say that the measure won’t actually impact Ferguson that much and will instead hurt St. Louis County cities with predominantly black populations and elected leadership.

    “If we just look at the race of people in the towns it affects more, I think we can certainly make a case for discrimination just based on who was carved out of this,” said state Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood. […]

    But the bill also contains provisions that may end up being more impactful than the revenue cap. Those include:

    Minimum standards for St. Louis County on budgeting, administration and policing, including a requirement for county cities to have an accredited police department patrolling the streets within six years. If a city ultimately fails to adhere to these standards, it could face disincorporation elections.
    A $300 limit on municipal traffic fines.
    An automatic disincorporation election for cities that don’t remit excess revenue from traffic fines to county schools within a certain amount of time.
    Prohibiting confinement for most traffic offenses or for failing to pay a fine.
    A revamped definition of a city’s “revenue,” which had been a common complaint about the old version of the law. In laymen’s terms, Schmitt described the new definition “as basically any money that the city has the ability to spend. … So it’s not dedicated resources or like pass-through money that goes to a particular fund – like the brain injury fund – that they don’t get to keep,” he added.

    “I grew up in North County. My grandfather actually lived in Ferguson. I’m very familiar with the area,” Schmitt said. “And I wanted to make sure that we got a bill passed that provided the maximum level of reform. And so St. Louis County has a lower percentage. But I think if you look at particularly the journalism and the investigation and all the facts that have come to light, there are significant problems in St. Louis County in the municipal courts.”

    Schmitt’s bill stands out because bills revamping the state’s use of force statutes, bolstering body cameras and implementing sensitivity training didn’t it make it to Gov. Jay Nixon’s desk.

    Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal represents Ferguson in the Missouri Senate and voted for Schmitt’s bill. While she expressed frustration that other “Ferguson-related” priorities didn’t make it due to either disagreements or legislative bickering, she adds Schmitt’s bill could make a difference – especially since it does away with “failure to appear in court” charges for minor traffic offenses.

    “And that’s why I don’t understand why some of the people who are in North County didn’t recognize that there’s some great things that are in the bill,” Chappelle-Nadal said. “You’re not going to get a bill with 100 percent of what you want. We’re making sausage here in this bill.”

    More at the link.

    Charles Johnson, one of the Internet’s most infamous trolls, has finally been banned from Twitter

    Chuck Johnson, the far-right mega-troll who doxed two New York Times reporters and argued that homosexuality caused the Amtrak derailment, may at last be off Twitter — this time, for good.

    On Sunday, Johnson was permanently suspended from the site after asking for funds to “take out” the civil rights activist DeRay McKesson, who’s been active in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. Twitter has also suspended a series of Johnson’s new accounts, including @citizentrolling and @freechucknow, prompting Johnson and his lawyers to threaten legal action and accuse the site of “censorship.”

    “Twitter doesn’t seem to have a problem with people using their service to coordinate riots,” Johnson complained on his blog, GotNews.com, which has since been downed by an apparent DDoS attack. “But they do have a problem with the kind of journalism I do.”

    In other words, Johnson’s saying, Twitter is differentiating between types of acceptable speech; they’re redrawing the boundaries of things you can say in public and things you can’t say in public, in a way that Johnson and others — including Twitter! — aren’t necessarily used to.

    It’s about ethics in journalism, isn’t it.

    Meanwhile, in Scotland. Family of tragic dad-of-two Sheku Bayoh issue series of questions they want answered over his death.. and pledge they won’t be silenced

    THE family of father-of-two Sheku Bayoh have demanded the truth on how he died in police custody.

    They issued a series of key questions yesterday that they want answered – and pledged they won’t be silenced.

    The grieving relatives are furious that the officers involved have yet to give statements to the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner.

    Sheku, 31, died after he was arrested in a street near his home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on May 3, following claims he had been seen with a knife.

    His sister Kadijatu Johnson said: “My family are tired of officers refusing to speak while my brother’s body lies in a mortuary.

    “Nobody should be above the law. If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear from speaking to the PIRC.

    “We also have a message for those who believe they can bully or intimidate us into silence – we will not rest until we have the truth.”

    Sheku’s family and partner Collette Bell say in the hours after his death they were told at least five different accounts of what happened to him.

    One version given by officers was that Sheku had been found lying in the street by a passer-by and another claimed the police were hunting two suspects in connection with his death.

    The PIRC were instructed to take independent control over the investigation. But the family have serious concerns about the probe after discovering that key facts were not handed to the Crown pathologists before the first post-mortem. […]

    “It’s looking more and more likely that positional asphyxiation was the cause of death, but we’re still waiting for definitive reports, which have been delayed by officers refusing to give statements to the PIRC.

    “The pathologists have been made aware verbally about the fact that CS spray and batons were used on Sheku, which are significant factors in trying to determine the cause
    of death as positional asphyxiation.

    “If you use CS spray, it heightens and alerts. Officers are meant to be trained to realise that that could lead to asphyxiation. The use of batons could also lead to it.

    “By doing so, they’re increasing the chances of positional asphyxiation by doing one after another.

    “Basically, they’ve lost the plot and done him in.” […]

    At an earlier press conference, Collette, the mum of Sheku’s four-month-old son Isaac, said: “I need to know why as my partner lay dying a few streets away, the police were busy lying to me in my house, then at the police station.

    “I want to know the whole truth of the circumstances surrounding his death so that one day I can explain to my son Isaac Bayoh why he has had to grow up without his daddy.”

    The Scottish Police Federation have claimed that a “petite” female officer believed she was “going to die” after Bayoh allegedly launched a violent and unprovoked attack.

    Divisional Commander Chief Superintendent Garry McEwan said: “We await the conclusion of the independent investigation and Police Scotland remain committed to co-operating fully with the PIRC’s inquiries.”

    It all sounds awfully familiar, doens’t it.

    Protesters Block Highway Ramp In Baltimore During Morning Traffic

    Protesters blocked morning traffic northbound and southbound I-95 to 395 ramp in opposition to a new youth detention center.

    Maryland Transportation Authority spokesman Tamory Winfield says Interstate 395 from I-95 into the city was closed just before 9 a.m. Tuesday for about 45 minutes, leading to delays on I-95.

    Tweets from Rev. Jamal Bryant show the protest is related to a new juvenile jail to be built in the city. The state approved the plans to build the $30 million, 60-bed jail on May 13th, according to The Baltimore Sun.

    Protesters believe the money should be spent on education instead of the facility.

    “You’ve just experienced an hour of what it’s like to be black in Baltimore,” Rev. Jamal Bryant told WBAL NewsRadio 1090. Listen to his full statement below:

    The Maryland Transportation Authority reopened all of the ramps at around 9:45 a.m. after protesters blocked them with their cars and began walking along MLK and Washington Blvd.

    Baltimore city police tweeted that they are continuing to “facilitate everyone’s first amendment rights to protest and be heard.” They also asked protesters remain off of the roads.

    Disruption at its finest. Note wearing of suits.

    Four Cleveland protesters charged with felonies to be released (photos)

    Four protesters charged with felonies in connection with Saturday’s demonstrations following the acquittal of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo will be released from jail Tuesday, including a man accused of knocking a bar patron unconscious.

    Julius Bell, 18, of Cleveland, faces the most serious accusations out of the 66 people charged following the protests. He is charged with felonious assault, a second-degree felony, and aggravated riot.

    A team of four defense attorneys led by Terry Gilbert are representing Bell and three others for free.

    Bell’s bond remained at $10,000. The other three — Jeremy Brustein, 60, of Cleveland; Iris Rozman, 19, of Cleveland; and Dwayne Otis, 21, of Indianapolis, Indiana — all had their bonds lowered Tuesday by Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinky Carr.

    “We’ve been trying to get these people out of jail since Saturday,” Gilbert said following the hearing. “Today we made our pitch to the court that this arose out of the very fast moving, ambiguous situation involving free speech and that there’s a lot of community support.”

    Bell, who used to live in Cleveland but recently moved to Indianapolis, is accused of throwing a sign through a window at Harry Buffalo restaurant, which hit a 49-year-old man in the head and rendered him unconscious, according to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Brian Murphy.

    Brustein, a pharmacy technician at University Hospitals, and Rozman, who works at the Music Box Supper Club, are charged with aggravated riot. They are accused of fighting with police on Huron Road outside Quicken Loans Arena shortly after the incident at Harry Buffalo, prosecutors said.

    Bell, who is set to graduate this summer from Educational Alternatives in Bedford, is charged with assaulting a police officer. He’s accused of the throwing a rock and hitting a police officer in the helmet during a clash between protesters and police on Euclid Avenue near East 8th Street.

    Gilbert said supporters raised money for the four during the weekend, but failed to meet the $5,000 they needed to post bond. Once Carr lowered the bonds for Brustein, Rozman and Otis, all four were able to post bond, Gilbert said.

    From the National Lawyers’ Guild (NLG), Reparations: A Blueprint to address systemic police violence

    The City of Chicago made history on Wednesday May 6 when it passed legislation providing reparations to survivors of racially motivated police torture committed between 1972 and 1991. Once implemented, it will offer a measure of hope to survivors, their family members and African American communities devastated by the legacy of torture committed by infamous former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and detectives under his command.

    It represents a bold break with the status quo, representing the first time that a municipality reparationswon-2 (1)in the United States – – a nation with a long tradition of unanswered calls for redress for systemic race based violence, including slavery and lynchings – – will provide reparations to those harmed by law enforcement violence. It can serve as a blueprint for what reparations might look like for systemic police abuse plaguing cities across the nation

    Chicago’s reparations package was driven by the inadequacy of traditional legal remedies to make individuals and communities whole for systemic harm. After decades of litigation, activism and investigative journalism, the truth about systemic torture of African Americans by white detectives to secure confessions, involving electric shock, suffocation, and mock execution, often accompanied by racialized abuse, was exposed. Yet full accountability proved elusive.

    The statute of limitations precluded Burge and his men from being held criminally or civilly responsible for their crimes of torture (although Burge was ultimately convicted in 2010 for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the torture he and others committed). They enjoyed decades of torturing with impunity, courtesy of a cover up by the Chicago Police Department’s chain of command and governmental officials, including former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Moreover, the limited remedies offered by civil litigation – financial settlements that were often meager and practically unavailable to the vast majority of survivors – were inadequate to address the trauma and material needs of the torture survivors, their family members and communities.

    Burge’s legacy of torture left festering wounds that remain open to this day. Many survivors continue to suffer from nightmares and flashbacks, grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder that has gone untreated for decades. They live under a shroud of shame, guilt, and anguish that undermines their ability to form relationships and share community with others. Survivors’ family members were also left to contend with their secondary trauma in isolation, after their fathers, sons and partners were ripped from them. As whispers of the torture spread, entire communities lived in fear that they or their loved ones would be disappeared from street corners or homes into the bowels of police stations to be tortured and terrorized. The torture, like lynchings, served to terrorize entire African American communities.

    Recognizing the lack of redress for these systemic harms, Standish Willis, founder of Black People Against Police Torture, made the initial call for reparations. Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM), a grassroots group of artists, activists, attorneys and survivors, amplified this call by asking police torture survivors and the larger community to imagine how they would publicly memorialize these cases recognizing the difficulty and immensity of depicting the harms perpetrated, while also recognizing the struggle waged by many for justice for decades. Through art charrettes, teach-ins, creative outreach and community dialogue, CTJM sought to spark the collective imagination of communities to conceptualize what was necessary for the City to provide in order for individuals and communities to heal from torture. This call served to redirect everyone’s attention beyond the usual cries for accountability for police brutality and to focus on holistic means of meeting the material needs of all members of impacted communities, and offering positive visions for healing and repair.

    Given the glaring lack of precedent in the U.S., CTJM looked to the U.N. Convention Against Torture’s principles of restitution, rehabilitation, compensation and public acknowledgment. CTJM also consulted with Juan Mendez, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, himself a survivor of torture in Argentina, and relied on the expansive scope of reparations provided for atrocities committed under the Pinochet regime in Chile when conceiving of the essential elements of the original legislation (a CTJM member is a Chilean torture survivor who fought for reparations in Chile as well).

    Ultimately, the reparations package, brought to fruition by an inspiring multiracial and intergenerational campaign led by CTJM, Amnesty International, Project NIA and We Charge Genocide, within the larger context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, achieved far more than any individual criminal prosecution or lawsuit could afford. In addition to financial compensation to all individual survivors, it includes a legislative admission and apology by the City of Chicago for the torture committed by city employees, settling the historical record and placing this systemic pattern and practice of torture beyond dispute. The reparations package also includes the creation of a center on Chicago’s Southside where survivors can access specialized trauma counseling services. It extends benefits like job placement, and free tuition at City Colleges for the torture survivors and their families.

    Reparations are also an exercise in collective grief, catharsis and healing. As part of this process of narrating and commemorating what Burge torture survivors endured, the City of Chicago will not only create a permanent public memorial, it will also create a living memorial through an 8th and 10th grade curriculum for Chicago Public schools about the reparationswon-3 (1)Burge torture cases. The hope is that by inscribing these cases both figuratively and literally into the collective memory, generations to come will ensure torture is never again committed in our name.

    Like every reparations process, there have been fair critiques for being too narrowly focused and not ambitiously seeking redress for every case of police torture. However, while the reparations for Burge survivors focus on a finite set of particularly egregious cases, they can still serve as a model in other cities. Ultimately, each process will be unique and place specific. But Chicago’s journey provides some guideposts for municipalities to consider beyond changes in police policies that have left both victims and communities affected by racist police violence unable to heal.

    There is no question that excessive force, in many instances amounting to torture, causes physical injuries and leaves psychological scars. As noted by sociologists Amanda Geller and Jeffrey Fagan in their study of the impacts of the New York City Police Department’s stop and frisk practices, even less egregious forms of discriminatory policing cause significant individual and collective emotional harm.

    Municipalities need not shoulder this burden alone. There are approximately 40 federally funded centers throughout the U.S. offering psychological treatment to torture survivors – but unfortunately, they are only permitted to provide services to people who have been tortured outside the U.S. It is time for federal government to recognize that law enforcement officials torture people in the U.S. and that survivors need access to the same services we rightfully offer survivors of torture around the world.

    Ultimately, Chicago’s approach to systemic racial harm offers a glimmer of a possible future in which the nation as a whole might finally grapple with reparations for the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and its direct descendant, mass incarceration, each of which echo through the Chicago Police Torture cases.

  231. rq says

    Here’s the activist collecting stats on police brutality, spec. on the black-on-black crime trope.
    White supremacy is when ppl dont demand research evidence before believing ‘black crime’+police violence r related. No such evidence exists.
    Nobody seems to ask which research studies prove that places with high crime have high rates of police killings. Such studies don’t exist.
    Nobody asks which studies prove a high percentage of people killed by police were actually committing violent crimes. No such studies exist.
    Basic evidence debunks this. Black-on-black crime is down 67% over past 20yrs. Police killings haven’t dropped. If anything, they’ve risen.
    Which means the US mainstream is operating out of racist assumptions with no empirical evidence. The burden of proof is on them, not us.

  232. rq says

    Euclid ave Downtown Cleveland shut down #BreloVerdict, from this afternoon.

    Rawlings-Blake criticizes protesters for blocking traffic in Baltimore – and yet she was perfectly within her rights in shutting down the city a month ago, without a worry for emergencies or people who had to get places.

    Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Tuesday criticized both Gov. Larry Hogan over his recent funding decisions and a group of protesters led by Pastor Jamal Bryant who blocked traffic coming into Baltimore — a decision she suggested could have prevented hospital workers from reaching medical centers and patients from getting treatment.

    “I understand and respect the right to protest,” Rawlings-Blake said. “When you are putting people at risk by shutting down major thoroughfares, that’s beyond reasonable protest. We were very clear with the protesters this morning that wasn’t going to be tolerated.”

    Bryant and others were protesting state decisions to fund a new $30 million youth jail in Baltimore, but not allocate $68 million set aside by the General Assembly for public schools.

    State officials approved plans earlier this month to build a 60-bed jail to house Baltimore teenagers charged as adults — a step to address years of concern about the practice of housing young city defendants alongside adults. The approval came a day before Hogan announced plans to spend the $68 million on the state’s struggling pension system instead of schools.

    Rawlings-Blake said Tuesday she doesn’t support the way the governor made his funding decisions. She called the decision to fund the youth jail “abrupt” and said officials didn’t involve community members in the process.

    “With respect to the underlying issue, I understand the frustration,” Rawlings-Blake said of Tuesday’s protest. “Without any debate at the Board of Public Works, there was a decision to spend millions of dollars on a youth jail. In the same week, there was a decision made not to fund education. It sends an unusual and a peculiar message to the families of Baltimore.”

    Bryant, pastor at Empowerment Temple and a vocal community leader in Baltimore during protests following Freddie Gray’s death, said more protests were planned.

    Historian Says Don’t ‘Sanitize’ How Our Government Created Ghettos

    Fifty years after the repeal of Jim Crow, many African-Americans still live in segregated ghettos in the country’s metropolitan areas. Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, has spent years studying the history of residential segregation in America.

    “We have a myth today that the ghettos in metropolitan areas around the country are what the Supreme Court calls ‘de-facto’ — just the accident of the fact that people have not enough income to move into middle class neighborhoods or because real estate agents steered black and white families to different neighborhoods or because there was white flight,” Rothstein tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross.

    “It was not the unintended effect of benign policies,” he says. “It was an explicit, racially purposeful policy that was pursued at all levels of government, and that’s the reason we have these ghettos today and we are reaping the fruits of those policies.”

    Interview (audio) follows, with some highlights:

    On using the word “ghetto”

    One of the ways in which we forget our history is by sanitizing our language and pretending that these problems don’t exist. We have always recognized that these were “ghettos.” A ghetto is, as I define it, a neighborhood which is homogeneous and from which there are serious barriers to exit. That’s the technical definition of a ghetto.

    Robert Weaver, the first African-American member of the Cabinet appointed by President Johnson as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development, described many of the policies that I’ve described today in a book he published in 1948 called The Negro Ghetto.

    The Kerner Commission referred to the ghetto.

    This is a term that we no longer use because we’re embarrassed to talk about it, and we need to confront our history and stop sanitizing our language and talk openly about what we’ve done as a nation and what we need to do to undo it. And we can’t talk openly if we’re going to use euphemisms instead of being explicit about what the reality is.

    On how the New Deal’s Public Works Administration led to the creation of segregated ghettos

    Its policy was that public housing could be used only to house people of the same race as the neighborhood in which it was located, but, in fact, most of the public housing that was built in the early years was built in integrated neighborhoods, which they razed and then built segregated public housing in those neighborhoods. So public housing created racial segregation where none existed before. That was one of the chief policies.

    On the Federal Housing Administration’s overtly racist policies in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s

    The second policy, which was probably even more effective in segregating metropolitan areas, was the Federal Housing Administration, which financed mass production builders of subdivisions starting in the ’30s and then going on to the ’40s and ’50s in which those mass production builders, places like Levittown [New York] for example, and Nassau County in New York and in every metropolitan area in the country, the Federal Housing Administration gave builders like Levitt concessionary loans through banks because they guaranteed loans at lower interest rates for banks that the developers could use to build these subdivisions on the condition that no homes in those subdivisions be sold to African-Americans.

    On real estate agents’ practice of “blockbusting”

    In the ghettos, government policy — municipal policy, for example — denied adequate services, garbage wasn’t collected frequently. African-Americans were crowded into neighborhoods in the ghetto because so much other housing was closed to them and as a result, housing prices in ghettos were much higher than similar housing in white areas. Rents were much higher than similar housing in white areas … because you had a smaller supply. It’s the basic laws of supply and demand. … So this created slum conditions.

    So when African-Americans managed to break out of those slums and buy a home in a neighboring area, whites could be persuaded that slum conditions were going to be brought with them. So the real estate agents would go into these neighborhoods and try to panic white families into selling their homes cheap to the real estate agents.

    They used techniques: They would recruit blacks from the ghetto to walk around the neighborhood pushing baby carriages. They would phone call families in the white area and ask for names that were stereotypically African-American. … All intended to give the impression that this was rapidly turning into another black slum.

    The white families who panicked would then sell their homes to the real estate agents or the speculators at prices far below what they were worth. The speculators would then turn around and resell the homes to African-Americans at far more than they were worth because of the restricted supply, and this policy was called “blockbusting” and it was a policy that was condoned by state licensing boards throughout the country.

    And DailyKos and Shaun King on Brelo and police protection: How the Brelo verdict in Cleveland proves laws protecting people from police are broken

    Many unjust verdicts across the years have exposed just how protected police misconduct is under the law.

    Four LAPD Police Officers were acquitted of their assault on Rodney King – in spite of overwhelming video evidence that they used excessive force.

    Four NYPD officers were acquitted after firing 41 shots at Amadou Diallo on the doorstep of his home. He was an unarmed model citizen.

    Three NYPD detectives were acquitted on all charges after firing 50 shots into the car of Sean Bell on his wedding day. Everyone in his car was unarmed and leaving a bachelor party.

    Even President George W. Bush said the decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choking death of Eric Garner was “hard to understand.”

    In a study commissioned by the Washington Post, it was determined that less than 1% of police officers who kill people on the job ever serve a day in jail – even when overwhelming evidence proves they acted unlawfully.

    Perhaps no police shooting in the history of America, though, was more egregious and excessive than that of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams by the Cleveland Police Department in 2012. Both of them were completely unarmed and their car was parked when Officer Michael Brelo jumped on the hood of the car and fired 34 shots into the windshield, reloaded his gun, then fired 15 more. 88 additional shots were fired by his fellow officers surrounding the vehicle.

    For years, police have claimed that Timothy and Malissa shot at them from the car, but after no guns were recovered, no bullet or bullet hole from the guns ever found, and their hands were completely free of any gun residue, it was concluded that that this mystery gunshot was likely just their car, a 1979 Chevy Malibu, backfiring. Some even dispute that this took place.

    On Saturday, Officer Michael Brelo was found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter in this shooting massacre. Taking nearly one hour to explain his decision, the judge stated that the prosecutors were simply unable to disprove Brelo’s claim that he “feared for his life” and that the state was unable to prove that the 49 bullets which came from Brelo’s gun were the ones that actually caused their death.

    This decision to set Officer Brelo free, without any consequence whatsoever, could very well be the most unjust police misconduct decision in the history of the United States and sets a deep and frightening precedent. In essence, without true evidence that a grave threat exists, officers are now allowed to fire 137 shots into a vehicle and then all claim they don’t know whose shots actually did the deed. This verdict, if anything, actually encourages excessive force. […]

    As the number of people incarcerated across the United States swells to preposterous highs, advocates for incarceration consistently argue that harsh sentences are not just the price people should pay for the crimes they commit, but should serve as a deterrent to others who may consider such crimes. With this same logic, it’s clear that police officers, who don’t actually pay for these huge settlements themselves, have no effective deterrent to excessive force. If Officer Michael Brelo can be set be free for what he did, I’m afraid we have many more miserable days ahead.

    How can anyone, absent an officer admitting that he is lying about being afraid, ever prove that police aren’t acting out of fear? It’s an unreasonably high hurdle and must be reconsidered.

  233. rq says

    Podcast “Reveal” from the Center for Investigative Reporting, with a whole list of programs to listen to, including:

    Law and Disorder 2: Citizens, cameras and cops

    In part 2 of Reveal’s in-depth look at law and disorder, we expose some of the tensions between police and the communities they serve and how video cameras are dramatically changing the public’s relationship with law enforcement.

    Several segments up at that link.
    Also, a transcript down at the bottom of the page.

    K. read this headline. Just read it. Cleveland police to stop hitting people on heads with guns as part of Justice Department agreement. And then wonder to yourself, What kind of a police force is the Cleveland PD?

    Cleveland police will stop hitting people on the heads with their guns and document any time they unholster them, according to a consent decree between the U.S. Justice Department and Cleveland police released today.

    The Justice Department found in a 21-month investigation that began in 2013 that Cleveland police routinely bash people on the head with their guns, sometimes accidentally firing them, according to a 58-page report released in December.

    The consent decree released Tuesday between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Cleveland is the result of five months of negotiations, as well as dozens of meetings with community groups, church leaders and advocates. Once approved by a federal judge, the city is legally bound to enact the reforms included in the 105-page document, meant to protect citizens’ constitutional rights.

    “[Cleveland Division of Police’s] policy will expressly provide that using a firearm as an impact weapon is never an authorized tactic,” the consent decree says. “Officers will be trained that use of a firearm as an impact weapon could result in death to suspects, bystanders and themselves.”

    The agreement prohibits officers from displaying their firearms unless they believe lethal force is necessary. It also requires Cleveland police train officers to de-escalate situations, including by using verbal persuasion and warnings, instead of approaching suspects with guns drawn.

    And, presumably, not to hit them on the head with it. I don’t know, I feel like laughing all over this. It seems so ridiculous. More:

    “It is also unclear why CDP appears to be categorizing hitting someone with a gun as a conventional response when force is needed,” the December report said. “This is uniformly understood to be a dangerous practice that should never be permitted except in very unusual and exigent circumstances in which the use of deadly force is authorized; yet, it was a practice we saw CDP officers engaging in too frequently.”

    The Justice Department made an example of a 2012 encounter when an off-duty officer drew his gun after a suspect asked him to show identification. Wrestling ensued, and the off-duty officer struck the man in the head, causing the gun to fire.

    In another incident from 2011, a police officer working as a convenience store security detail used his gun to hit an unarmed shoplifter over the head.

    “Again, this use of deadly force against a man who was not armed, had committed a minor offense, and who presented only a minimal threat to the officer was unreasonable and dangerous,” the Justice Department said in its December report.

    The full decree is available at the link, but I have some tweets with some minor excerpts:
    And here are additional Use of Force agreements from the DOJ/Cleveland decree. (No retaliatory force, no head strikes, no neck holds, limited vehicle pursuits.)
    And this Cleveland/DOJ decree agreement seem to directly relate to Brelo. (Do not discharge firearm at or from a moving vehicle.)
    Per the Cleveland/DOJ decree, a 13 member Community Policing Commission will be established. With lots of oversight but it seems minimal ability to actually act legally. Still, it’s something.
    Cleveland officers will now only carry CPD issued pepper-spray & “will not normally use [pepper-spray] on handcuffed or restrained persons.”
    Also a bunch of stuff on training and bias-free policing, so yeah. Lots of work ahead for them!
    But seriously, they have to be trained not to hit people over the head with guns… I suppose it’s better than shooting them, neh?

  234. rq says

    There’s still stuff to post but I’m calling it in early, so see y’all tomorrow.

  235. rq says

    Tail-ends from last night:

    Sometimes, I think we hate Jaden and Willow Smith because they are free black children and we don’t know what free black children look like. It was just a thought that I liked.

    #wacoshooting Black person with “Black Lives Matter” sign, inciting a riot; white biker with knives and a gun, motorcycle enthusiast involved in kerfuffle.

    More commentary on the Cleveland decree, Per the decree, Cleveland officers will not be able to use force against those who “only verbally confront them” & don’t impede police work. So feel free to mouth off and don’t let them provoke you into physical contact.

    Cleveland police department agrees to stop unjust searches and seizures. Because you need a fucking agreement for it in the first place? WHAT? As the blue-clad arm of the law, aren’t police already supposed to be just in their actions? Shouldn’t they be upholding the law (which purports to be just) rather than breaking it? Dude… I can’t even. Anyway, from that article:

    An agreement between the U.S. Justice Department and Cleveland police establishes a model for searches and seizures to ensure that police encounters are free of constitutional violations.

    More than five months of negotiations between federal and city officials resulted in a 105-page consent decree that addresses numerous concerns raised in a Justice Department report that blasted Cleveland’s police department.

    Searches and seizures were not part of the federal investigation and only briefly mentioned in the report released in December, but officials said they found troubling patterns in this area that they couldn’t ignore.

    Mayor Frank Jackson cited in an interview Monday decades worth of complaints from citizens who say police stopped them unfairly. Given the magnitude of the problem, city officials chose to address even though it was not one of the formal complaints lodged by federal officials.

    “If you listen to the community and what they’re talking about, you can’t ignore the fact that it was a major concern,” Jackson said. “If it could be supported by data or not was not relevant. You address the concern.”

    New policies have been agreed upon to protect citizens’ constitutional rights and to ease some of the tension between police and the community. [I liked this, where they listened to the community’s concerns and added that to the report, even though it wasn’t explicitly stated that this would also be examined. I really like that.]

    In line with the implementation of a “bias-free” policing model, the new policy will prohibit officers from making stops based on a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, national origin or perceived sexual orientation.

    These factors, according to the decree, don’t qualify as probable cause unless that information is part of a credible suspect description. Even in that case, a physical description must be accompanied by other identifying factors.

    Officers also can’t stop someone because they are in a high-crime area, according to the settlement. To justify an investigatory stop, there must be proof that a person has or is about to commit a crime.

    When a suspect is taken into custody solely on charges of obstructing official business, resisting arrest or assaulting an officer, an officer must immediately call a supervisor to the scene. This will ensure the legitimacy of the initial stop.

    Allegations of unjust stops by Cleveland police were a common theme in a decade’s worth of lawsuits examined by Northeast Ohio Media Group following the release of the report. Several people in court documents described police encounters that started with a baseless stop. Many suits included allegations of excessive and even deadly force that cost the city millions of dollars in settlements.

    Training will address constitutional rights

    The consent decree also requires annual officer training that emphasizes Fourth Amendment issues related to searches and seizures. Officers will learn better methods for approaching citizens, including introducing themselves immediately and telling people why they are being stopped.

    The new training model will also teach officers:

    – the difference between probable cause, reasonable suspicion and mere speculation as a basis for stopping someone.
    – the level of intrusion allowed in “pat-downs” and “frisks.”
    – procedures for seizing evidence.
    – the effect that these approaches can have on community perception of police.     [bolding mine, this seems important!]

    Pat down searches will be limited to people who police have reason to believe are armed and dangerous, according to the agreement. When officers ask for consent to search, they must inform citizens of their right to refuse.

    All stops must be reported in detail

    Federal investigators have also pointed out the department’s flawed –- often nonexistent — system for reporting police misconduct. As part of a push for more accountability across the department, written reports for searches and seizures will be subject to increased scrutiny.

    The agreement prohibits the kind of “canned” and “boilerplate” reporting language that came under fire in the Justice Department report. New policies require officers to be more descriptive and back up their actions with legal reasoning.

    Supervisors must review and sign off on all reports within 24 hours, according to the settlement. They have a week to document any stops, searches or arrests that violate policy.

    If policies are violated, supervisors must dole out discipline or refer the incident to Internal Affairs investigators in a timely manner.

    Finally, the supervisor’s assessment will be handed over to a command-level official for approval. Commanders are to note reports that indicate a need for review of department policy, strategy, tactics or training.

    It’s a great report, but implementing changes will be difficult (I have a feeling). Not least because of resistance from within the force, and most likely from the police union, too.

    Iyanla Vanzant Is Heading to Baltimore to ‘Fix the City’ With Jamal Bryant. Twitter implies this isn’t necessarily a good thing.

    How many lives has Iyanla Vanzant fixed or tried to fix? From Chris Brown’s ex-girlfriend to the man who fathered a ton of kids with a ton of women, Vanzant has been doling out her own version of tough love on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network for years.

    But can she fix a whole city?

    Since the recent uprisings after the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, many community leaders and activists have spoken out about the police brutality and crime that plague the city. One of those leaders happens to be Jamal Bryant, the pastor at Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple.

    Bryant is now teaming up with Vanzant to provide a healing over Baltimore with a three-day event at the Empowerment Temple.

    Maybe Vanzant should try to head over and fix the police officers in the city—and then move on to its elected officials. No? So that’s not how it works?

    One has to wonder what Bryant and Vanzant think they can do for the city by holding a “healing” service. Bryant, who has been a vocal advocate and activist in Baltimore, seems to be garnering a lot of attention in recent months. But bringing in Vanzant may not be the answer the city needs.

    Earlier I cited someone saying there’s been a 67% decrease in black-on-black crime over the past 20 years or so. He has provided the source: Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008

    Trends by race
    Blacks were disproportionately represented among homicide victims and offenders
    – In 2008, the homicide victimization rate for blacks (19.6 homicides per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (3.3 homicides per 100,000).
    – The victimization rate for blacks peaked in the early 1990s, reaching a high of 39.4 homicides per 100,000 in 1991 (figure 17).
    – After 1991, the victimization rate for blacks fell until 1999, when it stabilized near 20 homicides per 100,000.
    – In 2008, the offending rate for blacks (24.7 offenders per 100,000) was 7 times higher than the rate for whites (3.4 offenders per 100,000) (figure 18).
    – The offending rate for blacks showed a similar pattern to the victimization rate, peaking in the early 1990s at a high of 51.1 offenders per 100,000 in 1991.
    – After 1991, the offending rate for blacks declined until it reached 24 per 100,000 in 2004. The rate has since fluctuated, increasing to 28.4 offenders per 100,000 in 2006 before falling again to 24.7 offenders per 100,000 in 2008.

    The race distribution of homicide victims and offenders differed by type of homicide
    From 1980 to 2008—
    – Black victims were over-represented in homicides involving drugs, with 62.1% of all drug-related homicides involving black victims. By comparison, 36.9% of drug-related homicide victims were white and 1% were victims of other races.
    – Compared with the overall percentage of murder victims who were black (47.4%), blacks were less likely to be victims of sex-related homicides (30.4%), workplace killings (12.5%), or homicides of elders age 65 or older (28.6%) (table 7).
    – While two-thirds of drug-related homicides were committed by black offenders (65.6%), black offenders were less likely to be involved in sex-related killings (43.4%), workplace homicides, (25.8%) or homicides of elders age 65 or older (41.9%) compared to their overall involvement as homicide offenders (52.5%)

    Most murders were intraracial
    From 1980 through 2008—
    – 84% of white victims were killed by whites (figure 19).
    – 93% of black victims were killed by blacks.

    (pages 11 and 12)
    (Still not sure where the 67% comes from, I suck at reading stats?

  236. rq says

    @deray It’s important to note that there was no race component to the DOJ’s initial report released in December.
    @deray The mayor said in an interview yesterday that they heard a lot about this from the Cleveland community and added it to the agreement.
    So yes, this is important to note.

    Few things bring me as much joy as watching hundreds of black and brown students walk across the graduation stage. Congratulations, graduates!

    Interlude: Music! Alessia shares a video for her track “Here.”

    Judging by your response to Alessia’s HNHH debut, her recent track “Here” is pretty fire. Today, a video arrives.

    Billed as “Alessia Cara” in the video’s title, the 18-year-old Canadian is the only one moving at normal speed in the new video. Moving among slo-mo’d partygoers, she’s in a world of her own, which perfectly matches her lyrics about pulling her beanie low and chilling by herself in social situations.

    The song itself is based around a sample of Isaac Hayes’ “Ike’s Rap II” (which has also fueled great tracks by Portishead and Tricky), and on top of that fairly simple template, Alessia makes “Here” her own with precociously powerful vocals and a clear mastery of melody and songwriting. Keep your eye on her.

    I like it.

    Sheku Bayoh case seems to be becoming something of a contentious issue… Sheku Bayoh: Mother of man who died in police custody hits out after a lawyer issues legal threat over Facebook page

    THE mother of a man who died in police custody has hit out after a lawyer issued a legal threat to the family.

    A warning letter was sent from PBW Law, who represent the officers involved in the death, warning that a Facebook page set up in memory of Sheku Bayoh has broken the law.

    His furious mother, Aminata Bayoh, broke her silence to brand the legal threat “shameful”.

    And 31-year-old Sheku’s partner Collette Bell, mother of their four-month-old son Isaac, said she was “disgusted” by the letter.

    Leading criminal defence lawyer Aamer Anwar, who is working on behalf of Sheku’s family, said: “It is very sad that a family in the midst of their grief have been forced to campaign simply to get answers on what happened to Sheku.

    “No family should have to endure what they are going through and certainly nobody with any decency and compassion would attempt to silence them.

    “Surely now is the time for the police officers involved to speak up and tell the truth.”

    “This Sunday, 21 days will have passed since Sheku’s death, the longer the police refuse to speak the harder it becomes for the family and the community to keep an open mind.

    “I would urge Chief Constable Stephen House to take control of the situation and order his officers to co-operate with PIRC if public confidence is to be restored.”

    Mum Aminata said: “How dare these lawyers threaten my family and Sheku’s friends.

    “Do they have no shame? I have not even been able to bury my only son, yet this man abuses my family and thinks he can silence a grieving mother.”

    Sheku died after a struggle with up to nine officers in Kirkcaldy on May 3.

    PBW Law owner Peter Watson issued a statement on behalf of the Scottish Police Federation and the officers involved days after Sheku’s death.

    He claimed Sheku “punched, kicked and stamped on” a female officer.

    None of this has been proved and a probe into the death is still underway.

    Collette said: “All we are after is the truth.”

    Watson’s company warned the family the Facebook page was “in breach of criminal law”.

    The email from the firm was sent on Monday, May 18, and stated that a post on the Facebook page was a breach of the criminal law.

    The post named the WPC who was allegedly injured during the altercation. It was removed shortly after.

    Watson denied the email had been sent directly to the family. He said: “The email was sent to the official site monitoring Facebook provides.”

  237. rq says

    They Love Our Bodies but Not Us: Powerful Images From #SayHerName Demonstrations

    During the morning rush hour in Downtown San Francisco, a powerful group of Black women shut down the financial district. Tonight in New York City, there is a vigil for families of the women who have received far less attention from media on their murders. These coordinated demonstrations are in direct response to The Black Youth Project‘s (BYP) call to action, taking place in over 17 cities across the country.

    These demonstrations are meant to address the violence against Black women and reinforce a often forgotten truth: Black women’s bodies are NOT for consumption or commodification.

    View the powerful pictures from around the country below

    White Cops File Suit, Claim They Are Punished Too Much For Shooting People – I love the title on this one.

    Less than a week after twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by Cleveland police officers who thought Rice’s toy gun was real, nine other members of the Cleveland Police Department filed a lawsuit that accuses the department of discriminating against non-African American officers who used deadly force.

    In the suit, the plantiffs claim that the department treated non-African American officers involved in the 2012 shooting of two African Americans “substantially harsher” than African American officers involved in the same incidents. The lawsuit deals with the aftermath of a deadly November 2012 car chase. During the car chase, 13 police officers fired over 130 shots at a Chevrolet Malibu. Both people in the car were shot over 20 times and killed. Neither had a weapon. During an investigation of the car chase, it came out that officers had omitted events in their statements, misidentified the suspects and did not specify that police officers had fired shots. Earlier in November, the city settled a lawsuit over the incident for $3 million.

    The officers alleged that the department’s practices place “onerous burdens on non-African American officers, including the plaintiffs, because of their race,” which violates their due process and equal protection under the law. The officers argue that as a result, they have lost wages and have suffered “impairment of their professional reputations, humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish, and other serious damages.”

    The officers’ share of the punishment was 3 days of administrative leave, followed by restricted duty for a period of time — typically 45 days — during which they say they were asked to do “menial and unpleasant tasks” and denied overtime pay. The nine officers were not allowed to return to active duty for 16 months due to media and political pressure, which hurt their ability to apply for promotions and denied them “a substantial amount of income,” the suit alleges. The suit also argues that the nine officers should not have been disciplined individually because Ohio’s attorney general Mike DeWine attributed the incident to systemic failure within the entire department.

    While the city is on the hook for the $3 million settlement over the incident, individual officers in Cleveland paid about 1 percent of the settlement. A study in the NYU Law Review found that it is rare that individual police officers actually pay the plaintiffs in such lawsuits. The study found that individual police officers in New York City and Los Angeles paid .03 and .008 percent of settlement money to plaintiffs respectively.

    The lawsuit was filed as national police brutality protests erupt not just over a grand jury’s decision not to Ferguson officer indict Darren Wilson, but also by another fatal shooting in Cleveland’s own community. On November 23, a Cleveland police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy, believing that the toy gun he was carrying was real. According to Cleveland’s deputy police chief, Rice did not threaten the officers who killed him or point the toy gun in their direction. City officials said that police officers waited almost four minutes after Rice was shot to give him first aid.

    Note that ‘four minutes’ at the end there – wasn’t it far, far longer than that, that they refused to provide him with first aid? I don’t want to have to watch that video again…

    Seattle Cops Bring Lawsuit Claiming They Have A Constitutional Right To Use Excessive Force – this from October 2014 and not directly related to racist policing, but a confirmation of the police officer’s mentality, that they are better than or different than the general public, and authorized to legally use more (including excessive) force. So yeah. That needs a lot of changing.

    This guy just can’t shut up. Chuck Johnson name-calls Carol Costello

    Chuck Johnson, a troll/blogger, was kicked off of Twitter, for asking for donations to “take out” Ferguson activist DeRay McKesson.

    On Monday, CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello interviewed DeRay about Johnson asking for donations to “take out” him. […]

    To Rothstein, he said:

    “I think [Costello’s] a dumb b*tch who manipulated a situation with DeRay for her own ratings,” he said in our phone conversation. “Frankly, CNN’s numbers aren’t the best.”

    He’s particularly incensed that in her reporting on his exile, she never bothered to get in touch. “She never reached out for comment,” he said. “Very few people have.”

    Must be reverse-racism. Or something.

    A brief, clear explanation of why the Justice Department’s police reforms may fall short

    On Tuesday, Cleveland announced an agreement to adopt sweeping changes to its police department following a scathing report by the US Department of Justice that found a pattern of excessive use of force. But activist Shaun King gave a concise explanation for why these types of agreements may not get to the root of the problem behind racial disparities in police use of force, which have become part of a contentious nationwide debate about law enforcement following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore: [tweets]

    King is speaking to two conflicting issues: police are given wide legal latitude to use deadly force when they reasonably perceive a threat, but police may be more likely to perceive a threat against black suspects due to underlying racial biases.

    A growing body of research has found that subconscious racial biases may make police more likely to shoot and kill black men. Studies show, for example, that officers are quicker to shoot black suspects in video game simulations. Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor who conducted the research, said it’s possible the bias could lead to more skewed outcomes in the field. “In the very situation in which [officers] most need their training,” he said, “we have some reason to believe that their training will be most likely to fail them.”

    At the same time, two Supreme Court rulings in the 1980s established legal guidelines that allow police to use deadly force when they reasonably perceive a threat, even if a threat isn’t actually present. Police and their supporters say this wide legal standard is necessary so cops don’t hesitate during split-second decisions and get hurt or killed. But it’s drawn disapproval from critics of police, who say the loose standards give cops a license to kill innocent or unarmed people.

    So police are only required to reasonably perceive a threat to use deadly force, but, based on the research, the threat they perceive may be more about race than about whether a suspect is really carrying a gun. The only way to fix that conflict may be to make it more difficult for police to legally use force, or to find a way to curtail and control subconscious racial biases. Agreements between the Justice Department and local police forces don’t seem likely to accomplish either of those goals.

    #CheckThePolice Rating System – according to this, Cleveland PD’s rating would go from an F to a C:

    Section 1: Establish Trust and Legitimacy F
    Section 2: Reflect And Respect The Community F
    Section 3: Preserve Life: Do Not Use Excessive Force A
    Section 4: Use Technology For Oversight While Protecting Privacy A
    Section 5: Answer To The Community B
    Section 6: Invest In Rigorous and Sustained Training A
    Section 7: External and Independent Investigations and Prosecutors F
    Section 8: Ban Racial Profiling and Broken Windows Policing F
    Section 9: Don’t Profit Off Our People F

    Apparently all of that averages out to a C, though I still see a lot of Fs. More details at the link.

  238. says

    From Truth-Out comes a long article by Henry A. Giroux, The Fire this time: Black youth and the spectacle of postracial violence:

    In 1963, James Baldwin published an essay entitled “The Negro Child – His Self-Image,” in The Saturday Review. Later celebrated as “A Talk to Teachers,” his prescient opening paragraph unfolds with the following observation:

    Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced … from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible – and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people – must be prepared to “go for broke.” (1)

    Signaling the existential crisis engendered by a profound political crisis, the first title resonates more powerfully with the current historical moment, especially as Black youth are increasingly assaulted, even killed, by White police officers in alarming numbers. Baldwin’s essay also points to both the need for resistance and the hazardous price one might have to pay by engaging in open defiance. Baldwin was right then and his words are more powerful today as we are truly living in “dangerous times.”

    The killing of young Black men such as 16-year-old Kimani Gray, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 18-year-old Michael Brown, 22-year-old John Crawford III and 25-year-old Freddie Gray, among others, are part of a historical pattern of racial terror in which Black populations have been contained and controlled by so-called legitimate mechanisms of state violence. (2) Not only is a Black person killed by the police “every three or four days,” but “the rate of police killings of Black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century.” (3)

    Rather than seen as victims, Black youth are vilified, and viewed as suspicious, delinquent or dangerous by mass media. They are the most recent populations once again regarded as the “wretched of the earth,” considered excess and treated as human refuse, and preyed upon by the criminal legal system, private probationary companies and the financial elite who have brought back the debtors’ prison. (4) While violence waged against Black people in the United States is nothing new, we have witnessed the appearance of new death-dealing military weapons and the militarizing of entire police forces. In addition, there is the more recent neoliberal economic destruction of entire cities, and the collapse of the welfare state, the war on terror and the rise of the punishing state, all of which add a new and more capacious register to a long history of such racist violence. (5)

    At the same time, the racist brutality and spectacle of violence that have become more visible in the United States are abetted and legitimated through a discourse of demonization, stereotypes and objectification. For instance, Fox News commentators blamed the Baltimore uprisings on gangs, schools and the welfare system, and in some cases called for the use of deadly force against those participating in the uprising. John Nolte, a conservative news pundit, stated that in his home of rural North Carolina, “the residents don’t riot. We shoot rioters.” (6) Frank Rich observed, “The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the ‘animalism’ of Baltimore residents and President Obama.” (7) Such comments reveal more than the racist sensibilities that fuel them; they also make clear the intellectual and symbolic violence aimed at poor Black youth and the communities in which they live, and their devastating consequences. Dangerous indeed!

    Vicious forms of militarized repression have always been visible to Black communities. More recently, assaults have occurred almost weekly as another Black person is killed for walking through the wrong neighborhood, playing music too loud, taking umbrage at police harassment or for simply holding an unloaded air rifle in a Walmart store. (8) The killings play in the mainstream media as a spectacle, which by definition offers little or no critical commentary about the long legacy of racist violence in the United States. Nor does the mainstream media examine the myriad of conditions that both produce and normalize such violence. After decades of political inaction and retrenchment abetted by a compliant media, the United States has dissolved into a racist, militarized and corrupt financial state. Isabel Wilkerson goes so far as to argue that the killing of Black men has surpassed the spectacle of lynching associated with the country’s segregated past. She writes:

    Lynchings were spectacles with hundreds if not thousands of witnesses and were often photographed extensively. Now, much of the recent police violence has been recorded as well. The chokehold killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York, the beating of great-grandmother Marlene Pinnock on a Los Angeles freeway and the gut-wrenching case of 17-year-old Victor Steen, tasered while riding his bicycle and then run over by the police officer in Pensacola, Florida, were all caught on videotape and have reached hundreds of thousands of watchers on YouTube – a form of public witness to brutality beyond anything possible in the age of lynching. (9)

    Indeed, such images play nightly in the mainstream media. The death of Eric Garner, and countless others, serve less as a mode of public witnessing than as fodder for right-wing and conservative pundits to condemn an alleged Black culture of criminality and for the networks to increase their ratings. We know what such images mean for many Black youth, who view the police as responsible, in part, for their precarious existence; they refuse to be titillated by these spectacles of violence. Inoculated against the perception of the police as public servants whose job is to protect and serve their communities, young people, especially poor people of color, experience the police as a dangerous and violent paramilitarized force, an arm of state terrorism.

    Young people have watched as their peers have been accosted by the police, harassed, beaten and too often killed. As entire cities are transformed into zones of lawlessness, the police appear not only more violent, but more brazen, routinely violating the law rather than upholding it – their own video cameras be damned. They also inflict abuse and violence with impunity because lawlessness is on their side, safely secured by the absence of effective civilian oversight systems. (10) Hence, it should not be surprising that many Black and Brown youth both fear for their lives and view their neighborhoods as occupied territory. But it has been surprising nonetheless, especially for those who bought into the postracial mythology of the Obama era.

    When journalist Amy Goodman asked Aniya, a 13-year-old Black girl in Staten Island, why she was marching to protest the death of Eric Garner, she replied: “I want to live until I’m 18 … You want to get older. You want to experience life. You don’t want to die in a matter of seconds because of cops.” (11) Democracy for this 13-year-old has not only receded but its civil institutions have also become toxic for those marginalized by class and race. Manufacturing threats of fear and violence fails to create what Tariq Ali has called “sleepwalking citizens,” among these populations. (12) Rather, the undiminished presence of violence and suffering has produced new modes of politics for young people of color. The older myths that upheld a more liberal form of colorblind multiculturalism are no longer operable against the massive contradictions that have come to characterize a more fully realized corporate statehood and form of market fundamentalism.

    Just an excerpt. The whole article is worth reading.

  239. says

    Another one from Truth-Out– Advocates say black women left out of Freddie Gray conversation (video):

    They provide a transcript at the link above:

    TAYA GRAHAM, TRNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the scene where Baltimore’s penchant for violence against women and the reality of the little attention it receives can be told in the starkest terms. On this deserted patch of road near Baltimore’s Leakin Park, two women were brutally assaulted on the exact same spot nearly five years apart. One woman raped and disfigured in 2003 survived. The other, Yolanda Brown, died in 2008 shortly after she too was raped and discarded on the side of this road.

    But in between the two cases of extreme violence, something occurred that speaks to the special plight of women in Baltimore, caught between an onslaught of crime and a seemingly indifferent police department. DNA from the same man was found on the victim of 2003 and two other women killed that same year. It was evidence that sat untouched until Yolanda Brown and four other women were strangled in 2008. Then the police decided to test and found this man, William Brown.

    Brown plead guilty to two murders and one rape in 2003. But of the five women who died in 2008, four of their cases remain unsolved.

    HANI BELLOW, ORGANIZER, BALTIMORE BLOC: All the names, all the lost souls, we want to give them light. We want them to have a voice today.

    GRAHAM: Which is just one of the reasons advocates gathered beneath the Billie Holiday statue on Pennsylvania Avenue, to call attention to a topic that has been overlooked in the continued debate over violence and policing in Baltimore.

    COREY JOHNSON, ORGANIZER, BALTIMORE BLOC: And the more that we allow for this national narrative to structure how our community is run, the more that we’re able to gloss over the violence that happens to black women. It’s sad. I literally want to cry.

    GRAHAM: Here they held a discussion about how the daily onslaught of violence and proactive policing affects women in unique and often untold ways.

    CARMEN SHORTER, WOMEN’S HEALTH ADVOCATE, POWERINSIDE: And watching our city explode, and watching black women spill out into the streets and be traumatized by that just as much as men were, but being ignored in the public dialog–having worked with women as long as I have, I knew we needed to be here to speak for the women who couldn’t be here tonight.

    GRAHAM: They say too often the concerns of women are left out of the discussion, or ignored altogether.

    MYLA GORHAM, CONCERNED COMMUNITY MEMBER: I think it is a reflection of how black women are treated. I think different injustices that happen against black women, they’re not paid as much attention to. They’re not given the same amount of press as black men.

    GRAHAM: The events of the last month since the death of Freddie Gray in police custody show the real outcomes of our policing. But women are also victims of a neglectful, even aggressive, criminal justice system.

    Case in point was a Baltimore Sun investigation that found the Baltimore City Police Department dismissed rape reports at one of the highest rates in the country. Four in ten phone calls to 911 about rape resulted in no report at all. In fact, Baltimore City classified the reports of almost 40 percent of women who said they were raped as unfounded, a baseless accusation without facts.

    It’s an issue advocates say still exists today, and it is one of many reasons that women’s voices need to be heard in the discussion about violence, policing, and making Baltimore a safer and healthier place for women to live.

    SHORTER: We only have a certain role for black women. As a nurturer or as a lover, but not as a colleague, not as someone that we care about and love unless they are personally known to us. Until we start taking care of women in our conversations, we’re going to lose this struggle.

    GRAHAM: Taya Graham reporting with Megan Sherman in Baltimore, for The Real News Network.

  240. rq says

    Man I keep saying that. Police don’t prevent crime, they respond to it. Thats their purpose.

    #Baltimore Officer: “It seems like the citizens would appreciate a lack of police presence & that’s exactly what they’re getting.” #Hannity

    New: Baltimore City FOP president says Commissioner Batts apologized to police officers in a meeting at FOP headquarters tonight;
    FOP president said he believes apology was related to inaction on the day of the riots in Baltimore City; commissioner took no questions.

    Cleveland consent decree provides blueprint for long-elusive police reforms: The Big Story

    Cleveland’s Division of Police, for years a source of civil-rights complaints and racial tensions, could see long-elusive reforms under a deal announced Tuesday by Mayor Frank Jackson and the U.S. Department of Justice.

    The scope of the settlement, known as a consent decree, is sweeping.

    A 105-page document will serve as a blueprint for overhauling policies that federal lawyers say promoted excessive force. It also demands more accountability and transparency from officers and their supervisors when justifying the use of force.

    Perhaps most ambitiously, it aims to mend a frayed relationship between police and the community. Citizens would have a larger role and louder voice through a 13-member advisory committee established to recommend improvements. The city also agreed to revise its search-and-seizure guidelines and develop a “bias-free” policing strategy, committing to change in areas that, although not originally on the Justice Department’s list, advanced to the forefront during a series of community meetings.

    “In light of the work that has brought us here today, I am deeply optimistic that transformation is coming to Cleveland,” said Vanita Gupta, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “There is much work to be done to rebuild trust between citizens and police where it is eroded. But it can be done.”

    A federal judge must approve the consent decree before its many moving parts can be set in motion. But the Justice Department, which launched the review of Cleveland’s police practices in 2013 at Jackson’s request, acknowledged in the settlement that the city “recently has made important changes to some of its force policies.”

    An independent monitor will track how Cleveland complies with the consent decree. The city is responsible for paying the monitor’s salary and untold other costs related to instituting the required changes. Jackson estimated Tuesday during a City Hall news conference that he will seek support from business and philanthropic leaders.

    “What we will not do is get to the point where we have to shut down divisions of the city of Cleveland, because you’re going to still demand the services that you expect and should expect of the city of Cleveland,” the mayor said. “And we will not get to the point where we close up all of our recreation centers in order to do this.

    “So I believe, as we move ahead, that we will have partners external to the city who will help us even though there will be some cost that we will have to bear ourselves.”

    Jackson’s buy-in, even with financial aid from private sector, is key to making meaningful reforms last. Though he invited the Justice Department to review the city’s police division, he seemed to bristle and resist last December when the feds released their findings and talked of systemic deficiencies. But Jackson later insisted that media had misinterpreted him and that he merely was being his cautious, methodical self.

    “We’re trying to address what we believe is an opportunity, rather than incremental policy changes, to make real substantive, comprehensive reform that will be sustainable beyond whoever the mayor or chief of police is,” Jackson, accompanied by U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach, said at a Monday briefing with the Northeast Ohio Media Group.

    Regardless of any early static, Gupta noted Tuesday that the consent decree was completed “in a mere five months, which is an unprecedented pace for putting together a plan for reforming a major metropolitan police department.” […]

    Much of the consent decree surrounds changes to Cleveland’s rulebook on the use of force.

    Officers would face higher standards on unholstering and firing weapons and no longer will be allowed to use guns to strike suspects as they would with a baton. And all strikes to the head using any hard object would be banned unless lethal force is justified.

    Rules for using Tasers and pepper spray also would be revised, requiring more detailed reporting and justifications for each use. If an officer used a Taser or pepper spray twice on someone, separate reports and justifications would be required.

    Officers would be required to take immediate steps to provide or secure first aid for suspects they injure, addressing an issue raised in many lawsuits that cost the big city money. It’s also an issue that has been a flashpoint in the Tamir case, as the first officers on scene made no attempt to administer first aid in the minutes after he was shot.

    Retaliatory force – such as tussling with a suspect at the end of a chase or to mete out punishment for disrespecting an officer – would be explicitly prohibited.

    City wants more ink, fewer rubber stamps

    Officers also would have to provide real details – no more “boilerplate” language – when explaining why they used force. And their supervisors would have to provide more than the perfunctory reviews that nearly always have favored the officers over the suspects they encounter. […]

    Citizens panel would add scrutiny

    A 13-member Community Police Commission would flex oversight muscle, too. Representatives from Cleveland’s corporate boardrooms, churches, minority organizations and other key constituencies would issue annual reports and make recommendations. The agreement guarantees one seat each for the city’s two police unions and for Black Shield, a professional association of black officers.

    Leaders of those groups were cautiously optimistic Tuesday.

    “I’m sure there’s a lot of things in there that are going to improve the Division of Police, and that’s what all of us want,” said Brian Betley, president of the Cleveland Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents police supervisors.

    The panel also would help develop the new bias-free policing strategy, which would take aim at racial profiling and discrimination. Data-collection is key to the initiative. So is a stricter search-and-seizures policy that is targeted at unjust stops by officers.

    Terry Gilbert, a prominent local civil-rights attorney, also praised the deal but urged patience and persistence.

    “This is an historic agreement, which has the potential to reduce the widespread abuses in the use of force within the department [that] has existed for decades,” Gilbert wrote in an email. “The key to its success lies in the oversight by a federal judge and independent monitors. But keep in mind the reforms will take years to weed out the bad practices and attitudes that have been ingrained within the culture of the police.

    “And it will require active community involvement that will stand the test of time regardless of changing politics and new administrations.”

    Statement from the city of Ferguson concerning Mayor recall efforts. Short version: need to verify all the names, acknowledge the petition which does not change the stellar work they are doing for the community and will not disrupt their work.

  241. rq says

    White people are pretending to be black online in order to win arguments on race. From the article,

    Many have used the phrase “digital blackface” to describe the odd and all-too-prevalent practice of white and non-Black people making anonymous claims to a Black identity through contemporary technological mediums such as social media. It often involves masquerading behind the Black face of a fictional profile picture. These attempts, while hilariously transparent, take advantage of the relative anonymity of the internet to perpetuate decontextualized stereotypes and project an image of Black people that fits the desire of anti-Black individuals.

    It goes undocumented and unaddressed in most cases, though occasionally the people behind the blackface are unmasked. When musician, alleged feminist, and keen event planner Ani Defranco came under censure after revealing a former slave plantation as the locale for her Righteous Retreat, a workshop for creatives, fans flocked to the event’s Facebook page in support of the gathering (and to attack its detractors), including “LaQueeta Jones.”

    LaQueeta Jones’ comments include gratuitous usage of grammatically incorrect African American Vernacular English (AAVE), an evocation of MLK, and the bulletproof phrase of authenticity, “as a black woman.” An altogether weak attempt at internet minstrelsy, it prompted a skeptical Facebook user, MF Addaway, to track the IP address of “LaQueeta Jones,” and bust the actual account holder, Mandi Harrington—a white woman who had posted earlier in support of Defranco.

    This is… interesting. And clearly appropriation, even if for an ostensibly good cause. And shouldn’t be happening.

    Gag order request in Freddie Gray case shows prosecutor’s misunderstanding – ooh, let’s put down Mosby!

    The searing spotlight of media scrutiny fell upon a Maryland state’s attorney, a rising star in Democratic politics. After a high-profile beating death, the young prosecutor convened a news conference to announce murder charges, detail the evidence and insist that the public’s desire for justice had finally been achieved.

    If you think I’ve just described Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s actions surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, you’re only half right. Nearly the exact same situation occurred a dozen years ago in Maryland. In that case, the politically ambitious state’s attorney was Doug Gansler. And, in a judicial opinion that my law students study because of its landmark holdings, Mr. Gansler was publicly reprimanded by Maryland judicial authorities.

    Most Marylanders know Doug Gansler as the former attorney general who ran for governor and lost. But in 2000 and 2001, he was the state’s attorney for Montgomery County. While serving in that role and following three highly-publicized murder cases, Mr. Gansler used televised news conferences to grandstand in a manner that the Maryland Court of Appeals later described as “improper.” The judges then concluded that Mr. Gansler’s media performances “dangerously jeopardized the foundational principles of our system of criminal justice.”

    It was the first time a Free State prosecutor was disciplined for attempting to use the news media to unfairly prejudice a trial. But the clearly-stated precedent of the Gansler case now binds every prosecutor in Maryland. The holding is so well known in legal ethics circles that I spend most of a 2- hour class discussing it with my law students. But this subject is more than an academic exercise for me.

    As a prosecutor, I’ve spoken to the press on many occasions. When I was the deputy attorney general of Ohio, it was part of my job to discuss legal issues with journalists. And early in my career, when I was the spokesman for federal prosecutors who were bringing police brutality cases, I briefed countless media outlets. Yet, in each press encounter, I reminded myself of the special rules that apply to prosecutors talking to reporters.

    Simply put, using the words of the legal ethics rules in Maryland and elsewhere, a prosecutor is more than just a lawyer advocating for a legal position. A prosecutor is, and must be, a “minister of justice.” […]

    Had Ms. Mosby taken the time to read and reflect upon the opinion in the Gansler matter, it’s likely she would have taken a more thoughtful, even responsible, approach. After all, no attorney wants to face disciplinary charges that could lead to disbarment. It appears that the legacy of the Gansler ethics case went unheard in what someday may be called the Mosby ethics case.

    Whether or not Marilyn Mosby will be disciplined along the lines of Mr. Gansler remains to be seen. But she already shares the most troubling common denominator of certified-unethical attorneys: the willingness to abuse media relations and the prosecutor’s authority just to brighten her political horizons.

    We trust ministers to do the right thing and to be guided by higher principles. From a minister of justice, we should expect no less.

    NYC Housing Authority Doesn’t Trust NYPD Not to Kill Its Workers

    Just how large of a threat do New York City’s cops pose to its citizens—especially those who live in public housing? Large enough that the city’s housing authority ordered its employees to wear bright orange vests on the job, just in case an NYPD officer in a dark project stairwell mistakes a worker for a resident and shoots him dead.

    The New York Post reported yesterday that the New York City Housing Authority is asking public housing elevator maintenance workers to wear construction-style vests because of “trigger happy” cops like the one who killed Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man who was walking with his girlfriend, in the stairwell of NYCHA’s Pink Houses in December. According to the Post’s anonymous sources, different cops nearly shot a pair of NYCHA workers on a project rooftop recently:

    “[The elevator workers] were basically told the reason was because of recent incidents where cops had pulled a gun on a caretaker and a supervisor on the roof of a housing project,” a source said.

    “No one got shot, but they also referred to the cop shooting and were told, ‘We’re doing this for your protection. Your lives are in jeopardy, and we don’t want you to get hurt,’ ” the source said

    One Housing boss told his workers that the move was for their own good because cops are “trigger happy,’’ the sources said.

    The new rule also requires workers to wear badges around their necks instead of in their pockets—“We don’t want you reaching around in back pocket. That could be another reason for a cop to shoot you,” a NYCHA supervisor said, according to a worker who spoke with the Post. NYCHA confirmed the existence of the policy, but denied that it was “tied to any particular incident.”

    The logic behind the rule says that if a cop recognizes the person in front of him as a maintenance worker, he won’t unload his gun as quickly as he otherwise might. And if wearing a vest can save a city employee from accidental death at the hands of the police, that’s great. But what about the people who actually live in the projects?

    Orange vests for everyone!

    We were just told that the mayor of #Ferguson won’t talk about the petition in the meeting, but a written statement will be released tonight;
    #Ferguson residents line up outside of city hall, group organizer plans to address the petition to recall the mayor;
    They have stopped letting people in the #Fergcc meeting. Room at capacity. #FergusonRecall

  242. says

    White people are the default for Google images:

    Johanna Burai, a student at Stockholm’s Beckmans College of Design, summarized what she believes to be the whiteness of the Internet in her final project called World White Web. “This is a crystal clear example of how the norm of whiteness manifests itself—the white body is neutral. The search result is just one example of how being white is a norm in society,” she told The Fader.

    Burai published several images of hands with different skin tones on her project’s website and encouraged people to share them on social media to bump them higher up in the search results. “Sharing on websites like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter can boost the ranking on Google. Make sure that you make your posts ‘public’ so that others may share them,” the website says.

    Look at all the white people indeed.

  243. says

    From Vocativ, Immigration Canada not a fan of interracial marriages, poor people:

    Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been put on the defensive after “racist and offensive” training guidelines, designed to identify “non-genuine marital relationships,” were made public. The document was obtained and distributed by Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Steven Meurrens, and lists a set of criteria that immigration officials used—between 2007 and 2012—to weed out potentially fraudulent marriages.

    These criteria include Chinese nationals marrying non-Chinese persons, small wedding receptions held in restaurants, lack of a diamond ring, and no honeymoon due to the couple’s financial constraints. Touching too much in photos, or not touching enough in photos, and trips to Niagara Falls were also frowned upon.

    “I am surprised that a Chinese marrying a non-Chinese, or a Canadian who is poor trying to sponsor a spouse, is an indicator of marriage fraud. That they actually put that in writing is surprising,” said Meurrens. “I’d like to think that most immigration officers would realize how ridiculous that part of training was and would just ignore it.”

    When contacted by Canadian newspaper The Star, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada representative did not agree that the memo was racist, and made no mention of the discrimination against lower-income couples.

    “The specific document you are referencing was an ad hoc document issued to officers nearly five years ago in response to an observed temporary spike in cases of marriages of convenience,” said department spokesperson, Nancy Caron. “The instruction has not been active for more than three years, as the conditions that led to the instruction being issued subsequently changed.”

  244. rq says

    Attention Anyone that has been harassed, ticketed, arrested, etc. in Ferguson, DOJ is willing to have a meeting for us tomorrow on policing.
    @Nomoremurderz This meeting will be with DOJ & the Police Mediator that Ferguson hired. Wed. After 6 PM. Please let me know ASAP.

    Calling All Dorothys! NBC’s The Wiz Will Have Open Call, in case anyone’s stage-ready.

    A claim that Chicago police officers deleted footage from a security camera located near where 17-year old Laquan McDonald was shot and killed. Carol Marin investigates. NBC5 News @10. Should be an article up by tomorrow, too.

    Here’s the Bizarre Weapon Cops Will Be Using to Prevent Another Ferguson – and, as noted via twitter, by ‘Ferguson’ they mean the protests, not the killing of Michael Brown.

    When citizens hit the streets of Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the deaths of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown, two young black men who died at the hands of law enforcement, police used tear gas and rubber bullets to control the crowds. Now they have a new non-lethal tool: stink bombs, also known as malodorants.

    The weapon of choice in this case is called Skunk, and Defense One reports that a company called Mistral has been providing it to police departments feeling nervous about civil unrest.

    How it works: Skunk is a yellow liquid made from baking soda, yeast and amino acids. The smell has been described as garbage, human waste, dirty socks, rotting meat and an open sewer. Mistral reps claim the smell can be removed from your body only with a “special soap.”

    There are a number of ways police can stink-bomb a protest or gathering. In 2008, the military drafted plans for an artillery shell that would explode in the air and carpet whole acres of land with a cluster of small, parachuting stink bombs. Skunk is much less sophisticated: Police can simply load it onto a truck and spray it as a mist from a hose.

    Police tactics are growing more brutal: An increasing number of departments around the country have been arming themselves like the military as protest movements and civil unrest make local law enforcement officials nervous.

    Some departments are now considering crowd-control tactics usually reserved for violent civilian conflicts. Skunk is notorious for its popularity with the Israeli Defense Force, which regularly uses stink bombs on Palestinian protesters. The IDF has said repeatedly it’s only used Skunk when protesters get violent, but Palestinians have insisted that Skunk is used as collective punishment to discourage unrest.

    All of DOJ’s use of force policies for #Cleveland PD rely on an individual officer’s definition of reasonable, threat, & fear of one’s life.

  245. rq says

    Praise and disappointment for Ferguson Mayor Knowles as recall effort moves forward

    Many gathered to speak for and against Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III at Tuesday night’s Ferguson City Council meeting. Earlier in the day, reports surfaced that a petition to recall the mayor would be turned into the city clerk and presented to the council at the meeting. However, the petition was never filed.

    Alicia Street, a member of Ground Level Support, the organization behind the recall effort, told St. Louis Public Radio Tuesday night that the group was unable to file the petition because the city clerk had been out of the office in the afternoon.
    A packed house at the Ferguson City Council meeting.
    A packed house at the Ferguson City Council meeting.
    Credit Emanuele Berry | St. Louis Public Radio

    Mayor Knowles removal from office has been a goal of many protesters since Michael Brown, a black 18 year old, was shot and killed by a white Ferguson police officer in August. Street said Knowles needs to be held accountable for what’s happened in Ferguson.

    “You have three main heads in Ferguson,” Street said. “You have the chief of police. You also have the city manager, and you have the mayor. They control this city and two of them stepped down after the DOJ (the Department of Justice issued a highly critical report) and we believe that Mayor Knowles needs to do the same thing.”

    Street said Ground Level Support has collected “enough” signatures for a recall. Enough in this case means “fifteen percent of the total number of registered voters eligible to vote for such officer at the last election for such office.” That’s around 1,800 signatures.

    Street said they plan to turn those signatures over to the city clerk “soon.” [..]

    “With last August’s events. I just think you have shown great stamina and with working for progress or to move forward,” Dreifke said. “I think that’s what you’ve tried for all along, so I don’t know where this is coming from, to go after you.”

    Dreifke’s also expressed concern about the cost of a recall election. She asked the council who would have to foot the bill for a recall vote and was told it would be the city’s financial responsibility.

    Ferguson resident, Blake Ashby also complimented the mayor on his conduct since Brown’s death.

    “Yes, I could probably point to a line or two that could have been said a little differently ( by Knowles),” Ashby said. “Yes, I could probably point to a line or two that was probably taken out of context. But given the extremity of the situation, I think you’ve done a very good job.”

    Ashby said although many people would like to see the mayor removed, he doesn’t think the mayor being recalled will help the community move forward.

    “At the end of the day you are one of seven people that make the decisions, so you are 14 percent of the power structure,” Ashby said to the council. “We will spend tens of thousands of dollars and in all likelihood we will continue to have you as our mayor. So you know, I want Ferguson to move forward. I support greater transparency. I also support changes to the police department and the court system. I support all of the goals that many of the people in this room share. I’m just not convinced that spending money to remove you, of all people, is going to help that,” Ashby said.

    During the meeting Knowles did not acknowledge the recall effort. He did close the gathering by saying he appreciated hearing different perspectives from the audience.

    “You know for the last nine months … probably the hardest thing to do, is to take not criticism, but take criticism that comes from both sides,” he said. “And at times I’ve looked in the mirror and said maybe that means I’m doing something right, because one thing I’m not trying to do is take a side. I’ve never felt that taking a side is moving a community forward, bringing people together,” Knowles said.

    Although the council did not verbally mention the recall petition, it did issue a statement.

    If the petition’s signatures are verified by the County Board of Election, the city council would set a date to vote on the recall. If a majority of voters favor the recall then the city charter says “the mayor pro tempore shall fill the vacancy until the next possible regular or special election.” Also according to the charter, the mayor pro tempore will be selected by the council from among its members.

    Fourth staffer leaving Rawlings-Blake’s criminal justice team, though leaving, or sent away?

    The highest-ranking remaining member of the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice has submitted her resignation, officials confirmed Tuesday.

    Shannon Cosgrove, deputy director of the office, will be the fourth member of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s criminal justice team to leave in recent weeks.

    Three others have left the office as Baltimore endures a rash of homicides and other violence following last month’s rioting and unrest.

    Attempts to reach Cosgrove for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday. A spokesman for Rawlings-Blake could not immediately say when Cosgrove’s last day would be. […]

    The City Council is expected to discuss the turnover and the mayor’s strategy for addressing the surge in violence at a budget hearing Wednesday. This month has become the city’s deadliest since 1999, with at least 35 people killed. More than 100 people have been killed in Baltimore this year.

    Normandy Middle School students upset over lowered expectations, because it seems like nobody is interested in the children’s actual futures.

    In their continuing struggle to raise test scores and regain accreditation, leaders of the Normandy school district have stressed a positive message: high expectations, strict standards, no excuses.

    But students at the often-troubled Normandy Middle School have learned a different lesson.

    Earlier in the year, school officials said that for eighth graders to move up to the high school, they needed a 2.0 grade average. Now, in the waning weeks of the school year, that threshold was suddenly lowered, without warning or explanation, to 1.0 average.

    Eighth graders Kayvion Calvert and Unique Snelson never had to worry about whether they would be moving up to ninth grade. Unique’s grade point average is 3.8, and Kayvion has a 3.7 on a scale that has 4.0 as the top.

    But when they heard about the new policy, they wondered why the call for high expectations had suddenly been reversed, and why students who haven’t seemed to care about doing good work should even bother now. They got in touch with a reporter to make their disappointment known.[…]

    Normandy Middle School has not been one of the bright spots in a district that has had its problems with academic achievement. Both academically and in terms of discipline, the district’s new superintendent, Charles Pearson, has been the latest administrator to acknowledge that the school has fallen short.

    “We cannot ignore the fact that our middle school has had some serious issues,” he told a meeting of the district’s appointed governing board earlier this month. “We need to start doing some things differently.”

    To try to improve the situation, Pearson has proposed moving sixth graders out of the middle school, back to elementary schools, and leaving just seventh and eighth graders in the middle school. Normandy Middle School will also have a new principal in the coming year after the contract of Principal GeNita Williams was not renewed. […]

    During a 35-minute discussion last week about their time in Normandy, at the public library across Natural Bridge from the middle school, the two students – wearing their class T-shirts – talked about how difficult it is for good students to get the nurturing and challenges that they need.

    In math class, for example, Unique said she had worksheets with four or five problems, often simple addition and multiplication. That’s not the kind of rigor students need to get ready for high school, she said.

    “I do not feel that I have everything that I need,” she said. “I have some of the basics, but not everything that I could have if we didn’t have distractions in our classroom. I do feel disrespected, and I’m wasting my time.

    “I come to school to learn, expecting to learn. We have Sally and Susie over here talking and laughing. Then the teacher has to put them out of class, and they’re in and out of the door, so by the end of the hour I haven’t learned anything at all.”

    That kind of atmosphere, Kayvion said, does no one any good – top students or those who are struggling.

    “You send those people to high school,” he said of the ones scraping by with a 1.0, “and they’re not ready. Basically you’re setting them up for failure. When you get to high school, it’s not based on grades anymore. It’s based on credits.

    “So if you send them, and they’re freshmen, but they don’t have everything that they need to be on that level, then they’re not going to get their credits. By the end of the school year, when everybody else graduates, they’re still going to be back in the same grade they were in next year.” […]

    To help get misbehaving and underachieving students back on track, Unique and Kayvion said the answer is not the kinds of in-school (ISS) or out-of-school suspensions that Normandy is using now.

    “With ISS,” he said, “they don’t do anything. It’s just like a normal regular classroom, with 40 or 50 students, mixed grade levels. They’re just sitting in there talking on their phones, throwing stuff around, and they have the teacher in there standing at the door with a walkie-talkie, acting as a security guard. That’s not right.”

    Unique had this answer:

    “I think they need to be sent to an alternative school, where they’re going to have people who are going to put their foot down and be serious, not letting them slide and still having fun and it’s just a big party. That’s how they see ISS at our school, that it’s just a time to go and have fun. They’re finding ways to go to ISS just so they can go in there and have fun and do what they do.”

    Is the problem related to race? Unique said it’s more a question of resources.

    “When we try to use the Internet,” she said, “it’s slow, and it shuts down. I know that has nothing to do with race, but I feel we don’t have what we need or what we could have to achieve better.

    “You look at all the predominantly black schools, and they’re slowly failing. You go to the predominantly white schools, and they’re just getting better and better. It doesn’t add up to me. … You can’t have somebody trying to teach someone if they can’t really connect and understand what’s going on and what’s happening. You can’t teach somebody to walk a dog if they’re not used to dogs.”

    Both students would like to see Normandy’s requirements become more stringent, to change a culture where it is too easy to slide by, sometimes with grown-ups not seeming to care.

    “We need to put our foot down,” Unique said. “If we say that you can’t pass with anything less than a 2.0, you need to stick with that. We have to be more strict, and stick to our word and adjust to our atmosphere. I think that’s some of the problems that some of our teachers have. Where they came from is different to where they are now, so it’s hard for them to adjust to the different attitude to control some of us.”

    “In Normandy, it’s different,” Kayvion said. “You have to be constantly on them. I know some teachers don’t like fussing or yelling at their students, but at Normandy, that’s what you have to do to have them understand. What they’re doing now is not working.”

    So, less police, eh? Stenger, Belmar aren’t through pushing for police tax vote

    St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger plans to renew his push to allow unincorporated St. Louis County residents to vote on a sales tax increase for the St. Louis County Police Department. State legislation is needed to authorize such an election for the department that patrols unincorporated parts of St. Louis County, including large portions of the northern and southern parts of the county.

    But the bill, which would allowed the County Council to set a vote on a one-half cent sales tax increase, got intertwined with efforts to revamp the county sales tax distribution system. That has always been a highly controversial idea. Ultimately, the measure didn’t cross the legislative finish line when the General Assembly adjourned earlier this month.
    St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger delivers his inaugural address on Jan. 1, 2015. Stenger is coming into office with an ambitious agenda to change St. Louis County government — and the legislative alliances to help him out.

    During his press availability last week, Stenger also chalked up the legislative loss to the relative newness of his administration when the legislature convened in January.

    “Our approach this time was dictated by the fact that we were a new administration and we were just coming in at the beginning of session,” Stenger said. “The first thing we had to do is assess our needs once we took office. So the next time, there will be a different strategy. We’re an administration that’s already in place. We enter the year understanding that’s a need. And so, our approach will be different.”

    Stenger wouldn’t provide details of the new strategy or how he’d avoid getting the take hike entangled in the sales tax distribution issue. But he did say he would “redouble” the county’s efforts to get the enabling legislation through the General Assembly.

    He also said the fact that new speaker of the Missouri House – Todd Richardson – isn’t from the St. Louis area shouldn’t have an effect on the county’s prospects.

    “We’ve worked [with Richardson] on other issues,” Stenger said. “Certainly, a different speaker is going to make a difference. And the fact that the speaker is not from the St. Louis area will make a difference. But we’ll determine the appropriate strategy. And it’s a priority, and we want to get that passed.” [..]

    Councilwoman Colleen Wasinger, R-Huntleigh, said she has no philosophical objection to letting people vote on tax increases. But she added that Stenger would have make a case that the tax increase is needed – and subsequently explain how the revenue will be spent.

    “You have to back up and say ‘well is this needed? How much money are we talking about raising? What are we going to do with the money that we currently have? And why isn’t that enough to cover the proposed increase that Steve is looking to pay for county police?’” Wasinger said on the Politically Speaking podcast before the legislature adjourned.

    “But ultimately, I think, it should be up to the voters to decide,” she added. “Whether or not there should be a sales tax? There’s a debate on that too. Is it a regressive tax? At what point do we stop passing these sales taxes?”

    PZ’s latest on police brutality, How to deal with a medical emergency.

    St. Louis County Admits It Has A Jail Problem, Is Finally Getting Help

    For St. Louis County, the first step is admitting there’s a problem. For years, the county has enabled small municipalities scrounging for funds to exploit citizens for money. After slapping residents with fines for offenses like overgrown grass, saggy pants and “manner of walking,” municipalities have used the threat of incarceration as a brutal tool for ensuring that citizens pay up and help close government budget gaps. Part-time municipal judges working just a few hours a month in a network of dozens of tiny courts in towns of just a few hundred or a few thousand people conspired with city officials to put profits above justice.

    Using police departments and courts to generate revenue, unsurprisingly, has ruined relationships between officers and the citizens they are supposed to serve. But things didn’t really hit rock bottom until August, after a police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, sparking protests against police that at times turned violent.

    After years of denial about the extent of St. Louis County’s problems, some leaders are ready to take inventory and make amends. When they learned about the Safety and Justice Challenge from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, officials saw their chance to rehabilitate their approach to incarceration.

    On Wednesday, the MacArthur Foundation will announce that St. Louis County is one of just 20 jurisdictions across the county that will receive $150,000 to develop a multi-step plan to improve the local justice system, with the goal of reducing unnecessary over-incarceration. As part of the effort, 10 of those 20 jurisdictions will receive up to $2 million annually for two years to bring their plan to fruition. […]

    “Ferguson has shown that there is a lot of unnecessary incarceration here. I think everybody agrees to that. It isn’t always that the incarceration is unconstitutional, it’s just unnecessary,” Vatterott said.

    In an interview ahead of the announcement, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called the reform effort a “positive that came out of a tragedy.” While noting that roughly half of the dozens upon dozens of police departments in St. Louis County were “legitimate” in his view, Belmar said that there were many that didn’t exist for the right reasons. The county has so many police departments that it’s impossible for him to even know the name of every police chief, Belmar said.

    “You have 92 governments, and 60 some odd police departments and 83 or so courts,” he said. “The parts don’t equal the sum. It’s one of these issues to where it’s very difficult to manage large situations because there are so many fractionalized agencies coming to the forefront trying to work together under different general orders, protocols and guidelines.”

    “It was patently obvious that certainly not all, but some agencies, some governments here in St. Louis County were using traffic fine revenue to prop their cities up and prop their police departments up,” Belmar said. “Unfortunately, we do have police departments here in St. Louis County that exist, I believe, for the wrong reasons.”

    T.R. Carr, a member of the St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioners as well as the Ferguson Commission, said the grant came along “at an ideal time” for St. Louis.

    “We’re aware of the problem,” Carr said. “We really believe that this grant will help us reduce the number of nonviolent individuals being [unnecessarily] incarcerated.” He added that St. Louis County residents were generally not aware of how much of a hinderance the fragmentation was to law enforcement services, and it wasn’t until the protests in Ferguson that the issue really came under close scrutiny.

    “Once the discontent began to emerge in Ferguson, everything shifted. Why is the public so upset with law enforcement? It’s really the way they’re treated in terms of municipal courts. They perceived that police departments, some of these small municipal police departments, were just acting as an arm of the court as a way to generate revenue,” Carr said.

    St. Louis County will be working with officials from the University of Missouri-St. Louis as part of the effort. Nasser Arshadi, vice provost for research at the university, said that he thinks the MacArthur Foundation was attracted to the strength of the commitment from various officials in St. Louis County.

    “They really have shown real good intentions in trying to do something to reform the current system,” he said. […]

    Belmar acknowledged that the protests in Ferguson have given a voice to populations that had been overlooked in the past.

    “If you went to a very affluent area in St. Louis County, how long do you think a program would last where speed cameras were put up on arterial roads coming into subdivisions, and people were given letters saying they were going to be arrested? It would last about five hours,” Belmar said. “You know that and I know that, and that’s part of the problem. Yet in areas that are not as affluent, and where folks really are struggling with issues of poverty and education and crime and everything else that goes along with it — unemployment — they don’t have the ability really to voice that opinion. They can’t leverage change. So that’s a good thing that’s come out of all this.”

  246. rq says

    Judges telling Black boys they never should have been born. Violence in system goes well beyond police. It’s in the attached transcript.

    CPD cops posed for photo standing over black man dressed in antlers – for some reason, this seems especially sickening to me right now.

    It’s a racially charged photo the Chicago Police Department didn’t want the public to see: two white cops posing with rifles as they stand over a black man lying on his belly with deer antlers on his head.

    But a Cook County judge has refused to keep secret the shocking image of former Officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan kneeling with what the police department says is an unidentified African-American drug suspect.

    RELATED: About a photo we could not withhold from you

    Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013 and resulted in McDermott, a clout-heavy cop, being fired last year by the police board in a 5-to-4 vote. The four dissenters said McDermott should only have been suspended. But a majority of the board wrote that “appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience.”

    McDermott, who has been driving a truck to support his family, is now appealing his dismissal in court.

    Even though police Supt. Garry McCarthy moved to fire McDermott, attorneys for the police department and McDermott both asked Judge Thomas Allen to keep the photo under seal earlier this year.

    They said they wanted to protect the privacy of the unidentified African-American man. Allen denied their request in March. The Sun-Times recently obtained a copy of the photo in the court file.

    Federal prosecutors gave the photo to police investigators in 2013 about two years after Finnigan — the notorious other cop in the picture — was sentenced to 12 years in prison for leading a crew of rogue cops in robberies, home invasions and other crimes.

    The photo comes to light as conflicts in recent months between white police officers and black suspects have gained national attention and sparked national protests, and as McCarthy himself has started a listening tour throughout Chicago to improve the frayed relations between police and the black and Hispanic communities. Separately, the police board has come under scrutiny as aldermen have called for new members on a panel whose longtime chairman continues to serve, despite his term expiring in August 2014.

    McCarthy said in a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times that the photo “is disgusting, and the despicable actions of these two former officers have no place in our police department or in our society. As the superintendent of this department, and as a resident of our city, I will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that is why neither of these officers works for CPD today. I fired one of the officers and would have fired the other if he hadn’t already been fired by the time I found out about the picture. Our residents deserve better than this, as do the thousands of good men and women in this department.” […]

    When the feds confronted Finnigan with the photo, he told them he and McDermott arrested the African-American man for having “20 bags of weed” and the man provided them with the rifles, according to court records. The photo was taken in the tactical office of the Harrison Police District on the West Side, Finnigan said.

    But the police department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs says it was unable to identify the African-American man in the photo.

    Finnigan and McDermott did not file an arrest report involving the man, according to court records.

    Finnigan told the FBI the man didn’t have a serious criminal background so they let him go without arresting him, a law enforcement source said, adding that the photo was taken in “the spur of the moment.”

    The person who took the photo hasn’t been identified, either.

    Sgt. Michael Barz of internal affairs interviewed McDermott in June 2013.

    “I do remember an incident where I took a photo with Finnigan and it appears that this is it,” McDermott said in a transcript of the interview. “Finnigan called me over, told me to get in the picture and I sat in the picture. The photo was taken, and I went back to the business I was doing that day.”

    McDermott said he could not remember when or where the photo was taken, or anything about the man with the antlers. […]

    A cop who posed in front of the Southwest Airlines jet that ran off a runway at Midway Airport, struck a vehicle and killed a child in 2005 received a one-day suspension after the photo made the rounds on the Internet. And a police commander who took a photo of a handcuffed protester as he knelt before a line of cops in riot gear received a reprimand after that image hit the Internet.

    But the police board’s hearing officer would not consider those cases because the police department handled them internally without involving the board. She said she could compare McDermott’s case only with other police board cases.

    In his closing arguments at the police board hearing, Herbert emphasized the lack of information about where and when the photo was taken — and the mystery surrounding the African-American man’s identity.

    “What’s to say this individual wasn’t performing at a Christmas pageant in the district and was dressed as a reindeer and had taken the reindeer suit off? Again, I don’t mean to make preposterous arguments, but the charges in this case, they warrant that,” he said.

    Herbert also compared the photo to an episode of “Seinfeld” in which Jerry is wrongly accused of picking his nose.

    Herbert said there was strong evidence in the photo that the African-American man was a “willing participant” and was not coerced to pose with antlers. He even questioned whether the guns were really broomsticks carved to look like weapons.

    Phil Cline, the former police superintendent, spoke on behalf of McDermott, who had earned 74 department awards during his career. He called McDermott a “very hard-working policeman, the type of policeman I wanted working for us and his character was impeccable.”

    McDermott is the stepson of former Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Thomas Byrne, who also spoke glowingly of him during the police board hearing. Byrne was a powerful figure within former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration and later went on to run the Department of Streets and Sanitation for Daley.

    Court records show McDermott was a defendant in four federal lawsuits accusing him and other officers of misconduct while he was assigned to the Special Operations Section and later, when he was a detective.

    The city paid settlements in three of the cases and a jury awarded damages in a fourth case — with a total payout of $162,000. The city also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, records show.

    But the lawsuits did not come up at McDermott’s police board hearing.

    Willing participant or no, that is not a picture that should have been taken with or by the police. At all.

    Chicago Police Put Antlers On Black Man and Posed For Pictures, The Intercept with the same story.

    how many. cleveland.

    So let’s go! Here’s the schedule of brilliant black feature filmmakers standing with @AFFRM. Tweet them via #ARRAY!

    Stopped by #VonderritMyers memorial this morning. @deray

  247. rq says

    @deray Sure it does: All the registrations LOST BY THE STATE ARE FROM BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS! That’s Voter Fraud right there: by the STATE. There was a discussion on voter ID fraud. Just sayin’.

    #BaltimoreUprising. (via @Nettaaaaaaaa) (photo)

    @deray Just look at #KellyThomas. About 5+ Ferguson officers beat an ill homeless guy to death w/ fist & torch, on camera, acquitted.

    Unrest will cost city $20 million, officials estimate – that’s Baltimore, anyone who’s wondering.

    The expenses — which go before the city’s spending board for approval Wednesday — include overtime for police and firefighters, damage to city-owned property and repaying other jurisdictions for police and other assistance.

    Henry J. Raymond, Baltimore’s finance director, said the city can temporarily cover the costs from its rainy day fund while seeking reimbursement for up to 75 percent from Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    “The city remains on strong financial footing,” Raymond said. “Hopefully, with the FEMA reimbursement, it will reduce the financial stress that we’re under. In terms of the city’s overall revenue structure, we’re on firm footing and we’ll move forward.”

    Both Gov. Larry Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake have requested federal aid.

    Hogan has asked President Barack Obama to issue a disaster declaration so the city and state can be reimbursed for some expenses, officials said. Rawlings-Blake, meanwhile, encouraged city-based businesses to apply for aid from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Baltimore Development Corp.

    The $20 million estimate released by city officials does not include the cost to businesses of the unrest. The figure also does not include state or federal costs. It’s unclear when those figures will be tallied.

    Raymond said the $20 million in direct costs is based on figures submitted by various city agencies. He did not provide a breakdown, but said the figure also includes the cost to purchase equipment, such as riot gear and tear gas canisters, and pay for public works crews to clean city streets.

    He said the cost of the civil disturbance is expected to be larger when accounting for future lost taxes and economic impact.

    A preliminary economic impact estimate included in Hogan’s request for the disaster declaration put the cost at $30.5 million. That included the loss of conventions, hospitality and leisure spending, and tourism from Orioles games that were closed to the public or moved to Tampa Bay, Fla.

    As for the more than 380 businesses damaged during the unrest, Rawlings-Blake said loans and grants are available to pay to fix the destruction. She joined Baltimore Development Corp. President Bill Cole at a news conference Tuesday in Highlandtown.

    “Storefront recovery grants can be awarded as quickly as a day or two,” Cole said. He did not have information about how many grants and loans the city has awarded thus far.

    Cole said the BDC is offering grants of up to $5,000 and zero-interest loans of up to $35,000. He said those loans could be converted into grants.

    Businesses may also be eligible for loans from the Small Business Administration, which has estimated business damages of at least $9 million. The city will assist those seeking federal funds, Cole said.

    Raymond said the city will continue to monitor the impact on income taxes from lost wages when businesses were closed, as well as decreases in property tax collections from the destruction and other costs.

    A final figure is expected within the next several weeks.

    Racist tweets from a Clark County OH deputy re: the Baltimore protests. Likens protesters to apes #BaltimoreUprising

    The shocking truth about the two Chicago Police officers posing in this horrendous photo, Shaun King on the antler picture.

    The Chicago Police Department fought to keep private this horrendous photo taken between 1999 and 2003 of Officers Jerome Finnigan and Timothy McDermott posing with a black man as if he were a dead deer.

    Maybe it’s because the cash-strapped city has already paid over a half a billion dollars in settlements because of police misconduct the past 10 years alone?

    Maybe it’s because it was recently revealed that the Chicago Police Department has a secret facility it has been using to harass people off the record?

    Maybe it’s because the City of Chicago just passed a reparations bill for the many victims their police have tortured?

    Even more likely, though, is that they really didn’t want the identity of these two officers in the spotlight.

    Officer Jerome Finnigan

    Officer Jerome Finnigan, pictured on the left, is in prison for ordering a hit on another officer. Known as one of the most corrupt officers in the history of the Chicago Police Department, details of his crimes—as part of the department’s secretive Special Operations Section—continue to emerge to this day. […]

    Officer Timothy McDermott, pictured on the right, was able to not only get away with the consequences of this offensive photo for more than a decade, but the consequences of a long trail of corruption during his time with the SOS and as a detective for the CPD.

    In an attempt to explain why he would take such a photo, McDermott’s answer is as preposterous as it gets: He blamed his young age. But he was at the time a fully grown man, serving in a special unit of the CPD when the photo was taken. […]

    McDermott served in the same corrupt private squad, the SOS, with Finnigan for four years. During that time, he was named in four different lawsuits.

    The report against McDermott shows the great lengths so many people went to protect him.

    In this lawsuit, Terrance Thompson, who had his sentence vacated after all the officers who arrested him were convicted for corruption, names McDermott as one of the officers who planted a gun on him and illegally detained him. As a consequence of a lawsuit, Thompson was eventually awarded $400,000 for the three years he spent in prison.

  248. says

    Here’s a review/synopsis (from Robert Carroll of The Skeptic’s Dictionary) of Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces:

    September 16, 2014. The front page of today’s Sacramento Bee honors the valor of fourteen California police officers. Three were involved in a deadly shootout with Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer charged in connection with a series of shooting attacks on police officers. The attacks left four people dead, including three police officers, and left three police officers wounded. Dorner shot himself in the head when he was cornered by the cops.

    Others honored by Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris included officers who stopped shooting rampages in Santa Monica and at Los Angeles International Airport, a San Bernardino County deputy who saved an adult and four children from a fire, and a Shasta County officer who rescued a fellow diver at Lake Shasta.

    None of these officers or any others who performed similar acts of heroism are mentioned in Radley Balko’s book on the rise of the warrior cop. Balko doesn’t deny that there are courageous men and women who wear the uniform of the police officer, but his focus is on what he calls the militarization of our police forces. Never mind that being armed better than most armies around the world allows our police officers to engage in deadly shootouts with the angry or demented killer on a rampage or a gang of equally well-armed bank robbers. Balko’s focus is on what cops do with all that military gear the rest of the time, when they’re not engaged in deadly shootouts to protect innocent citizens.

    Balko is concerned that, while the U.S. is not yet a police state, we are moving in that direction. He notes that we’re free to travel and free to write or say just about anything we want as long as we do it in an orderly fashion. Take to the streets to assemble and exercise what many take to be a right guaranteed by the Constitution and we run the risk of being attacked by the very people we pay to protect us from attackers. He notes that most of us will not have our doors kicked in during the middle of the night and have menacing weapons pointed at our heads while we watch our dogs being shot by cops who got the wrong address about a drug operation from a tipster nobody will ever hold accountable for any lies he tells or mistakes he makes. The most that the average citizen has to worry about from his local cop is being given a ticket for not making a complete stop at a stop sign even when there is nobody else on the road in the area. Unless, of course, you happen to be a person of color or mentally ill. In that case, there are no rules. You may be shot on the spot because you scared a cop. You made him fear for his life when you reached for your wallet or lunged at him with a ceremonial sword. You didn’t obey a command, so now you’re dead. The cops, of course, see it differently.

    According to Balko, some laws encourage the police to break the law and behave like the Mafia. Sabbatarian laws that shut down bars in New York City on Sundays led to organized crime on the part of the city’s cops. They extorted the bar owners: pay up and you can open your bar. Don’t pay and you will stay closed or go to jail if you try to open up. (This is my example, taken from a recent PBS program on Theodore Roosevelt and the Roosevelt clan.) The evil effects on law enforcement of our current drug laws are in a category that defies comparison. We let cops confiscate the property of innocent people. We arm them with weapons of mass destruction and invite them to break down our doors in the middle of the night on the basis of some scumbag informant whose reputation seems to mean nothing either to the cops or the judges who issue no-knock (“dynamic entry”) warrants. We let them terrorize citizens who are non-violent and little threat to the social order. On utilitarian grounds, we should legalize all drugs immediately, but Balko realizes that this will never happen in the U.S. There is way more harm being done to our society by the so-called war on drugs than is being done by drug users. We need to create police forces that put the lives of citizens above the lives of cops and who see that it is the duty of cops to serve and protect the citizens who pay their salaries. Balko seems to believe that the police see all of us as potential enemies who want to kill them. They are trained to kill us and our pets at the slightest provocation. And we ignore it all, as if nothing is happening. Too much social media? Too busy revealing the intimate and boring details of our lives while talking on our smart phones in public places? Too self-absorbed to care about privacy, the right to be left alone in one’s own home unless the police have a warrant for a specific purpose based on good evidence that we are committing a crime or conspiring to commit a crime? Too indifferent to care about the right to assemble and protest the actions of corporations, the government, or elected politicians and their insane policies? We live in a country where there are SWAT teams everywhere. We take them for granted. The SWAT team is now the face of law enforcement in the United States of America. Balko wants us to return to something called “community policing,” where cops walk a beat, know the people they serve, and have an ongoing friendly relationship with the communities they serve. Sounds like some sort of pipe dream.

    Reading this book awakened several unpleasant images that have been resting uncomfortably in my subconscious. Thanks to the magic of Google and the Internet, I can find facsimiles of my memories posted for all to see and I can reproduce them here to show you what it means to have other peoples’ lives flash before your eyes.

    The book is available at Amazon.

  249. rq says

    Racism: it doesn’t end with graduation. Teaching While Black: Exposing Institutional Racism at Claremont Middle School in Oakland

    Claremont Middle School is nestled in the affluent and predominantly white neighborhood known as Rockridge, Oakland. It is an open enrollment public institution consisting of a diverse socioeconomic population of students from all over the East Bay. Many parents send their children to Claremont in hopes of a better education, but something is amiss behind its school walls. There are talks of Claremont becoming a neighborhood school-welcome only to students found in the school’s backyard. To achieve this vision, the current administration is actively working to push out black students and teachers. In this year alone, the school has instituted inequitable student tracking, transferred and fired several black teachers, and eliminated a popular Ethnic Studies program. “The school will be all white in 3-4 years,” states History and former Ethnic Studies teacher Kurt Kaakuahiuu.

    It’s becoming increasingly evident that the school administration is feasting off of a culture of exclusion and intimidation to achieve its end goal. Claremont has had a troubled history for many years due to a massive amount of administrative turnover. However this began to change when Reggie and Ronnie Richardson were hired in 2011. The Richardsons were co-principals who were turning the school around; so much so, they received local and nationwide press. However the Richardsons did not return for the 2014-2015 school year, accepting a position instead with a neighboring school district. Once again, Claremont was left in a state of transition. The staff at Claremont prepared to collaborate with new principal Jonathan Mayer and Vice Principal Tonia Coleman. Former Afterschool Site Coordinator Aries Jordan noted, “It was unfortunate when (the Richardsons) left but I stayed because I’m committed to the children… I wanted to support the students through this transition.” […]

    When asked about the leadership style of the current administration, the consensus is it’s an epic failure, and openly hostile to minority staff and students. Eighth grade History teacher Mirishae McDonald asserts that the current curriculum ”negatively impacts learning outcomes for students of color.” When asked to elaborate, she discussed an eighth grade program called the “Leadership Academy,” in which the lowest performing students are pulled out of the general school population and put into a class for the entire school day. The vast majority of these students are black and they are taught by a white teacher. It’s known among many students as “the dumb class.” The Leadership Academy is a controversial and inequitable practice in the field of education. While the black students are in the “Leadership Academy,” the remaining youth (primarily white) are getting a more enriching education. Mirishae McDonald harshly criticizes it, “It’s another way of tracking, and it’s not good for the development of the students.” Student tracking is a way to fuel institutional racism and there seems to be other ways that racism surfaces in the administration’s practices.

    Kurt Kaaekuahiuu witnessed this firsthand during a teacher meeting in which Principal Mayer stated, “This is all about race. We know that the white kids will go to places like Stanford or Berkeley with or without our help. We would be lucky if black students at best graduated from high school and went to a junior college.” Another tracking program-“Math Intensive”- is happening concurrently in 7th grade. It’s a class designed for the more advanced students. Math teacher Alonna Haulcy teaches both Math Intensive as well as the traditional math class and notes, “I do think there are some (black) kids who are capable of being in Math Intensive. I’ve expressed that to the principal. He said he would have the department head look at their test scores and I never heard back from him.” […]

    Another major problem is Principal Mayer’s top-down approach along with an outward hostility towards any staff member who attempts to question his methods. Kaaekuahiuu states, “From the beginning, Claremont was framed from a complete deficit model. They looked at everything that was wrong with the school without prior knowledge or asking teachers.That says a lot about who you are as a manager.” Kurt used to be the Ethnic Studies teacher until he received an email that the school would no longer support the class. A 7th grader at Claremont reflects on the cancelled Ethnic Studies program: “All the students were engaged because he went outside of the book. His whole class was decorated with Ethnic Studies quotes and pictures. They were torn down by the end of the year and I wondered why.” Alonna Haulcy also feels constricted, “They’re not giving me my own voice. She noted that she is the only veteran teacher who is getting five classroom evaluations; something that is only required for new teachers. When she inquired about it Mayor gave no explanation; but she’s the only black teacher on the list.

    Aries Jordan also discusses her struggles working with the administration while coordinating the afterschool program which is “99.9 percent black.” Ms. Jordan had a difficult time running the program this year since the cafeteria burned down in February. Instead of the Claremont administration accommodating the program with unused classrooms in the school, they forced students to have their after school program outside despite cold weather conditions. Moreover, Principal Mayer claimed that he wanted to make technology a priority in the afterschool program however, Jordan’s students weren’t allowed to use the computer lab or the 60 Macbooks and laptops owned by the school. “They recommended this technology program to us and then turned around and denied us access to the abundant resources available.” states Jordan. Finally, the administration conceded by loaning 4 outdated MacBooks to the entire program. Apparently the Claremont administration wants to institute a tuition policy at the after school program next year; yet another barrier to access students will be up against. […]

    It started with Ms. Bebe, a staff member who challenged Principal Mayer’s thinking and also questioned his racial biases. Soon after, her position was consolidated and she was transferred. Mirishae McDonald was next. She continued to advocate for her students by questioning the administration’s tactics and was given a notice of non-reelect shortly afterward. A non-reelect is something that is possible for all teachers in OUSD to receive during their first two years of teaching. If a teacher receives a non-reelect, not only are they not allowed to teach in the school for the following year, but they are banned from teaching in OUSD. There is no due process and it’s left completely up to the principal’s discretion. According to Music teacher Vincent Tolliver-a teacher with 23 years of experience in OUSD,“Your evaluations are irrelevant. You can get good evaluations and it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s become a tool that an administrator can use to eliminate someone and not do their job of providing adequate training.” […]

    The New York Times recently published an article about racial disparities in the teaching field which showed that “despite the fact that minority students have become the majority in this country, more than 80 percent of teachers are white.” (Rich, 2015) The article cited this trend in major East Coast cities however, it’s something that extends into the city of Oakland. Claremont Middle School is not just an isolated incident of institutional racism fueled by poor leadership, it’s a microcosm highlighting the poor treatment of black teachers in the U.S public school system. It raises many questions regarding institutional racism, and if school systems truly believe in the ability and agency of black educators. When asked about his next steps, Kaaekuahiuu strongly states, “I needed a wake up call. I needed a grave reminder of the gross inequities and the systematic attack on black and brown communities. Classrooms are a political battlefront; me being present everyday is a political act. Nothing is neutral.” Aries Jordan reflects on her traumatic experience and remains hopeful and determined, “My goal is to connect my experience to what’s happening across the U.S. How many other educators of color are being pushed out?” Mirishae McDonald also remains courageously outspoken, “I will not be bullied into silence. We need to come together and show that we are not afraid.”

    The mind boggles. How do you come in and tear a good thing down without even examining what it does? Oh wait, I think the principal’s words there at the beginning say it all: “This is all about race. We know that the white kids will go to places like Stanford or Berkeley with or without our help. We would be lucky if black students at best graduated from high school and went to a junior college.”

    Dreams: The Case of Queer Deferment

    Since the weeks that I have known, I have thought a lot of Langston Hughes and his thoughts on dream deferment. Moving past, for now, what happens to a dream once it has been deferred, how is this idea conceptualized when deferment is incipient? It is no doubt compartmentalization, both societally and internally, that forces one to live a nightmare of a lie in order to deny the dream of their truth; but is there cognitive awareness of the deferment during the process? In order to achieve “success” in such detriment, I am forced to believe that there has to be a continual displacement of desire. Displacement that façades itself toward a realization that is unachievable, but ever hopeful of being imminent. Displacement that only masks the sight of innate desire but does little to actively “treat it”. Displacement that creates delusions to distract inquiring minds from questioning and rescinds the opportunity of space, agency, love (however false), and freedom to allow cogitation to be cognitively realized. My father has used sex and lies to prove a point of patriarchy, masculinity, and heterosexuality. Yet, even with five points of attempted distractions, my father has been, by and large, unsuccessful at denying his sexual affinities and realizing fatherhood beyond providing sperm to an egg.
    Juxtaposed against his own dream of what life might be as a lady’s man or a man’s man, my queerness has had to come as a nightmare for him. Queerness not only in regard of sexuality, but in the truest sense of the word: my aversions to celebrated sports for Black boys; my mannerisms that fell further on the feminine spectrum of gender expression; my desire to be and comfort around women and girls; and, lastly, my inability to relate or to love a man whom I should have adored and admired given our multitude of similarities and overlap. Yet I was only ever readily able to conjure fear. And he used fear to guide me to the path of masculine heterosexuality. And for his every failed attempt there remains a scarred memory in my lived experience.
    Returning to dreams post-deferment: I am curious how the outcomes apply to the bond my father and I share now. A bond that is only visible in genetic markers and soap operatic acts of humiliation. I’m forced to remember there are: years of lies, threats of violence, manipulation, a memory or two worthy of a smile, physical attacks, fire, botched haircuts, and a moment where I feared for my life. Then, there is clarity and decidedness. Life opened up for me when I decided that I would no longer entertain his presence in my life. But as it opened, life closed in on my father’s dream for me and, by extension, himself.

    “These men do not deserve to live. Without strong laws & consequences society gets chaotic,” – #deathpenaltyrepeal #Nebraska Yep, they had a hearing on the death penalty in Nebraska yesterday. This is only one quote. Others are, as you can imagine, just as bad. Including ones on abortion and the ‘pro-life’ crowd.

    Why Do All the Superheroes Have to Be White, and All the Thugs Black?

    There is little doubt that forced diversity can potentially weaken a story when it’s a clear departure from that story’s truth. This is not the case, however, with director Josh Trank’s “contemporary reimagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team.” Drawing inspiration from his own multiracial family, Trank’s goal is to normalize that representation in film, a medium which traditionally relies on a racially homogenous family structure that no longer reflects America. This makes sense. Still, so-called comic book purists are actually upset because Storm, a fictional teen who transports to another galaxy and gains superpowers through cosmic radiation, thus arming him for an epic battle against Dr. Doom, is no longer white.

    Yeah … no. That’s not how any of this works.

    Jordan responded to criticism with a forthright essay in Entertainment Weekly, writing in part:

    “Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, ‘I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.’ I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that ‘it has to be true to the comic book.’ Or maybe we have to reach past them.

    “To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in.”

    Unfortunately, the world we live in breeds the criticism Jordan is receiving. Some mainstream media outlets seem hell-bent on amplifying the parallel myths of white superiority and black inferiority. African-American men in particular are primarily packaged as “thugs,” wrapped in pathology so stifling that even when the opportunity presents itself, mainstream media won’t let them breathe. They don’t get to be heroes.

    This dogged determination to negatively stereotype black people—first in Ferguson, Mo., then in Baltimore—has become craftier in recent weeks. In the Waco, Texas, “Wild West” shootout between rival biker gangs, esteemed outlets such as CNN went out of their way to profile one African-American biker out of 170 men arrested, the vast majority of them white. When the federal government raided medical facilities (“pill mills”) that illegally sell and distribute prescription pain pills in a concerted effort to “crack down on prescription pain-drug abuse,” NBC featured the arrests of African-American medical professionals—despite 280 arrests being made over 15 months, and despite recent research by Recovery.org that found that white men are overwhelmingly the face of prescription-drug addiction.

    That dedication to privileging and protecting whiteness is also evident in film, making Jordan one of only a few black actors to ever be placed in the barrier-breaking position he now finds himself. Typically, Hollywood executives will find a way to make a character white—accuracy be damned. We’ve seen it with Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart, Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra and the whitewashing of the Exodus cast, because who cares about geography when there is a prime opportunity to paint black characters as the thugs of Mesopotamia.

    In both fantasy and reality, what is seen as power when wrapped in whiteness is often viewed as threat when wrapped in blackness. This sets the stage for a daily fight in which black people in this country often struggle to be acknowledged as human beings. That being the case, Michael B. Jordan’s playing Johnny Storm, a black man with superhuman powers, in a predominately white and historically racist genre is bound to be framed as “controversy” instead of what it really is—good ol’ boys rebelling against the slow dethroning of the “white savior.”

    What has become more and more clear is that the myth of white superiority partly relies on the perpetuation of white supremacy in dark movie theaters where prejudices and biases can hide behind overpriced popcorn and Twizzlers.

    Read that bit about the Waco shooting and the drug raid, one more time. Yeah. No racism at all.

    Black women in San Francisco arrested way more often than white women, report shows

    Black women in San Francisco are disproportionately arrested compared with their white counterparts, according to a new analysis of state arrest data from the Center on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

    Black women represent 5.8% of the city’s female population, but accounted for 45.5% of all female arrests in 2013, according to the report from the nonprofit, which works to reduce incarceration. For arrests related to weapons and narcotics—both felonies—black women made up 77% and 68% of all female arrests, respectively.

    Black women were arrested “at a per capita rate 13.4 times higher than women of other races,” says the report. San Francisco’s overall black population declined from 60,515 in 2000 to 48,870 in 2010.

    [chart]

    These shocking statistics come on the heels of a report released last Wednesday outlining what its authors call the dangerous criminalization of black women. In a year filled with countless protests, relentless media coverage, robust political and community organizing efforts aimed at addressing the over-policing and police-involved deaths of young black men, comparatively little has been said about the criminalization and vulnerability of black girls and women.

    Last Wednesday, a vigil was held in New York City’s Union Square to honor black girls and women killed by police. The next day, San, Francisco’s busiest streets were shut down by topless black protesters demanding they—and all women—be seen.

  251. rq says

    Gender and racial bias can be ‘unlearnt’ during sleep, new study suggests

    Distinct from overt sexism or racism, the study targeted so-called implicit biases, that can shade the way we respond to others. Project Implicit, a long-running online project by Harvard psychologists, has shown that 80% of people have a bias against the elderly, for instance, and that people often have a preference for white faces over black faces.

    Other research has revealed that these biases can have consequences – when playing a video game with instructions to shoot only people carrying weapons, players are more likely to shoot unarmed black targets. Another study showed that professors writing recommendation letters were more likely to introduce an element of doubt about junior female researchers than male ones – potentially skewing their chances of employment.

    “These biases are well-learned,” said Hu. “They can operate efficiently even when we have the good intention to avoid such biases. Moreover, we are often not aware of their influences on our behaviour.”

    The study, published in Science, began with two Pavlovian-style conditioning exercises designed to counter race and gender biases. In the first, participants were shown female faces with words linked to maths or science and in the second, black faces appeared with pleasant words.

    During the tasks, two distinctive sounds were played – one that came to be strongly associated with the gender pairs and the other with the race pairs.

    Following the training, participants took a 90 minute nap and once they entered a deep sleep, without their knowledge, one of the sounds was played repeatedly.

    After the counter-bias training exercise, and before the nap, people’s bias tended to have fallen, but without the extra cues during sleep, their level of bias had almost recovered to baseline after the nap. However, when participants were played the sound cues during sleep, their bias scores reduced by a further 56% compared to their pre-sleep score. Their scores remained reduced by around 20% compared to their initial baseline when the participants were tested one week later.

    The authors acknowledge that further experiments are needed to test how long the effect endures beyond the one-week mark and whether it translates into changes in behaviour.

    Now that is interesting.

    From Brianne Bilyeu and her Biodork blog, I found some posts she has on police brutality, racism, and protests – just some interesting reading with some neat thoughts, many of which I could relate to.
    Speaking Up;
    Secular Townhall: Ferguson and Beyond, this one with video by black freethinkers and atheists;
    Mayor de Blasio call for a temporary halt to protests (yes some of the posts are dated);
    Still Boycotting the Mall of America.

  252. says

    You.
    Have.
    Got.
    To.
    Be.
    Kidding.
    Me.
    Boulder cops declare rock stacking a jailable offense to stop local artist who spent 7 years crafting sculptures:

    In a Monday Facebook post, Grab explained that a Boulder police officer had informed him that there would be stiff penalties for continuing his art.

    “For the past 7 years i have been creating this art in and around Boulder, Colorado, USA. nearly every day!” he wrote. “[J]ust this weekend, one police officer has decided that balancing rocks in Boulder, Colorado is now illegal, obscurely referencing two city codes [5-4-8 and 5-4-2] about ‘destruction of public property’ in relation to rocks.”

    “So now the police have belligerently taken it upon themselves to write tickets and/or arrest ANYONE balancing rocks in Boulder, CO. and specifically threatened to ticket me and/or arrest me if they catch me in the future,” the artist lamented. “[I] encourage as many people as possible (especially locals) to contact the city council here in Boulder and voice your support for this long standing tradition in Boulder. [I]t is something that an overwhelming portion of the community supports.”

    Grab said that he would be forced to leave Boulder if the city council did not step in to clarify the city ordinances.

    Rooster Magazine wondered why Boulder police felt the need to focus on “Draconian rock art witch hunt” instead of higher-than-average rates of rape and theft.

    “Why is any of this important? Because if we ban every bizzaro Boulder character that causes a stir (see: nude gardening woman), we’re left with nothing more than a college town with a Target that’s about to become Google’s new headquarters,” the magazine noted. “At a time like this, we need less kid gloves in the form of overzealous legislation, and more attention paid to retaining the city’s core personality. And if you don’t like that, f*cking move to Westminster.”

    “Keep Boulder weird, and keep Gravity Glue making weird ass rock art.”

    In the end, the call to action worked. Grab said that the city attorney personally called to let him know that rock stacking was not illegal in Boulder.

    “UPDATE: holy shit! maybe the support was more than i anticipated!!” he exclaimed. “[J]ust got a call from the city attorney personally here in Boulder telling me that he has ordered the police to NOT cite rock balancing under the city codes [I] mentioned below!!!”

    Well I’m glad he won’t be arrested, but the troubling thing is they thought creating art by stacking rocks was an offense. What the unholy fuck?!

  254. rq says

    I thought this was something that should be noted here: Nebraska becomes the first conservative state in 40 years to repeal the death penalty. Gov’s veto overridden by 30 votes. #NERepeal
    An article on the same: Nebraska Lawmakers Override Governor’s Veto Of Death Penalty Repeal

    Lawmakers in Nebraska overrode Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto of their vote to repeal the death penalty, making it the first Republican-controlled state in the U.S. to repeal the death penalty since North Dakota in 1973. The vote was 30-19.

    As we reported Tuesday, Ricketts, a Republican, vetoed the legislation flanked by law enforcement personnel, murder victims’ family members and state lawmakers who support capital punishment. Opposition to the death penalty in the conservative state came from Republicans who were against it for religious or fiscal reasons, as well as from Democrats and independents.

    “The efforts and arguments of Nebraska conservatives are part of an emerging trend in the Republican Party, evidenced by the involvement of conservative Republicans in legislative efforts to repeal the death penalty in other states, such as Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming,” Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in a statement.

    Those who opposed capital punishment in Nebraska point out that the state hasn’t executed a prisoner since 1997.

    More horrible Republican comments about this at the link, if anyone’s interested. But yay Nebraska!

    We’re getting there. @deray @Nettaaaaaaaa, poster for a justice for John Crawford event.

    LAPD Det. at Center of Lawsuit for Framing Innocent Man Appears to Be Up to No Good

    By now you should be aware that Alford is the young man that had the crap beaten out of him in South Los Angeles courtesy of a bunch of Newton Division police officers. The video of this beaten hasn’t been released publicly—yet—but one of the officers involved has been charged with assault under color of authority. That officer—one Richard Garcia was the subject of a post I recently did entitled The LAPD Officer Who Might Just Be an Idiot.

    Attorney Harper sent out an interesting tweet asking for the LAPD police officer who dropped their badge while harassing her client to come by her office, with ID, to pick it up. She then went on to tweet a photo of a smiling detective who I’m guessing is outside of the Alford’s home.

    That of course piqued my interest.

    Clinton Alford and his attorney have long contended that since his unfortunate beat down by the LAPD, Alford and his family have been the subject of constant harassment by Newton Division officers. Alford even told reporters during a press conference that he was in fear of his life and that he didn’t think the officers were going to quit until they killed him.

    Well apparently during one of Newton’s many visits to the Alford’s home (aka harassment), a Los Angeles police badge was left behind—but not before a photo was taken of a smiling Richard Arciniega in his unmarked sedan.

    Now I’m told Arciniega is a detective, D3 to be exact, and not a police officer so I hope Arciniega was with an actual police officer because I cannot fathom for the life of me why a detective would be carrying around a police officer’s badge.

    Second, police officer or detective, what was Arciniega and whoever he was with doing that they would just up and lose a badge?

    Third, Arciniega is no stranger to us.

    He’s one of several LAPD officers at the center of an ongoing civil rights lawsuit filed in 2014 where he his accused of framing Ron Galvan for murder and paying a homeless pair $10,000 to falsely testify against him at trial.

    Roy Galvan, who was acquitted by a jury, spent 13 months in county jail awaiting trial in the 2011 murder of a reputed gang member in South Los Angeles.

    Galvan accusesd LAPD Officers Miguel Terrazas, David Nunn and Richard Arciniega of destroying evidence in the case, falsifying reports and bribing witnesses for statements, false arrest and malicious prosecution, among other claims of misconduct and civil rights violations.

    My, my, my.

    More at the link. Cops can be terrible people.

    Body cam video catches Barstow cops slamming black pregnant woman to ground, letting white woman go free

    Officials with the city of Barstow, California insisted this week that officers had acted properly when they used force to arrest a pregnant woman who refused to show them her identification, even though the charges were later dismissed.

    In police body camera video obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), an officer is responding to an apparent traffic dispute between Charlena Michelle Cooks, who is 8 months pregnant and black, and an unidentified white woman.
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    The officer first talks to the white woman, who accuses Cooks of acting “all crazy.”

    “I don’t see a crime that has been committed,” the officer admits after examining the woman’s car. After promising the woman a police report, the officer heads over to talk to Cooks.

    Cooks explains that the argument occurred because the woman disagreed with the way she was driving in the parking lot. Cooks also said that the woman frightened her daughter, who was in second grade.

    “She called the police for whatever reason, I don’t know,” Cooks says. “Should I feel threatened by her because she’s white? Because she’s white and she’s making threats to me?”

    At that point the officer asks for Cooks’ name, but she insists that she does not have to tell him.

    “I actually do have the right to ask you for your name,” the officer replies.

    “Let me make sure,” Cooks says as she makes a phone call to someone.

    The officer says he will give Cooks two minutes to verify his right to ask for her identification. But less than 20 seconds later, the officer and a colleague are performing a painful wristlock takedown on Cooks. The pregnant woman screams as she is forced belly first into the ground.

    “Why are you resisting?” the officer demands.

    “Please! I’m pregnant!” Cooks exclaims. “Please, stop this!”

    ACLU SoCal staff attorney Adrienna Wong pointed out that Cooks had a right to refuse to show her ID.

    “It would be a wrongful arrest, but it would be an arrest,” she noted. “Even if an officer is conducting an investigation, in California, unlike some other states, he can’t just require a person to provide ID for no reason.”

  256. rq says

    And because all black and brown lives matter, even in soccer, The human toll of FIFA’s corruption – yup, guess who’s paying!

    FIFA, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment that some would say is worthy of its reputation. The charges against a handful of senior FIFA officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that FIFA officials have been using the organization’s massive influence to line their pocketbooks.

    On the surface, it’s just another white collar crime story: rich, powerful men making themselves richer and more powerful. But a closer look suggests that there is a lot of real-world suffering happening as a direct result of FIFA’s decisions.

    For the most obvious example of this, look to Qatar. The decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the rich Gulf state with a terrible human rights record was a controversial one right out of the gate. There have been extensive allegations of bribery: why else, some figured, award the Cup to a tiny country with sweltering summer heat and no soccer culture to speak of?

    Human rights advocates’ worst fears about Qatar seemed to be confirmed as Qatar began building the infrastructure to host the Cup, and reports of migrant worker deaths started to pile up. The numbers, to the extent that we know them, appear startling: A Guardian investigation last year revealed that Nepalese migrant workers were dying at a rate of one every two days. In sum, the Guardian put the total Qatar death toll of workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh at 964 in 2012 and 2013.

    It is hard to know how many of those are specifically World Cup associated. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers come to Qatar each year, and there could be hundreds of deaths even without a World Cup — figures from the Indian embassy show, for instance, that 200+ Indian workers died in Qatar in 2010, before the World Cup announcement. But the numbers could also be worse: a report by the International Trade Union Confederation has estimated 1,200 deaths so far, with up to 4,000 additional worker deaths by 2022.

    In the chart below, I’ve compared those fatality numbers for Qatar with worker fatality estimates for other major international sporting events in recent years. Some of these numbers (like Sochi’s) are third-party estimates, others (like Beijing’s) are based on official numbers that are almost certainly an undercount. And it’s tough to do an apples-to-apples comparison here, since the Qatar estimates include the deaths of all migrant workers after the announcement of Qatar’s successful bid in 2010, while other countries’ figures may only include deaths directly related to, say, stadium construction.

    The infographic there in the middle, that one. o.o

    LaVena Johnson, ruled suicide by U.S. Army, yet her autopsy: broken teeth, bite marks, broken nose, burned genitalia. Going to have to look this one up a bit. :(

    Packed Room: Prep Session for #BlackGirlsMatter Town Hall tomorrow at 6:00 at the African Heritage Cultural Center, yay events!

    Here’s a thought: @deray I’ve never heard of Union busters targeting police unions, but they sure love to go after the teacher’s unions.

    Nebraska abolishes death penalty, one more on that.

    Officers in Freddie Gray case file for change of venue, and you’ll never guess the reason why!!! (Sorry.)

    The case has drawn international attention and intense media coverage, and defense attorneys contend that not enough time has passed to permit “the type of healing and reconciliation in the community that would be needed to dampen the effects of the events surrounding the case.”

    The attorneys also sought to contrast the Gray case with other high-profile trials that weren’t moved, including the case against the Boston marathon bomber. They argued that Baltimore City draws from a much smaller jury pool than those larger cities.

    “Based on the relative size and characteristics of Baltimore City, the prejudicial information that has penetrated every form of online, printed and broadcast media, and the short time between the alleged crimes and the trial(s), the presumption of prejudice prevents the Officers in this case from receiving fair trials,” the attorneys wrote.

    The state’s attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the filing. […]

    In their venue motion in Baltimore Circuit Court, the attorneys refer to a 2011 excessive force civil case against six Baltimore police officers. In that case, the officers arrested a 7-year-old for illegally riding a dirt bike and later handcuffed him to a bench at police headquarters. The child’s mother, Lakisa Dinkins, sued for more than $700,000 in compensatory damages.

    Attorneys in the Gray case called that case “similar to, but much more temperate” than the one against their clients. The Dinkins case was moved to Howard County after the Court of Special Appeals upheld a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge’s decision to grant a change of venue.

    A Howard County jury rejected the family’s civil suit, even after a judge ruled that the arrest of the boy was illegal.

    As for the Boston bombing trial against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which remained in Massachusetts federal court, the attorneys in the Gray case noted that the jury pool there included surrounding counties. And unlike in Baltimore, where the curfew affected all citizens, not all potential jurors in Boston were affected, they argued.

    In their motion, attorneys in the Gray case warned of a movement in the city to register young men to vote “so they can get on the jury to convict the officers.”

    “It will be impossible to ferret out the bias and resentment of those prospective jury members who choose to hide their deeply held prejudices to get onto the jury,” they said.

    The defense attorneys cited U.S. Supreme Court analysis that considers the size of the community, whether “blatantly prejudicial information” was publicized, and the time that elapsed between the alleged crime and the trial.

    It has been noted that they don’t need jurors who haven’t heard about the case, they need jurors who haven’t yet made up their minds about it. (Though judging from the skeptics who have a hard time making up their minds, I don’t know if that’s the route that should be walked…)

  257. says

    Some good news-
    FCC announces plan to expand ‘Lifeline’ program for low income Americans to include Internet access:

    The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on June 18 to begin the process of revamping the $1.7 billion program, called Lifeline, which has helped poorer Americans get access to telecommunications technologies since 1985.

    FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wants to give those receiving the subsidy a choice of using it for phone services, high-speed Internet, or both. The program helps about 12 million U.S. households afford landline and mobile phones, according to agency estimates.

    “As communications technologies and markets evolve, the Lifeline program also has to evolve to remain relevant,” Wheeler said in a blog post. “Broadband is key to Lifeline’s future.”

    The FCC estimates that some 95 percent of U.S. households with incomes of $150,000 have access to high-speed Internet, while less than half of households with incomes lower than $25,000 have Internet access at home.

    The latest changes to Lifeline seek to bridge the digital divide for poorer Americans as companies routinely require basic digital literacy skills and Internet access becomes increasingly important for healthcare, financial planning or education.

    The subsidy is currently available to households with an income at or below 135 percent of the federal poverty line, or receive federal assistance through other programs such as food stamps or Medicaid.

    It is funded through fees paid by landline and cellphone users and offers each eligible household $9.25 a month. The new plan does not propose changes to the funding cap.

    Nonetheless, the proposals are likely to spark a new round of political battles of the Lifeline program, which has faced criticisms for its history of fraud and abuse, often by individuals and small telephone companies.

    Republicans, who in recent years have referred to Lifeline as “Obamaphone” program, have fought to shut it down for being too wasteful.

    Wheeler’s proposal aims to address some concerns, seeking comments on how best to ensure that those receiving financial support are the ones who need it most, for instance by putting third parties instead of phone companies in charge of deciding eligibility.

    The proposal also seeks comments on how the FCC can encourage more providers to participate in the program and suggests increasing minimum standards for phone and Internet service that low-income users receive through Lifeline.

    Wheeler’s proposals are a renewed push for reforms of Lifeline, which has gone through several alterations in recent years to accommodate the growing use of wireless phones, cut its spending and crack down on fraud.

  258. rq says

    Tony
    Funny you say that, since there were people following the arguments on twitter, and *bleep!* right on schedule, the pro-lifers were out, arguing for the death penalty. I have since closed my tabs with those examples, but, yes, the hypocrisy is apparent.

    +++

    Lawyers in #FreddieGray case claim that if all officers agree not to testify against each other the case falls apart. Is this true? Because I hope not. There are the videos, after all…

    The Human Family Tree Bristles With New Branches. I ask you to focus not on the article (though it is interesting!) but on the photos of the hand demonstrating the fossil evidence. Note the melanin, in large amounts, contrary to most (the vast, vast, vast majority) of demonstrating hands one sees on the internet. Just thought I’d make a note, because I was surprised at my own surprise at this.

    Ohio Sheriff’s Deputy Fired Over Racist Tweets Comparing Baltimore Protesters To ‘Planet Of The Apes’, had this in a tweet upthread, which only once again proves the old idea that sometimes it’s worth waiting.

    Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly confirmed to The Huffington Post that deputy Zachary Davis was terminated after the sheriff’s office received a complaint about a series of racially insensitive tweets Davis published to his Twitter account in April.

    Kelly said he received an email from a concerned community member who expressed anger over tweets Davis sent in the days after protests unfolded in Baltimore following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Davis’ tweets compared the unrest in the city to a “real life planet of the apes,” and described Baltimore residents as “ignorant young people” who deserve “every stereotype they’ve ever been labeled.”

    Davis’ account was public early Wednesday and was later made private. His tweets were also deleted. However, prior to their removal, Kelly says he printed the comments and presented them to Davis, who admitted to publishing them.

    Screenshots at the link.

    SHOCK VIDEO: Cop Claims Freedom of Speech Does Not Give Citizens the Right to Question Police. Because police are exempt or something, who knows.

    Entrepreneur and police accountability activist, Michael Picard was out warning drivers about a DUI checkpoint ahead when he caught a cop speaking quite candidly about his authority.

    On his YouTube channel, Picard explains how the night progressed:

    On Friday, May 15th, I cop blocked a DUI checkpoint in Hartford, CT, holding up a sign that read, “Cops ahead (Turn now).” Many people ignored the sign and went through the checkpoint, undoubtedly thinking, like most people do, that they have nothing to hide and, therefore, they have nothing to fear, and still, many people turned before the checkpoint, thanking me and laughing because I did this right in front of the cops.

    As Picard engages in conversation with one of the officers, their conversation becomes frank, quickly.

    The officer explains how stopping every car on the road and detaining them, somehow stops DUI’s. Picard retorts by saying that he only witnessed one car being suspected of drunk driving all night and the others are merely guilty until proven innocent.

    In an email, Picard told the Free Thought Project about a recent DUI checkpoint conducted in the area. In New Britain, CT, 693 cars were checked, and not a single person was charged with DUI.

    “No matter how small the violation of our rights, there is always a natural inclination by those in authority to push the envelope, to empower themselves,” Picard explains.

    At the end of their conversation, this officer gets tired of the fact that his authority is being questioned; he then proves Picard’s above statement.

    “You don’t have the right to question me about what we’re doing out here…Freedom of speech does not include questioning me, it doesn’t work like that,” says this Hartford officer as he ducks over to another car to violate their right to travel unmolested.

    The irony here is that the 1st amendment was explicitly written to protect the act of questioning authority. This officer epitomizes what the founders had in mind when they wrote it.

    And so continues the cycle of the police state. A group of individuals, created and funded by the people, refuse to be questioned by the very source of their existence. Some would call this tyranny. Unfortunately, others still hypnotized by the ostensible “security” provided by the police state, call it “heroism.”

    Is anyone surprised? That’s the attitude of cops out there: unquestionable authority. Blech.

    Amnesty on Nebraska and the death penalty, VICTORY: Nebraska Becomes the 19th US State to Abolish the Death Penalty!.

    Man Threatens Suicide, Police Kill Him. Yes, the man was white. I’m pretty sure he’d be dead if he was black, too.

    “My brother has been Baker Acted three times because he was threatening to hurt himself so I figured that would happen with Justin,” said Lyons. Florida’s Baker Act allows the involuntary institutionalization of an individual, and it can be initiated by law enforcement officials.

    “The only person Justin threatened was himself and I honestly don’t think he wanted to die.”

    Minutes later, two St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputies, 26-year-old Jonas Carballosa and 32-year-old Kyle Braig, arrived at the home, armed with assault rifles, and told Kaitlyn to wait outside.

    “I thought they were going into war,” she remembered thinking when she first saw the large guns. Within moments, Justin was shot dead.

    Officers unable to adequately explain themselves.

    Slay’s MBE/WBE diversity program should be called minority diversion program. Under Slay’s tenure, 6% MBE/WBE participation vs 30% capacity.

  259. rq says

    Dammit, moderation.
    ‘Kay, I’m going to put up these links to twitter. These were a series of tweets that I can’t seem to view now (plus another one that had screenshots of these) by a person who was next door when the cops shot his neighbour dead in a case of mistaken identity. The tweets said APD, but… not sure which city.
    In any case, the links:
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603811383482822656
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603811664664793089
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603812070576955392
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603812278840860672
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603813771488841728
    https://twitter.com/Trojuan_/status/603816226985410561
    I feel kind of silly posting dead links. I guess there for the record?

  260. rq says

    Interlude: Ballet!! Brown ballerinas

    Today, the ballet world still has a race issue. Brown ballerinas are almost invisible, rarely in the spotlight. Pools of talent are left untouched, as major dance companies glide over people of color in favor of white dancers. Dancers of color don’t often get coveted principal or soloist roles, and browsing through the corps de ballet roster of renowned institutions like the American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet shows that diverse swans are in short supply.

    Johnson rests comfortably in her three- to five-year theory, though. She is in a position to push that change forward. Along with companies like the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, the Dance Theatre of Harlem is a well-known entity in the ballet world, founded in 1969 “shortly after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the site declares. Its mission statement is clear: “To present a ballet company of African-American and other racially diverse artists who perform the most demanding repertory at the highest level of quality.”

    “Right from the beginning, this company started making people think different about ballet,” says Johnson.

    She remembers her early days at New York University, cramming in church basement ballet classes on the weekend with dancer Arthur Mitchell. Once she found out he was starting his own company, she took a leave of absence from college and joined him at his Dance Theatre of Harlem. It was a bold idea in a tense dance era for people of color.
    […]

    Outside of predominantly black institutions, she was aware she’d “always be the only one like me in the room.” In college, she took a class at a studio in D.C. (she won’t reveal the name, but says it’s “prominent” in the dance world). As she was leaving the studio, she saw two young white girls who looked about 13 or 14.

    “This school has really gone down since they’ve been letting black kids into the school,” Figgins overheard.

    It was a sharp reminder that others could consider her different, or lesser than as a dancer, simply because of race. It made her wonder — who taught those girls institutions had to be white in order to stay respectable?

    In ballet, uniformity is next to godliness. There’s an old argument that dancers of color, particularly with darker skin tones, can ruin the uniformity of a performance. It doesn’t matter whether each movement is perfectly in line — their skin stands out.

    And it’s not just a problem for women. Male dancers of color also feel the sting of this exclusivity, fighting for even fewer opportunities than are offered their female counterparts.

    Eric Underwood, a soloist at the Royal Ballet in England, addressed this issue in an interview with The Guardian.

    “You’re left with a choice: You have to either become so great a dancer that you’re not left in a chorus or a line, or embrace your beauty and hope others do, too — seeing it as beautiful, even if the symmetry is disturbed,” he says.
    […]

    But ballet’s uniformity argument is slowly being cracked, by one dancer in particular. It’s impossible to discuss race in modern ballet without discussing Misty Copeland. The biracial ballerina, 32, is a soloist at the American Ballet Theatre, the first African-American soloist at the company in 20 years. She also has huge mainstream appeal, recently breaking the Internet with her viral ad for Under Armour.

    In April, Copeland and fellow ballerino Brooklyn Mack performed as Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. They were the first African-American dancers to perform the iconic roles in such a venerated establishment.

    Copeland is nearly a household name, but she’s also one of extremely few mainstream brown ballerinas. This past June, she graced the cover of Pointe magazine (which was founded by DTH’s Virginia Johnson, who served as editor in chief from 2000-2009) alongside black ballerinas Ashley Murphy and Ebony WIlliams. One of the issue’s main topics: ballet’s diversity problem.

    “Asian and Asian-American dancers have made real inroads,” the article notes. “However, dancers of other ethnic backgrounds continue to face challenges, especially women.”

    Some of those challenges include stereotypes about physical build. People generally assume women of color are all naturally bigger, with wider hips and more muscular frames — a frowned upon aesthetic in ballet.

    “When people meet me in person, they’re usually surprised at how petite I am because there’s just [an] idea that because I’m black I just look a certain way,” Copeland, who’s 5’2″, told NPR.
    […]

    In a new short film called Brown Ballerina, aspiring filmmaker and TV editor Chassidy Jade is exploring the unique problems dancers of color face. (Jade is specific in using the term “brown”; it applies to all dancers of color, not just black men and women.)

    In the film, ballerina Terri Green (played by real life dancer Maryann Payne) is discriminated against by judges, told to consider traditional college instead of a career in dance and is sexually assaulted by an instructor. The film packs all the drama into six fast-paced minutes. Plot-wise, it feels slightly on the hyperbolic side — until Jade explains everything in the film happened to her sister, Shanna Woods, a longtime dancer who choreographed the film’s dance sequences.

    The film releases this year. 2015. Brown dancers are still facing these issues every day.

    Jade hopes to take the short further, turning it into a feature-length film. Then, she wants to expand it into a “brown ballerina” movement.

    “A dream of mine and my sister’s is always to have an outreach program,” Jade says. “I would love to incorporate dance into that.”

    One day, Jade could create a great resource for young kids who want to step into the dance world. But when it comes to taking that next step and entering the big leagues, brown ballerinas will have to rely on the major companies like DTH.

    And sometimes even companies like DTH aren’t an option.

    In 2004, the Dance Theatre of Harlem closed due to financial problems — $2.3 million in debt.

    When that happened, only one of its dancers landed a job with a major American ballet company, The New Yorker noted. Only one. A whole host of eligible ballerinas, swallowed up by financial misfortune and an abundance of melanin.
    […]

    DTH finally reopened in 2013, thanks to a stringent five-year plan and an expanded board. Now that it’s back, Johnson can feel the tide turning. In the past few years, young, diverse dancers have shown up at DTH’s door, with the proper amount of training. To her, this is a rare sea change. It means these dancers are being heavily prepared elsewhere, which takes some of the burden off the company.

    She calls this the “pipeline zone.” It’s not enough for young girls to just want to be dancers — they need rigorous preparation if they want to turn dance into a career.

    “It takes 10 years to make a ballet dancer,” she says. “You have to train them — you have to have a pipeline.” […]

    But bolder steps need to be taken. Tangible change will come about when mainstream dance companies address any potential bias that lingers in recruiting practices. The ripple effects from groundbreaking moments like Misty Copeland’s Kennedy Center performance need to reach those who hold the power to groom star ballerinas. Representation matters. When directors see a dancer of color taking one of the country’s most prestigious stages, a small switch can potentially flip in their subconscious. Old theories about why brown ballerinas don’t fit start to shake and splinter.

    In the meantime, Copeland will continue to break bleach-white barriers. Jenelle Figgins will keep performing with the largely diverse Dance Theatre of Harlem. And Chassidy Jade will push Brown Ballerina out into the world, entering festivals and selling merchandise in the hopes of turning heads.

    Until then, brown ballerinas will continue to stand out, long limbs gliding through a sea of white swans.

    Was that too long? I’m sorry, I love ballet.

    Metrolink expansion talks start for first time in decade, important because of where the expansion would occur. Which nobody really knows yet. But it would be nice for the poorer neighbourhoods to get some public trnasportation.

    Grand jury indicts SC cop on felony charge in on-duty shooting, whoa-whoa!

    An Edgefield County grand jury has indicted a North Augusta police officer on a felony charge in the death of a driver shot after a long chase.

    The grand jury handed up an indictment Wednesday on a charge of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, which carries up to 10 years in prison. The indictment came nine months after a grand jury refused to indict Justin Craven on a voluntary manslaughter charge.

    Authorities say Craven chased 68-year-old Ernest Satterwhite for a dozen miles to his driveway in February 2014. Investigators say Craven fired several shots through Satterwhite’s car door almost immediately after he stopped. Craven told authorities Satterwhite reached for his gun.

    Defense lawyer Jack Swerling says Craven thinks the shooting was justified and plans to go to trial.

    Go to trial. I hope the officer is convicted.

    Indian Removal Act Forces Indian Tribes to Migrate West, May 28 1830.

    On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the President to grant land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for the lands of the American Indian tribes living primarily in the southeastern United States. President Jackson’s message to Congress stated a double goal of the Indian Removal Act: freeing more land in southern states like Alabama and Mississippi, while also separating the Indians from “immediate contact with settlements of whites” in the hopes that they will one day “cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.”

    Although the act referred specifically to those “tribes and nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside” and President Jackson described the removal as a “happy consummation” of the government’s “benevolent policy” of Indian removal, the legislation culminated in the brutal forced migration of thousands of Creek, Chocktaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Cherokee Indians to present-day Oklahoma. The journey came to be known as the “Trail of Tears.”

    There were numerous reports of epidemic illness, exposure to the elements, and death along the migration paths. One eyewitness account published in the Arkansas Gazette stated, “No portion of American history can furnish a parallel of the misery and suffering at present endured by the emigrating Creeks.”

    Racism: not a new thing.

    SC Cops Refuse to Release Dash Cam Footage of Ernest Satterwhite’s Death, Unveiling an Ugly Double Standard and Body Cam Weakness, in ref. to above article about the indictment.

    The decision by South Carolina police officers to not release dash cam footage of the death of an unarmed Black man at the hands of police is not only demonstrating the weakness of police body cameras, it is unveiling yet another ugly double standard when it comes to the treatment of white officers when compared to Black victims.

    Dash cam footage captured the tragic shooting that took 68-year-old Ernest Satterwhite’s life back in February of 2014.

    North Augusta officer Justin Craven attempted to pull Satterwhite over after receiving a call about a drunk driver. When Satterwhite refused to pull over, both he and the officer eventually ended up in his driveway.

    That’s when officer Craven approached the vehicle and shortly afterwards fired into the car, killing Satterwhite.

    To no surprise, Craven is claiming self-defense after insisting Satterwhite was reaching for a weapon, a report from Edgefield County revealed.

    Satterwhite’s family has already reached a $1.2 million settlement with the city following the shooting but the officer’s trial is still underway.

    In the meantime, the public will not be able to view the dash cam footage that captured the incident although those who have seen it describe it as being “horrible” and “offensive,” The Guardian reports.

    Those who have seen the video are also unable to speak on record about the incident after being threatened with legal action if they decide to do so.

    But why all the secrecy around the video? After all, this is the same state where the dash cam video of Walter Scott’s encounter was released to the public without much fuss.

    The answer is painfully obvious.

    walter scottThe department doesn’t want to release any footage that could tarnish the officer’s perception in the public eye in fear that it will interfere with court proceedings.

    That’s the key difference in the case of Scott and Satterwhite.

    The dash cam footage in Scott’s case did not capture the shooting. It only captured Scott running away during the traffic stop, a display that would have only worked to tarnish Scott’s image—not the officer’s.

    The footage of the actual shooting was captured by a bystander, therefore, the police couldn’t keep that video from being released to the public.

    According to reports about the video’s content in Satterwhite’s case, the officer’s image is at risk because it shows him shooting into a man’s vehicle while it is parked in his own driveway.

    Eh, there’s other dashcam footage out there showing just that, and I don’t see any officers’ images being particularly tarnished. Not without a heckuvalot of effort, at any rate.

    READ THIS. I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

    On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

    That’s a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, “I can’t believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!” He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

    That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.

    It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.

    And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty. Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was recently acquitted of all charges against him in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, both black and unarmed. Thirteen Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at them. Brelo, having reloaded at some point during the shooting, fired 49 of the 137 shots. He took his final 15 shots at them after all the other officers stopped firing (122 shots at that point) and, “fearing for his life,” he jumped onto the hood of the car and shot 15 times through the windshield.

    Not only was this excessive, it was tactically asinine if Brelo believed they were armed and firing. But they weren’t armed, and they weren’t firing. Judge John O’Donnell acquitted Brelo under the rationale that because he couldn’t determine which shots actually killed Russell and Williams, no one is guilty. Let’s be clear: this is part of what the Department of Justice means when it describes a “pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive force.”

    Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from last year asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.

    Here’s what I wish Americans understood about the men and women who serve in their police departments — and what needs to be done to make the system better for everyone.
    1) There are officers who willfully violate the human rights of the people in the communities they serve

    As a new officer with the St. Louis in the mid-1990s, I responded to a call for an “officer in need of aid.” I was partnered that day with a white female officer. When we got to the scene, it turned out that the officer was fine, and the aid call was canceled. He’d been in a foot pursuit chasing a suspect in an armed robbery and lost him.

    The officer I was with asked him if he’d seen where the suspect went. The officer picked a house on the block we were on, and we went to it and knocked on the door. A young man about 18 years old answered the door, partially opening it and peering out at my partner and me. He was standing on crutches. My partner accused him of harboring a suspect. He denied it. He said that this was his family’s home and he was home alone.

    My partner then forced the door the rest of the way open, grabbed him by his throat, and snatched him out of the house onto the front porch. She took him to the ledge of the porch and, still holding him by the throat, punched him hard in the face and then in the groin. My partner that day snatched an 18-year-old kid off crutches and assaulted him, simply for stating the fact that he was home alone.

    I got the officer off of him. But because an aid call had gone out, several other officers had arrived on the scene. One of those officers, who was black, ascended the stairs and asked what was going on. My partner pointed to the young man, still lying on the porch, and said, “That son of a bitch just assaulted me.” The black officer then went up to the young man and told him to “get the fuck up, I’m taking you in for assaulting an officer.” The young man looked up at the officer and said, “Man … you see I can’t go.” His crutches lay not far from him.

    The officer picked him up, cuffed him, and slammed him into the house, where he was able to prop himself up by leaning against it. The officer then told him again to get moving to the police car on the street because he was under arrest. The young man told him one last time, in a pleading tone that was somehow angry at the same time, “You see I can’t go!” The officer reached down and grabbed both the young man’s ankles and yanked up. This caused the young man to strike his head on the porch. The officer then dragged him to the police car. We then searched the house. No one was in it.

    These kinds of scenes play themselves out everyday all over our country in black and brown communities. Beyond the many unarmed blacks killed by police, including recently Freddie Gray in Baltimore, other police abuses that don’t result in death foment resentment, distrust, and malice toward police in black and brown communities all over the country. Long before Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown last August, there was a poisonous relationship between the Ferguson, Missouri, department and the community it claimed to serve. For example, in 2009 Henry Davis was stopped unlawfully in Ferguson, taken to the police station, and brutally beaten while in handcuffs. He was then charged for bleeding on the officers’ uniforms after they beat him.
    2) The bad officers corrupt the departments they work for

    About that 15 percent of officers who regularly abuse their power: a major problem is they exert an outsize influence on department culture and find support for their actions from ranking officers and police unions. Chicago is a prime example of this: the city has created a reparations fund for the hundreds of victims who were tortured by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command from the 1970s to the early ‘90s.

    The victims were electrically shocked, suffocated, and beaten into false confessions that resulted in many of them being convicted and serving time for crimes they didn’t commit. One man, Darrell Cannon, spent 24 years in prison for a crime he confessed to but didn’t commit. He confessed when officers repeatedly appeared to load a shotgun and after doing so each time put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Other men received electric shocks until they confessed.

    The torture was systematic, and the culture that allowed for it is systemic. I call your attention to the words “and officers under his command.” Police departments are generally a functioning closed community where people know who is doing what. How many officers “under the command” of Commander Burge do you think didn’t know what was being done to these men? How many do you think were uncomfortable with the knowledge? Ultimately, though, they were okay with it. And Burge got four years in prison, and now receives his full taxpayer-funded pension.
    3) The mainstream media helps sustain the narrative of heroism that even corrupt officers take refuge in

    This is critical to understanding why police-community relations in black and brown communities across the country are as bad as they are. In this interview with Fox News, former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir never acknowledges the lived experience of thousands and thousands of blacks in New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, or anywhere in the country. In fact, he seems to be completely unaware of it. This allows him to leave viewers with the impression that the recent protests against police brutality are baseless, and that allegations of racism are “totally wrong — just not true.” The reality of police abuse is not limited to a number of “very small incidents” that have impacted black people nationwide, but generations of experienced and witnessed abuse.

    The media is complicit in this myth-making: notice that the interviewer does not challenge Safir. She doesn’t point out, for example, the over $1 billion in settlements the NYPD has paid out over the last decade and a half for the misconduct of its officers. She doesn’t reference the numerous accounts of actual black or Hispanic NYPD officers who have been profiled and even assaulted without cause when they were out of uniform by white NYPD officers.

    Instead she leads him with her questions to reference the heroism, selflessness, risk, and sacrifice that are a part of the endeavor that is law enforcement, but very clearly not always characteristic of police work in black and brown communities. The staging for this interview — US flag waving, somber-faced officers — is wash, rinse, and repeat with our national media.

    When you take a job as a police officer, you do so voluntarily. You understand the risks associated with the work. But because you signed on to do a dangerous job does not mean you are then allowed to violate the human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of the people you serve. It’s the opposite. You should protect those rights, and when you don’t you should be held accountable. That simple statement will be received by police apologists as “anti-cop.” It is not.

    4) Cameras provide the most objective record of police-citizen encounters available

    When Walter Scott was killed by officer Michael Slager in South Carolina earlier this year, the initial police report put Scott in the wrong. It stated that Scott had gone for Slager’s Taser, and Slager was in fear for his life. If not for the video recording that later surfaced, the report would have likely been taken by many at face value. Instead we see that Slager shot Scott repeatedly and planted the Taser next to his body after the fact.

    Every officer in the country should be wearing a body camera that remains activated throughout any interaction they have with the public while on duty. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for officers when they are on duty and in service to the public. Citizens must also have the right to record police officers as they carry out their public service, provided that they are at a safe distance, based on the circumstances, and not interfering. Witnessing an interaction does not by itself constitute interference.
    5) There are officers around the country who want to address institutional racism

    The National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform and Accountability is a new coalition of current and former law enforcement officers from around the nation. Its mission is to fight institutional racism in our criminal justice system and police culture, and to push for accountability for police officers that abuse their power.

    Many of its members are already well-established advocates for criminal justice reform in their communities. It’s people like former Sergeant De Lacy Davis of New Jersey, who has worked to change police culture for years. It’s people like former LAPD Captain John Mutz, who is white, and who is committed to working to build a system where everyone is equally valued. His colleagues from the LAPD —former Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey, now a frequent CNN contributor (providing some much-needed perspective), and former officer Alex Salazar, who worked LAPD’s Rampart unit — are a part of this effort. Several NYPD officers, many of whom are founding members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the gold standard for black municipal police organizations, are a part of this group. Vernon Wells, Noel Leader, Julian Harper, and Cliff Hollingsworth, to name a few, are serious men with a serious record of standing up for their communities against police abuse. There’s also Rochelle Bilal, a former sergeant out of Philadelphia, Sam Costales out of New Mexico, former Federal Marshal Matthew Fogg, and many others.

    These men and women are ready to reach out to the thousands of officers around the country who have been looking for a national law enforcement organization that works to remake police culture. The first priority is accountability — punishment — for officers who willfully abuse the rights and bodies of those they are sworn to serve. Training means absolutely nothing if officers don’t adhere to it and are not held accountable when they don’t. It is key to any meaningful reform.

    Racism is woven into the fabric of our nation. At no time in our history has there been a national consensus that everyone should be equally valued in all areas of life. We are rooted in racism in spite of the better efforts of Americans of all races to change that.

    Because of this legacy of racism, police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new. It has become more visible to mainstream America largely because of the proliferation of personal recording devices, cellphone cameras, video recorders — they’re everywhere. We need police officers. We also need them to be held accountable to the communities they serve.

    Article posted in full. Because it needs to be read.

    Interlude: Music! Bilal Reps #BlackLivesMatter in New ‘Satellites’ Video [WATCH], video.

    Cleveland police union says Justice Department reforms would endanger police. See picture of angry white man at article. WOo! Anyway, here’s why they are mad:

    The head of the Cleveland police department’s patrol union said aspects of the agreement that mandates sweeping reforms to the city’s police department could put officers in danger.

    Officers could be hesitant to draw their guns because doing so would result in more paperwork under the terms of the agreement, Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association president Steve Loomis said Wednesday. The agreement requires an officer to complete a report each time he or she points a gun at a suspect.

    “It’s going to get somebody killed,” Loomis said. “There’s going to be a time when someone isn’t going to want to do that paperwork, so he’s going to keep that gun in its holster.”

    It’s the paperwork! The paperwork will kill them! DEATH BY A THOUSAND PAPERCUTS! While I sometimes share the feeling that the paperwork will, indeed, kill me, umm… argument invalid, I say. More:

    Loomis said he believes the 105 pages of reforms are a response to high-profile incidents that have happened nationwide, rather than to incidents that have happened in Cleveland, including the 2012 police chase that saw 13 officers fire at two unarmed people 137 times, the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and the death of a mentally ill woman after officers forced her to the ground.

    “This is a political agenda,” he said. “This has nothing to do with the actions of the men and women of the Cleveland police department.”

    A Justice Department report released in December said that officers misused Tasers, routinely struck citizens in the head with the butt of their guns, shot at fleeing suspects, beat citizens prone in handcuffs and were inadequately trained to handle people with mental illnesses.

    The outspoken Loomis said a Justice Department investigation last year overstates how often officers use force. Officers arrested more than 31,000 people last year and used force approximately 400 times, he said.

    Loomis also rejected the portion of the agreement that discusses bias-free policing, saying Cleveland officers approach their work without bias. He also argued that arrest statistics could be skewed for officers who work in neighborhoods that are predominantly black or Hispanic.

    This from the union representing the same officers who shot Tamir Rice. You sound perfectly legit, Loomis. Totally.

  261. rq says

    Interlude: Ballet!! Brown ballerinas

    Today, the ballet world still has a race issue. Brown ballerinas are almost invisible, rarely in the spotlight. Pools of talent are left untouched, as major dance companies glide over people of color in favor of white dancers. Dancers of color don’t often get coveted principal or soloist roles, and browsing through the corps de ballet roster of renowned institutions like the American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet shows that diverse swans are in short supply.

    Johnson rests comfortably in her three- to five-year theory, though. She is in a position to push that change forward. Along with companies like the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, the Dance Theatre of Harlem is a well-known entity in the ballet world, founded in 1969 “shortly after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the site declares. Its mission statement is clear: “To present a ballet company of African-American and other racially diverse artists who perform the most demanding repertory at the highest level of quality.”

    “Right from the beginning, this company started making people think different about ballet,” says Johnson.

    She remembers her early days at New York University, cramming in church basement ballet classes on the weekend with dancer Arthur Mitchell. Once she found out he was starting his own company, she took a leave of absence from college and joined him at his Dance Theatre of Harlem. It was a bold idea in a tense dance era for people of color.
    […]

    Outside of predominantly black institutions, she was aware she’d “always be the only one like me in the room.” In college, she took a class at a studio in D.C. (she won’t reveal the name, but says it’s “prominent” in the dance world). As she was leaving the studio, she saw two young white girls who looked about 13 or 14.

    “This school has really gone down since they’ve been letting black kids into the school,” Figgins overheard.

    It was a sharp reminder that others could consider her different, or lesser than as a dancer, simply because of race. It made her wonder — who taught those girls institutions had to be white in order to stay respectable?

    In ballet, uniformity is next to godliness. There’s an old argument that dancers of color, particularly with darker skin tones, can ruin the uniformity of a performance. It doesn’t matter whether each movement is perfectly in line — their skin stands out.

    And it’s not just a problem for women. Male dancers of color also feel the sting of this exclusivity, fighting for even fewer opportunities than are offered their female counterparts.

    Eric Underwood, a soloist at the Royal Ballet in England, addressed this issue in an interview with The Guardian.

    “You’re left with a choice: You have to either become so great a dancer that you’re not left in a chorus or a line, or embrace your beauty and hope others do, too — seeing it as beautiful, even if the symmetry is disturbed,” he says.
    […]

    But ballet’s uniformity argument is slowly being cracked, by one dancer in particular. It’s impossible to discuss race in modern ballet without discussing Misty Copeland. The biracial ballerina, 32, is a soloist at the American Ballet Theatre, the first African-American soloist at the company in 20 years. She also has huge mainstream appeal, recently breaking the Internet with her viral ad for Under Armour.

    In April, Copeland and fellow ballerino Brooklyn Mack performed as Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. They were the first African-American dancers to perform the iconic roles in such a venerated establishment.

    Copeland is nearly a household name, but she’s also one of extremely few mainstream brown ballerinas. This past June, she graced the cover of Pointe magazine (which was founded by DTH’s Virginia Johnson, who served as editor in chief from 2000-2009) alongside black ballerinas Ashley Murphy and Ebony WIlliams. One of the issue’s main topics: ballet’s diversity problem.

    “Asian and Asian-American dancers have made real inroads,” the article notes. “However, dancers of other ethnic backgrounds continue to face challenges, especially women.”

    Some of those challenges include stereotypes about physical build. People generally assume women of color are all naturally bigger, with wider hips and more muscular frames — a frowned upon aesthetic in ballet.

    “When people meet me in person, they’re usually surprised at how petite I am because there’s just [an] idea that because I’m black I just look a certain way,” Copeland, who’s 5’2″, told NPR.
    […]

    In a new short film called Brown Ballerina, aspiring filmmaker and TV editor Chassidy Jade is exploring the unique problems dancers of color face. (Jade is specific in using the term “brown”; it applies to all dancers of color, not just black men and women.)

    In the film, ballerina Terri Green (played by real life dancer Maryann Payne) is discriminated against by judges, told to consider traditional college instead of a career in dance and is sexually assaulted by an instructor. The film packs all the drama into six fast-paced minutes. Plot-wise, it feels slightly on the hyperbolic side — until Jade explains everything in the film happened to her sister, Shanna Woods, a longtime dancer who choreographed the film’s dance sequences.

    The film releases this year. 2015. Brown dancers are still facing these issues every day.

    Jade hopes to take the short further, turning it into a feature-length film. Then, she wants to expand it into a “brown ballerina” movement.

    “A dream of mine and my sister’s is always to have an outreach program,” Jade says. “I would love to incorporate dance into that.”

    One day, Jade could create a great resource for young kids who want to step into the dance world. But when it comes to taking that next step and entering the big leagues, brown ballerinas will have to rely on the major companies like DTH.

    And sometimes even companies like DTH aren’t an option.

    In 2004, the Dance Theatre of Harlem closed due to financial problems — $2.3 million in debt.

    When that happened, only one of its dancers landed a job with a major American ballet company, The New Yorker noted. Only one. A whole host of eligible ballerinas, swallowed up by financial misfortune and an abundance of melanin.
    […]

    DTH finally reopened in 2013, thanks to a stringent five-year plan and an expanded board. Now that it’s back, Johnson can feel the tide turning. In the past few years, young, diverse dancers have shown up at DTH’s door, with the proper amount of training. To her, this is a rare sea change. It means these dancers are being heavily prepared elsewhere, which takes some of the burden off the company.

    She calls this the “pipeline zone.” It’s not enough for young girls to just want to be dancers — they need rigorous preparation if they want to turn dance into a career.

    “It takes 10 years to make a ballet dancer,” she says. “You have to train them — you have to have a pipeline.” […]

    But bolder steps need to be taken. Tangible change will come about when mainstream dance companies address any potential bias that lingers in recruiting practices. The ripple effects from groundbreaking moments like Misty Copeland’s Kennedy Center performance need to reach those who hold the power to groom star ballerinas. Representation matters. When directors see a dancer of color taking one of the country’s most prestigious stages, a small switch can potentially flip in their subconscious. Old theories about why brown ballerinas don’t fit start to shake and splinter.

    In the meantime, Copeland will continue to break bleach-white barriers. Jenelle Figgins will keep performing with the largely diverse Dance Theatre of Harlem. And Chassidy Jade will push Brown Ballerina out into the world, entering festivals and selling merchandise in the hopes of turning heads.

    Until then, brown ballerinas will continue to stand out, long limbs gliding through a sea of white swans.

    Was that too long? I’m sorry, I love ballet.

    Metrolink expansion talks start for first time in decade, important because of where the expansion would occur. Which nobody really knows yet. But it would be nice for the poorer neighbourhoods to get some public trnasportation.

    Grand jury indicts SC cop on felony charge in on-duty shooting, whoa-whoa!

    An Edgefield County grand jury has indicted a North Augusta police officer on a felony charge in the death of a driver shot after a long chase.

    The grand jury handed up an indictment Wednesday on a charge of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, which carries up to 10 years in prison. The indictment came nine months after a grand jury refused to indict Justin Craven on a voluntary manslaughter charge.

    Authorities say Craven chased 68-year-old Ernest Satterwhite for a dozen miles to his driveway in February 2014. Investigators say Craven fired several shots through Satterwhite’s car door almost immediately after he stopped. Craven told authorities Satterwhite reached for his gun.

    Defense lawyer Jack Swerling says Craven thinks the shooting was justified and plans to go to trial.

    Go to trial. I hope the officer is convicted.

    Indian Removal Act Forces Indian Tribes to Migrate West, May 28 1830.

    On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the President to grant land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for the lands of the American Indian tribes living primarily in the southeastern United States. President Jackson’s message to Congress stated a double goal of the Indian Removal Act: freeing more land in southern states like Alabama and Mississippi, while also separating the Indians from “immediate contact with settlements of whites” in the hopes that they will one day “cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.”

    Although the act referred specifically to those “tribes and nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside” and President Jackson described the removal as a “happy consummation” of the government’s “benevolent policy” of Indian removal, the legislation culminated in the brutal forced migration of thousands of Creek, Chocktaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Cherokee Indians to present-day Oklahoma. The journey came to be known as the “Trail of Tears.”

    There were numerous reports of epidemic illness, exposure to the elements, and death along the migration paths. One eyewitness account published in the Arkansas Gazette stated, “No portion of American history can furnish a parallel of the misery and suffering at present endured by the emigrating Creeks.”

    Racism: not a new thing.

    SC Cops Refuse to Release Dash Cam Footage of Ernest Satterwhite’s Death, Unveiling an Ugly Double Standard and Body Cam Weakness, in ref. to above article about the indictment.

    The decision by South Carolina police officers to not release dash cam footage of the death of an unarmed Black man at the hands of police is not only demonstrating the weakness of police body cameras, it is unveiling yet another ugly double standard when it comes to the treatment of white officers when compared to Black victims.

    Dash cam footage captured the tragic shooting that took 68-year-old Ernest Satterwhite’s life back in February of 2014.

    North Augusta officer Justin Craven attempted to pull Satterwhite over after receiving a call about a drunk driver. When Satterwhite refused to pull over, both he and the officer eventually ended up in his driveway.

    That’s when officer Craven approached the vehicle and shortly afterwards fired into the car, killing Satterwhite.

    To no surprise, Craven is claiming self-defense after insisting Satterwhite was reaching for a weapon, a report from Edgefield County revealed.

    Satterwhite’s family has already reached a $1.2 million settlement with the city following the shooting but the officer’s trial is still underway.

    In the meantime, the public will not be able to view the dash cam footage that captured the incident although those who have seen it describe it as being “horrible” and “offensive,” The Guardian reports.

    Those who have seen the video are also unable to speak on record about the incident after being threatened with legal action if they decide to do so.

    But why all the secrecy around the video? After all, this is the same state where the dash cam video of Walter Scott’s encounter was released to the public without much fuss.

    The answer is painfully obvious.

    walter scottThe department doesn’t want to release any footage that could tarnish the officer’s perception in the public eye in fear that it will interfere with court proceedings.

    That’s the key difference in the case of Scott and Satterwhite.

    The dash cam footage in Scott’s case did not capture the shooting. It only captured Scott running away during the traffic stop, a display that would have only worked to tarnish Scott’s image—not the officer’s.

    The footage of the actual shooting was captured by a bystander, therefore, the police couldn’t keep that video from being released to the public.

    According to reports about the video’s content in Satterwhite’s case, the officer’s image is at risk because it shows him shooting into a man’s vehicle while it is parked in his own driveway.

    Eh, there’s other dashcam footage out there showing just that, and I don’t see any officers’ images being particularly tarnished. Not without a heckuvalot of effort, at any rate.

    READ THIS. I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

    On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

    That’s a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, “I can’t believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!” He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

    That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.

    It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.

    And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty. Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was recently acquitted of all charges against him in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, both black and unarmed. Thirteen Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at them. Brelo, having reloaded at some point during the shooting, fired 49 of the 137 shots. He took his final 15 shots at them after all the other officers stopped firing (122 shots at that point) and, “fearing for his life,” he jumped onto the hood of the car and shot 15 times through the windshield.

    Not only was this excessive, it was tactically asinine if Brelo believed they were armed and firing. But they weren’t armed, and they weren’t firing. Judge John O’Donnell acquitted Brelo under the rationale that because he couldn’t determine which shots actually killed Russell and Williams, no one is guilty. Let’s be clear: this is part of what the Department of Justice means when it describes a “pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive force.”

    Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from last year asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.

    Here’s what I wish Americans understood about the men and women who serve in their police departments — and what needs to be done to make the system better for everyone.
    1) There are officers who willfully violate the human rights of the people in the communities they serve

    As a new officer with the St. Louis in the mid-1990s, I responded to a call for an “officer in need of aid.” I was partnered that day with a white female officer. When we got to the scene, it turned out that the officer was fine, and the aid call was canceled. He’d been in a foot pursuit chasing a suspect in an armed robbery and lost him.

    The officer I was with asked him if he’d seen where the suspect went. The officer picked a house on the block we were on, and we went to it and knocked on the door. A young man about 18 years old answered the door, partially opening it and peering out at my partner and me. He was standing on crutches. My partner accused him of harboring a suspect. He denied it. He said that this was his family’s home and he was home alone.

    My partner then forced the door the rest of the way open, grabbed him by his throat, and snatched him out of the house onto the front porch. She took him to the ledge of the porch and, still holding him by the throat, punched him hard in the face and then in the groin. My partner that day snatched an 18-year-old kid off crutches and assaulted him, simply for stating the fact that he was home alone.

    I got the officer off of him. But because an aid call had gone out, several other officers had arrived on the scene. One of those officers, who was black, ascended the stairs and asked what was going on. My partner pointed to the young man, still lying on the porch, and said, “That son of a b*tch just assaulted me.” The black officer then went up to the young man and told him to “get the fuck up, I’m taking you in for assaulting an officer.” The young man looked up at the officer and said, “Man … you see I can’t go.” His crutches lay not far from him.

    The officer picked him up, cuffed him, and slammed him into the house, where he was able to prop himself up by leaning against it. The officer then told him again to get moving to the police car on the street because he was under arrest. The young man told him one last time, in a pleading tone that was somehow angry at the same time, “You see I can’t go!” The officer reached down and grabbed both the young man’s ankles and yanked up. This caused the young man to strike his head on the porch. The officer then dragged him to the police car. We then searched the house. No one was in it.

    These kinds of scenes play themselves out everyday all over our country in black and brown communities. Beyond the many unarmed blacks killed by police, including recently Freddie Gray in Baltimore, other police abuses that don’t result in death foment resentment, distrust, and malice toward police in black and brown communities all over the country. Long before Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown last August, there was a poisonous relationship between the Ferguson, Missouri, department and the community it claimed to serve. For example, in 2009 Henry Davis was stopped unlawfully in Ferguson, taken to the police station, and brutally beaten while in handcuffs. He was then charged for bleeding on the officers’ uniforms after they beat him.
    2) The bad officers corrupt the departments they work for

    About that 15 percent of officers who regularly abuse their power: a major problem is they exert an outsize influence on department culture and find support for their actions from ranking officers and police unions. Chicago is a prime example of this: the city has created a reparations fund for the hundreds of victims who were tortured by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command from the 1970s to the early ‘90s.

    The victims were electrically shocked, suffocated, and beaten into false confessions that resulted in many of them being convicted and serving time for crimes they didn’t commit. One man, Darrell Cannon, spent 24 years in prison for a crime he confessed to but didn’t commit. He confessed when officers repeatedly appeared to load a shotgun and after doing so each time put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Other men received electric shocks until they confessed.

    The torture was systematic, and the culture that allowed for it is systemic. I call your attention to the words “and officers under his command.” Police departments are generally a functioning closed community where people know who is doing what. How many officers “under the command” of Commander Burge do you think didn’t know what was being done to these men? How many do you think were uncomfortable with the knowledge? Ultimately, though, they were okay with it. And Burge got four years in prison, and now receives his full taxpayer-funded pension.
    3) The mainstream media helps sustain the narrative of heroism that even corrupt officers take refuge in

    This is critical to understanding why police-community relations in black and brown communities across the country are as bad as they are. In this interview with Fox News, former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir never acknowledges the lived experience of thousands and thousands of blacks in New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, or anywhere in the country. In fact, he seems to be completely unaware of it. This allows him to leave viewers with the impression that the recent protests against police brutality are baseless, and that allegations of racism are “totally wrong — just not true.” The reality of police abuse is not limited to a number of “very small incidents” that have impacted black people nationwide, but generations of experienced and witnessed abuse.

    The media is complicit in this myth-making: notice that the interviewer does not challenge Safir. She doesn’t point out, for example, the over $1 billion in settlements the NYPD has paid out over the last decade and a half for the misconduct of its officers. She doesn’t reference the numerous accounts of actual black or Hispanic NYPD officers who have been profiled and even assaulted without cause when they were out of uniform by white NYPD officers.

    Instead she leads him with her questions to reference the heroism, selflessness, risk, and sacrifice that are a part of the endeavor that is law enforcement, but very clearly not always characteristic of police work in black and brown communities. The staging for this interview — US flag waving, somber-faced officers — is wash, rinse, and repeat with our national media.

    When you take a job as a police officer, you do so voluntarily. You understand the risks associated with the work. But because you signed on to do a dangerous job does not mean you are then allowed to violate the human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of the people you serve. It’s the opposite. You should protect those rights, and when you don’t you should be held accountable. That simple statement will be received by police apologists as “anti-cop.” It is not.

    4) Cameras provide the most objective record of police-citizen encounters available

    When Walter Scott was killed by officer Michael Slager in South Carolina earlier this year, the initial police report put Scott in the wrong. It stated that Scott had gone for Slager’s Taser, and Slager was in fear for his life. If not for the video recording that later surfaced, the report would have likely been taken by many at face value. Instead we see that Slager shot Scott repeatedly and planted the Taser next to his body after the fact.

    Every officer in the country should be wearing a body camera that remains activated throughout any interaction they have with the public while on duty. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for officers when they are on duty and in service to the public. Citizens must also have the right to record police officers as they carry out their public service, provided that they are at a safe distance, based on the circumstances, and not interfering. Witnessing an interaction does not by itself constitute interference.
    5) There are officers around the country who want to address institutional racism

    The National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform and Accountability is a new coalition of current and former law enforcement officers from around the nation. Its mission is to fight institutional racism in our criminal justice system and police culture, and to push for accountability for police officers that abuse their power.

    Many of its members are already well-established advocates for criminal justice reform in their communities. It’s people like former Sergeant De Lacy Davis of New Jersey, who has worked to change police culture for years. It’s people like former LAPD Captain John Mutz, who is white, and who is committed to working to build a system where everyone is equally valued. His colleagues from the LAPD —former Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey, now a frequent CNN contributor (providing some much-needed perspective), and former officer Alex Salazar, who worked LAPD’s Rampart unit — are a part of this effort. Several NYPD officers, many of whom are founding members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the gold standard for black municipal police organizations, are a part of this group. Vernon Wells, Noel Leader, Julian Harper, and Cliff Hollingsworth, to name a few, are serious men with a serious record of standing up for their communities against police abuse. There’s also Rochelle Bilal, a former sergeant out of Philadelphia, Sam Costales out of New Mexico, former Federal Marshal Matthew Fogg, and many others.

    These men and women are ready to reach out to the thousands of officers around the country who have been looking for a national law enforcement organization that works to remake police culture. The first priority is accountability — punishment — for officers who willfully abuse the rights and bodies of those they are sworn to serve. Training means absolutely nothing if officers don’t adhere to it and are not held accountable when they don’t. It is key to any meaningful reform.

    Racism is woven into the fabric of our nation. At no time in our history has there been a national consensus that everyone should be equally valued in all areas of life. We are rooted in racism in spite of the better efforts of Americans of all races to change that.

    Because of this legacy of racism, police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new. It has become more visible to mainstream America largely because of the proliferation of personal recording devices, cellphone cameras, video recorders — they’re everywhere. We need police officers. We also need them to be held accountable to the communities they serve.

    Article posted in full. Because it needs to be read.

    Interlude: Music! Bilal Reps #BlackLivesMatter in New ‘Satellites’ Video [WATCH], video.

    Cleveland police union says Justice Department reforms would endanger police. See picture of angry white man at article. WOo! Anyway, here’s why they are mad:

    The head of the Cleveland police department’s patrol union said aspects of the agreement that mandates sweeping reforms to the city’s police department could put officers in danger.

    Officers could be hesitant to draw their guns because doing so would result in more paperwork under the terms of the agreement, Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association president Steve Loomis said Wednesday. The agreement requires an officer to complete a report each time he or she points a gun at a suspect.

    “It’s going to get somebody killed,” Loomis said. “There’s going to be a time when someone isn’t going to want to do that paperwork, so he’s going to keep that gun in its holster.”

    It’s the paperwork! The paperwork will kill them! DEATH BY A THOUSAND PAPERCUTS! While I sometimes share the feeling that the paperwork will, indeed, kill me, umm… argument invalid, I say. More:

    Loomis said he believes the 105 pages of reforms are a response to high-profile incidents that have happened nationwide, rather than to incidents that have happened in Cleveland, including the 2012 police chase that saw 13 officers fire at two unarmed people 137 times, the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and the death of a mentally ill woman after officers forced her to the ground.

    “This is a political agenda,” he said. “This has nothing to do with the actions of the men and women of the Cleveland police department.”

    A Justice Department report released in December said that officers misused Tasers, routinely struck citizens in the head with the butt of their guns, shot at fleeing suspects, beat citizens prone in handcuffs and were inadequately trained to handle people with mental illnesses.

    The outspoken Loomis said a Justice Department investigation last year overstates how often officers use force. Officers arrested more than 31,000 people last year and used force approximately 400 times, he said.

    Loomis also rejected the portion of the agreement that discusses bias-free policing, saying Cleveland officers approach their work without bias. He also argued that arrest statistics could be skewed for officers who work in neighborhoods that are predominantly black or Hispanic.

    This from the union representing the same officers who shot Tamir Rice. You sound perfectly legit, Loomis. Totally.

  262. rq says

    There’s a second comment in moderation. *sigh* Getting late.

    #SomeBlackLivesDontMatter – yes, read that title. Some ocmmentary on this, in a moment.

    Taken at face value, the phrase is a truism, since obviously all lives matter. But the people who use it as a shibboleth don’t care about black lives per se so much as scoring points against the police.

    When there is some awful tragedy, involving a cop shooting or doing harm to a young black man (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not), they muster every ounce of their moral dudgeon and stage demonstrations eagerly covered by a sympathetic media.

    Baltimore was an obsession of the BlackLivesMatter crowd and of the news media after the death of Freddie Gray from a terrible injury suffered in police custody. But now that 35 people have been murdered in the month of May, the highest in a month since 1999, the response has been muted.

    A few Baltimore organizations are staging anti-violence protests, but they won’t command major media attention. There have been headlines and TV reports about the killing spree, but nothing like the ubiquitous calls for yet another national “conversation” after Freddie Gray’s death.

    Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you. You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media, therefore all but invisible.

    The same Memorial Day weekend during which there were nearly 30 shootings and nine mostly young people were murdered in Baltimore, demonstrators were out in force, blocking traffic — not to protest the shootings, of course, but the state of Maryland funding a youth jail in a city that rather desperately needs a youth jail.

    Not quoting the rest, but as you can see, it’s one long black-on-black crime argument. Completely ignoring the conditions that foster such crime, and also completely ignoring the efforts of the black community to address this sort of crime. So fuck the author, alright.

    Mother Jones commented on this: Editor of Leading Conservative Magazine Declares That “Some Black Lives Don’t Matter” to Activists

    Rich Lowry, editor of National Review magazine, has a plan for restoring stability to America’s currently troubled inner cities: Arrest and imprison more black people. It’s basically a long-running conservative argument, but can we get real for a minute about how he’s making it?

    Here’s the profoundly cynical and callous way that he’s decided to tweak some social media language to argue in Politico that the #BlackLivesMatter movement is “a lie.” Its supporters, he suggests, are opportunistically anti-police and don’t otherwise care about inner city deaths that don’t make national news: […]

    That high-octane trolling is accompanied by an equally cynical take on the underlying problem. Baltimore reportedly saw an uptick in murders in recent weeks, which Lowry blames on police “shrinking from doing their job” in the wake of upheaval over Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. The city’s “dangerous, overwhelmingly black neighborhoods,” he writes, “need disproportionate police attention, even if that attention is easily mischaracterized as racism. The alternative is a deadly chaos that destroys and blights the lives of poor blacks.”

    Never mind that a rising awareness of policing problems in America may also have something to do with acute underlying socioeconomic ills, which, you know, destroy and blight the lives of poor blacks.

    Rich Lowry. National Review Online

    Lowry’s theme ignores the reality of what many Americans have found so outrageous about the cases that have drawn national media attention. Say, the fact that the white cop who instantly shot a 12-year-old black kid and then watched him bleed out on the pavement without providing any first aid still hasn’t been questioned by investigators six months after the killing. Or the fact that a black woman whose family called 911 in need of mental health assistance for her ended up dead from police use of force less than two hours later.

    Perhaps Lowry should spend a little time watching these 13 videos from the past year that show mostly white cops killing mostly black men who were mostly unarmed. They are a kind of vivid, disturbing evidence that may well bring some different hashtags to mind.

    Black people in Minneapolis nine times more likely to be arrested for petty crime

    Black people in Minneapolis are 8.7 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people, according to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

    The research into racial disparities in policing also found that native American people were 8.6 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people.

    White youth, however, while making up 40% of the city’s youth population, accounted for only 14% of youth arrests.

    The findings are based on Minneapolis police department figures, secured through a freedom of information request, on more than 96,000 low-level arrests between 1 January 2012 and 30 September 2014.

    The research comes after one teenager’s encounter with the police was captured on a cellphone in which a police officer in the city is filmed telling him: “Plain and simple: if you fuck with me, I’m gonna break your legs before you get a chance to run.”

    The footage was captured by 17-year-old Hamza Jeylani. Faysal Mohamed, who was in the car with Jeylani when he was arrested, told the ACLU that he had been detained several times. “I have to watch my back because the police are targeting me and targeting people like me,” he said.

    Forty percent of all youth arrests were for curfew violations; Minneapolis teenagers between 15 and 17 must be home by 11pm on weekdays, and midnight on weekends. But despite 40% of the city’s youth population being white, white youth made up only 17% of curfew charges – 56% of which were against black youth.
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    “In poor and minority neighborhoods of Minneapolis, the police aren’t seen as guardians who serve and protect,” the report says. “Rather police officers are viewed suspiciously as oppressors who harass and arrest.”

    The study also discovered huge disparities in numbers of low-level arrests made by individual officers. The median number citywide for low-level arrests, the study shows, was 51; but the officer with the highest number racked up an astonishing 2,026 arrests in that time-period, and the next seven made just over a thousand each – the vast majority of them in poor black neighbourhoods.

    More, with data, at the link.

    Law firm partners were given a memo. 1/2 were told the writer was white, 1/2 were told he was black. This happened: See attached, but you can probably guess.

    2010 Duke national champion, @ndotsmitty tweeted about his interaction with the police last night. Guns drawn. See attached, like holy shit.

    tf is a Caucasian Afro? Appropriation at its… finest?

  263. rq says

    Join us #M30 for the Martin O’Malley and the Fraternal Order of Police Unwelcoming Day of Action. #BaltimoreUprising

    The Conservatives Who Gutted the Voting Rights Act Are Now Challenging ‘One Person, One Vote’ – wait, what?

    Blum first began attacking the Voting Rights Act after losing a Houston congressional race to a black Democrat in 1992 and founded the Project on Fair Representation in 2005 to challenge the constitutionality of the VRA. The Evenwel case doesn’t deal directly with the VRA but on how districts should be calculated. Since the Supreme Court’s 1964 Reynolds v. Sims decision, districts have been drawn based on the total population of an area. Blum instead wants lines to be drawn based only on eligible voters—excluding children, inmates, non-citizens, etc. from counting toward representation.

    If that happened, legislative districts would become older, whiter, more rural, and more conservative, rather than younger, more diverse, more urban, and more liberal. “It would be a power shift almost perfectly calibrated to benefit the Republican party,” explains University of Texas law professor Joey Fishkin. “The losers would be urban areas with lots of children and lots of racially diverse immigrants. The winners would be older, whiter, more suburban, and rural areas. It would be a power shift on a scale American redistricting law has not seen since the 1960s. While not nearly as dramatic as the original reapportionment revolution, it would require every map in every state to be redrawn, with the same general pattern of winners and losers.”

    Demographically, the gap between Republicans and Democrats is wider than it has ever been. “House Republicans are still 87 percent white male, compared to 43 percent of House Democrats—the widest gap we’ve ever seen,” explains Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report. “In terms of composition of districts, the median GOP district is 76% white, while the median Dem district is 49% white—again, the widest gap we’ve ever seen. Overall, the median House district is 68% white, compared to 63% for the nation as a whole.”

    This representation gap explains why Republican officials are pushing new voting restrictions like voter ID laws and cuts to early voting, which disproportionately impact minority voters and seek to make the electorate smaller and whiter. A victory for Blum’s side in Evenwel would make districts across the country even less representative of the country as a whole.

    He claims he’s fighting for race neutrality. Obviously.

    In Arizona, Bikers Plan Armed Protest Outside of Mosque. Racist, or no? Gee.

    Floyd Dent, Man Beaten by Michigan Cops on Camera, Settles for $1.4 Million. I hope there will still be some criminal repercussions for the officers involved.

    An unarmed black man who was repeatedly punched, kicked and Tasered during a January traffic stop in the Detroit suburb of Inkster has agreed to a $1.4 million settlement with the city, NBC affiliate WDIV reported Wednesday.

    “Money isn’t everything,” the man, Floyd Dent, told the station. “You can’t buy happiness.”

    Dent’s arrest on alleged assault and drug charges during a routine traffic stop continues to haunt him, he said. Dashcam video of the incident showed one Inkster officer, William Melendez, putting Dent, 57, in a chokehold and repeatedly punching him. […]

    Prosecutors dropped the charges against Dent, who claimed police planted a bag of crack cocaine underneath his passenger seat during the stop. He did admit to driving on a suspended license at the time.

    Amid public outcry over the case, Inkster’s police chief resigned in April, two officers were suspended and Melendez was fired and charged with misconduct in office and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.

    A Wayne County district court judge was expected to decide Thursday if there’s enough evidence to put Melendez on trial. Dent began testifying in the morning, and recounted the night that he was arrested.

    Dent earlier told WDIV that he wishes the beating never happened, although he’s pleased to see Melendez off the streets. He hopes to go back to work at Ford Motor Co., and get on with his life.

    “I want people to remember me as an honest person — a person who told the truth, a person not scared to go against the officers that done this to me,” Dent said. “I want people to know that I’m grateful.”

    Daily Kos on the pregnant woman – Camera catches police wrestling pregnant black woman to the ground for no reason whatsoever

    Dropping her daughter off for elementary school, Charlena Cook, eight months pregnant in Barstow, California, ended up being forcibly handcuffed and wrestled to the ground for no reason whatsoever. Not only was this excessive, the entire ordeal was completely uncalled for.The ACLU fought to have the video released and also announced that all charges were dropped against Charlena.

    As you will see in that video, an employee of the school called police after she claimed she and the pregnant mother argued over a parking spot—which is not illegal. Nobody was assaulted and no property damage took place.

    The police, though, were determined that a crime had been committed that required the use of brute force.

    Warning, it’s hard to watch.

    Satire for Baltimore, NYC, Fruitvale, etc.

  264. rq says

    Attorney: UVA Honor Student Martese Johnson’s Arrest Was Not Justified – that’s from May 7, but he had a court date today. From the article:

    State law enforcement officers charged University of Virginia honor student Martese Johnson—whose bloody arrest was captured on viral video in March—with public intoxication even though they knew he was not drunk, his lawyer tells the Richmond Free Press.

    Instead, agents with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control believed Johnson might have been using a fake ID, his lawyer, Daniel Watkins of the Williams Mullen law firm based in Richmond, Va., tells the news outlet.

    A statement issued to the newspaper by Mr. Watkins’ law firm states: “We have already reviewed the reports from the arresting ABC agents and the local police on the scene, and our position remains that the (agents) lacked legal justification to arrest or brutalize young Martese.”

    A State Police report has been completed on the March 18 arrest of the 20-year-old African-American third-year student from Chicago that riveted the nation, sparking protests much like last month’s arrest of Freddie Gray, 25, who died after he was injured in police custody.

    Johnson was charged with public intoxication and obstruction of justice after state agents arrested him near popular campus hangout, The Trinity Irish Bar. Photos of his bloody face were disseminated across the nation.

    For godsake, indict the officers, and OF COURSE drop the charges against the victim. #MarteseJohnson The same officer was involved in a similar incident a few years ago. (Seen on previous iteration of this thread.)

    The trial for #MarteseJohnson has been set for September 30th at 9am. Well, guess they’re going ahead with the bullshit charges. When are they going to charge the officers, hello?

    A ‘Pattern or Practice’ of Violence in America, a pretty major article:

    Long before a Cleveland police officer shot and killed a 12-year-old boy holding a pellet gun in a park in November 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice was already investigating numerous allegations of excessive use of force by the city’s cops. Federal monitors with the agency’s civil rights division arrived in March 2013 and spent 18 months scrutinizing nearly 600 cases.

    The result, a 105-page document released May 26 known as a consent decree, spells out new use-of-force guidelines and procedures to investigate police misconduct, and calls for training to counter racial bias. Cleveland’s mayor and police chief joined in the announcement of the plan, which will keep their city under federal monitoring for years to come.

    When a police force gets into enough trouble, the feds often come to town: Los Angeles in 1996; Austin, Tex., in 2007; and Baltimore in May, weeks after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died in the custody of police. In total, the Justice Department has investigated 67 police departments since 1994.

    The Department of Justice didn’t have the authority to get involved with local police until after the 1991 broadcast of a grainy video showing four Los Angeles Police Department officers beating an unarmed black man. “It was always on the wish list,” recalls Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who worked at DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in the mid-1990s. “The Rodney King incident provided the impetus,” and Democrats in Congress spent the next three years working to make police reform a federal prerogative. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994, allowed DOJ to step in whenever police engage in “a pattern or practice of conduct” that deprives people of their constitutional rights.

    The law was passed with the LAPD in mind, and one of the first investigations conducted under DOJ’s new power started in Los Angeles in 1996. Now any jurisdiction with a police problem finds itself in a position to be investigated from on high.
    It begins with a preliminary inquiry, which Schlanger describes as little more than “a glimmer in someone’s eye”—as long as that someone is a lawyer working for DOJ. A preliminary inquiry may be a lawyer at DOJ doing some reading to get an idea of recurring problems at a particular police department.
    The announcement of a formal investigation—the step taken by Attorney General Loretta Lynch on May 8 regarding the Baltimore Police Department’s alleged involvement in Freddie Gray’s death—opens up the process to law enforcement experts who will begin reviewing training procedures, disciplinary policies, and routine police interactions. About 325 preliminary inquiries have taken place from 2000 to 2013, and 38 cases proceeded to formal investigation, according to numbers gathered by University of Illinois legal scholar Stephen Rushin.
    Even at this point, DOJ can decide to do nothing. If it finds that patterns of police conduct need to change, it can pursue three separate options:
    Technical Assistance Letter. These letters are not enforceable by courts and tend to emerge in cases where easy fixes can solve police problems. A 2003 letter to the Schenectady, N.Y., Police Department, for example, suggested that officials there should rewrite policies and ensure that officers are explicitly aware of them. The courts could stay out of it.
    Memorandum of Understanding. These aren’t enforceable in court, either. They are more like handshake agreements in which—even without a finding of official wrongdoing—steps are taken to ensure that bad things don’t happen. A memorandum of understanding in 2014 between entities in Missoula, Mont., and DOJ described steps taken to address complaints about gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Again, no need for the courts to step in.
    Lawsuit Against a Local Jurisdiction. In most cases, these lawsuits never go to trial. The signing of a consent decree can eliminate the need for one while obligating local officials to follow new policies under DOJ oversight. An independent monitor is usually hired to ensure that the suggested policy changes take place. These are enforceable in court: When a monitor finds that a jurisdiction hasn’t done what it agreed to do, the jurisdiction can be found in contempt of court. If the jurisdiction does not want to sign a consent decree, the lawsuit can go to trial, leaving it for a federal judge to decide what’s next for the police department. Jurisdictions have refused to sign consent decrees on only a handful of occasions, and DOJ has gone to trial only once, in a case involving discrimination against Latinos by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina.

    More details at the link, def. worth a read, with lots of graphs! diagrams! visual comparisons! and you look at it all, and you wonder how law enforcement can be considered to be a part of the justice system in the USAmerica. :/

  265. rq says

    Out for the night. Left y’all with some reading. :) Plus two in moderation, Enjoy!

  268. rq says

    Let’s start with some outrage. The Baltimore Police Union (@FOP3) released this statement today. #BaltimoreUprising #FreddieGray

    The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest. Criminals feel empowered now. There is no respect. Police are under siege in every quarter. They are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty. Right now they can go to jail for following Supreme Court decisions such as Illinois vs. Wardlow. The Baltimore States Attorney’s Office essentially overturned the Supreme Court’s decision. We hope that all leadership will come together to support the police to move the community forward

    Seriously, that reads like the back blurb of a scifi dystopian novel. Except that last sentence. I’d love to use this text as the beginning to a short story of some kind. “And there he was, alone, black, unarmed, pacing the streets, searching… searching… for elusive Justice.”
    I’d also like to note that “more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty” is about how it should be, I think.

    Oldie but goodie, Women find their voice in Ferguson protest movement. Still relevant.

    Interlude: Hair! These Are Bantu Knots, Not ‘Mini Buns.’ There’s A Difference.

    It’s been well over a year since Marc Jacobs sent models sporting Bantu knots in a mohawk formation down the runway at his Spring 2015 Marc by Marc Jacobs show. But a related hair tutorial recently published on the beauty blog Mane Addicts — and later removed — sparked outrage among many black women and men for linking the style to Marc Jacobs, rather than acknowledging its actual roots.

    Mane Addicts posted the tutorial on May 17, telling readers how to replicate what they called “twisted mini buns inspired by” Marc Jacobs’ show. Readers took to comments and social media, arguing that calling the hairstyle “mini buns” rather than Bantu knots seemed like the latest example of a traditionally black style or feature being positioned as a “new” trend, typically on or credited to white people.

    Bantu knots are said to have originated centuries ago with the Zulu tribes in southern Africa. They’re styled by sectioning the hair into parts all over the head, then twisting those individual sections until they form mini knots. They can be worn as is or unraveled into loose curls or waves, and we’ve seen the style crop up in recent decades on black celebs such as Scary Spice, Lauryn Hill and Rihanna. It’s also the signature hairdo for “Orange Is the New Black” character Crazy Eyes, played by black actress Uzo Aduba.

    When the hairstyle hit runways last year, Redken’s global creative director Guido Palau, who was the lead hairstylist at the Marc Jacobs show, told The Huffington Post that the show’s hairstyling was inspired by Björk. On Wednesday, in response to a HuffPost question about the Mane Addicts controversy, Palau responded that the “look is a continuation of last season with that very girly, punky vibe. It’s kind of the same girl, but she’s going to a rave now.”

    We all recall Björk wearing a similar style in the 1990s to go with her grunge fashion. But as the countless individuals who’ve taken to Twitter and Instagram point out, these “mini buns” are Bantu knots, and failing to mention that fact has left many people understandably upset.

    Mane Addicts’ editorial director, Justine Marjan, authored the tutorial. She did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost, but earlier appeared to comment on an Instagram post critical of the piece, saying that she “[has] nothing against African culture” and wants to do a post on Bantu knots soon.

    To prove that this style is deeply rooted in the black community, many women took to social media to show off their Bantu knots, some using the hashtag #Itaughtmarcjacobs. Check a few of them out below, along with other photos of women sporting Bantu knots.

    Also, the description under the second photo mentions ‘tribal make-up’, which… well, sort of seals the deal for me. Appropriation.

    Today in #Ferguson, the petition to recall mayor James Knowles has been filed via @search4swag. Good luck!

    Interlude: Music! Cheryl Lynn To Release ‘Duets With Divas’ Album

    When Cheryl Lynn hit the Black Girls Rock stage this year to perform her 1978 hit “Got to Be Real”, it was clear that the 58-year-old diva can still get down with the get down. So it should come as no surprise that she is ready to get back on the scene with a new album.

    Lynn is slated to released Duets With Divas, an album of collaborations with a slew of her fellow female contemporaries including Miki Howard, Deniece Williams, Betty Wright, and Meli’sa Morgan.

    The project will mark Lynn’s first album since 1995’s Good Time.

    Duets With Divas is slated for release on June 23.

    Our main frustration is the specter of police misconduct has caused this trial to be pushed back. @martesejohnson_ Once again, for those who missed it (article later), Martese Johnson’s charges were not dropped; the trial was scheduled for September 30. There is sitll a chance that the charges will be dropped, sometime in June, but… it looks like the ABC is pushing ahead with the charges against him.

  269. rq says

    You think lethal injection is barbaric? These states still allow execution by hanging. Just another death-penalty post and the barbaric practice that it is.

    Currently at #Ferguson townhall meeting Officials have already started distancing themselves from Mayor. Empty seats;
    #Ferguson Mayor Knowles. You can’t sit with us ! Recall in progress Recall is a lonely island.

    Study: Black Teachers are Just as Likely as White Teachers to Disproportionately Punish Black Students. Internalized racism just sucks.

    Implicit bias makes teachers of all races more likely to punish black students than white students for the same misbehavior, according to a new Stanford University study, the Huffington Post reports.

    In an experiment, teachers of all races exhibited unconscious bias against students with “black-sounding names.” Researchers showed teachers the school records of misbehaving students. The researchers attached stereotypical names (such as DeShawn and Jake) to each record.

    The result showed that all teachers were more likely to label DeShawn as a troublemaker than they were willing to label Jake. They also unconsciously recommended harsher punishment for the students with black-sounding names. Surprisingly, like their white counterparts, black teachers would also punish black students disproportionately.

    “I think that it attests to the pervasiveness of stereotype effects,” lead author of the study, Jason Okonofua, told the Huffington Post. “Research has demonstrated that exposure to media influences the stereotypical associations we all make in our daily lives. Thus, all teachers, regardless of race, are more likely to think a black child, as compared to a white child, is a troublemaker.”

    This suggests that the consequences of implicit bias are just as destructive to black lives as conscious racism is.

    What are the solutions? Start with awareness of implicit bias and make a conscious effort to change. Research says our brains are not “hardwired” for bias.

    Please have your puke-bucket handy. Exclusive: Here Are a Bunch of Cops Talking About How a Slain 14-Year-Old Deserved to Die

    When 14-year-old Christopher Duran left his Bronx home on Friday to go to school, he didn’t know that a red-bandana-wearing gunman was waiting to pump him full of lead.

    In a brutal ambush caught on surveillance video, Duran was shot four times and died while screaming for his mother. Though Duran already had five previous arrests on his record, no one could possibly blame such a young victim for his own tragic murder.

    No one, except for three former New York Police Department officers who took to Facebook to call the 14-year-old a “piece of shit thug,” a “piece of trash” and a “menace to the neighborhood.”

    Those hateful words come from the comments section of a public Facebook post by former police officer and current CNN contributor Thomas Verni, where what appears to be three former NYPD members smeared Duran’s character and suggested the 14-year-old murder victim was somehow complicit. The posts can be seen below. The three men are Brian Charles, Joseph Gasparre and Andrew Blethen. […]

    While comments from a few individual ex-officers do not speak for the force as a whole and there’s no indication of a link to any actual misconduct, they certainly seem emblematic of an attitude problem among some New York police officers.

    After two officers were murdered in 2014 by a man angry over Garner’s death, Patrolman’s Benevolent Association head Patrick Lynch issued an outraged memo saying city Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hands were “literally dripping with our blood.” A sizable number of officers chose to turn their backs on de Blasio at one of the officers’ funerals. […]

    The dehumanizing language used by the three commenters is also telling, considering the racial connotations of words like “thug.” The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program was recently declared an unconstitutional form of racial profiling. Stereotyping in the NYPD is apparently so widespread that a Reuters poll of 25 active and former African-American NYPD officers found all but one had been racially profiled while off-duty.

    But the most chilling aspect of the posts is the fact that each of these men, who at one time may have been charged with the protection of the public, do not seem to consider a 14-year-old boy who fell in with a bad crowd as possessing the same constitutional equality as other New Yorkers. Bad apples or not, this is yet another small piece of evidence that some police consider “thugs” as synonymous with less than human.

    14-year-old boy, called ‘gang member’. Automatically. Like he’s made all his available life choices already.

    Man fatally wounded in officer-involved shooting in Long Beach

    A man wounded in an officer-involved shooting in Long Beach has died at a hospital, authorities said Thursday.

    The shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the 4600 block of East 15th Street, the Long Beach Police Department reported.

    Police were sent to the scene to help Long Beach Fire Department paramedics with “an intoxicated male adult who was acting violently,” LBPD spokeswoman Marlene Arrona said.

    “Witnesses who were with the subject prior to police arrival said (he) was acting strange, as if he was possibly under the influence,” Arrona said.

    “They got into an altercation with the subject in their apartment that lasted 10 minutes,” Arrona said. “The subject then jumped out of a second- story window, exiting the apartment.”

    An arriving officer contacted the man, who “was non-compliant with the officer, and a use of force occurred,” Arrona said.

    “The officer initially used less lethal force options, but the incident escalated and an officer-involved shooting occurred,” Arrona said.

    The man was wounded, and he died at a hospital, Arrona said. His name was not immediately released. No officers were injured.

    I wonder.

  270. rq says

    Can black police be pro-black and pro-blue at the same time? Isn’t that, like, the definition of cognitive dissonance? In some way? Almost?

    In the emotionally charged debate about police brutality, misconduct and the perceived targeting and victimization of African Americans, many of us not only identify with the frustration of black citizens in Ferguson, Cleveland, Chicago and Baltimore, but have our own experiences of racial profiling by law enforcement. The largely white law enforcement community often counters those anecdotes by claiming that they have to make snap judgments about the level of force necessary to get a suspect to comply and to keep themselves – and others – safe. And, in the middle, stands black cops and their families, often either branded Uncle Toms by their families, friends and neighbors or traitors to their profession if they approach any discord between cops and African Americans with objectivity. Three of the six Baltimore City Police Department officers, for instance, charged in Freddie Gray’s death are African American.

    Police brutality is not a black-white issue; much like a bruise on the skin of our communities, it is black and blue.

    I was recently asked to join the chief of police and his chief of staff of a particular locality for a lunch meeting to discuss how to help their new recruits learn cultural competency – part of their commitment to public safety, community relations and diversity on the force. But as the three of us sat in a restaurant, laughing and talking about our mutual interest in gang history despite our racial, cultural and age differences, I saw a group of young black men and women outside and got nervous. My first thought was that the young black people – who were hardly paying attention to me – would think that I was snitching on someone or something. I feared that the faux revolutionaries whom I follow on social media would get a picture of me and accuse me of working with “the feds” or being a modern day informant for Cointelpro, and even that the family members who spent time in jail would be disappointed in me, thinking I turned “5-0” and, by extension, turned my back on my people. I worried that other black people might come to believe that I condone some of the atrocious acts of violence that officers have committed against black and brown citizens, even though any help for which I was asked and which I offered would be to try to protect them.

    It gave me a taste for the way that black officers must feel – the ones who love their profession, but are also concerned that their sons and daughters could be the next Rekia Boyd or Mike Brown. […]

    Some black officers – past and present – feel that, as law enforcement officers, they are doing a service to the law abiding citizens in their communities. But other members of the black community think that black cops are simply members of the colonized group protecting the interests of the distant colonizer and, in the wake of a rash of well-publicized police killings of unarmed black men and women and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, police organizations from around the nation have ratcheted up the “us versus them” rhetoric. In New York City, for instance, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association union stated that, because of the protests after Eric Garner’s homicide, it had become a wartime police department.

    But wars dictate that people choose sides.

    It is possible to be a both pro-black – caring and working actively for the advancement of black communities – and be a police officer; the safety and wellbeing of African American men, women and children and the ability of cops to do their jobs effectively are not mutually exclusive. However, it requires that officers look beyond the uniform and at their colleagues, superiors, and at the entire system and ask if the three are serving the needs of all segments of the public.

    For instance, black officers cannot ignore or defend the individual or institutional racism they witness in the system: from ignoring the racist actions or statements of colleagues to taking part in “stop and frisk” activities that unfairly (and unlawfully) target black and brown people, black officers can’t simply work in police departments and expect to alter the system by their mere presence, they have to actively agitate for change. Police officers need to try to solve the problems of brutality and community distrust through mentoring youth, working with community leaders and activists and strongly advocating for best practices among their police superiors to be part of the solution. Though members of the law enforcement community do not create the laws, their devotion to black and brown people and the civil liberties guaranteed every citizen by the constitution must come before professional goals or comradery with fellow officers. Black officers must lead the way in ensuring that even so-called “career criminals” receive due process. They also must refuse to accept racially insensitive and dehumanizing remarks or jokes from their coworkers about the people from the communities they police.

    There are organizations like B-CAP or Black Cops Against Police Brutality that care about their communities and their profession enough to want to see racism and violence eradicated from both. Being pro-law enforcement can mean wanting to see fair policing, solid community relations and officer safety – and safe policing is absolutely dependent upon community relations and trust. Fighting racism within various police forces and improving a community relations will be a slow process given the history but, if black police fight for it with the same fervor that they fought for inclusion and promotions in police departments, they will be able to empower African American communities and protect their fellow officers.

    Being black and blue it not only is a sign of a past injury, it’s part of the process of healing.

    Trial Date Set for Martese Johnson

    The trial will take place Sept. 30 in Charlottesville District Court.

    On Thursday, Johnson and his attorneys were in court hoping to get the charges against him dropped due to a lack of reasonable suspicion.

    “Our frustration is that the specter of police conduct has caused this trial to be pushed back,” said Daniel Watkins, Johnson’s attorney.

    They will have to wait until a status hearing June 12 for that decision.

    Johnson said, “I hope that, in the near future this process will end. It has endured a bit longer than we all expected. But I believe that justice will be served.”

    Friday’s hearing lasted no more than ten minutes.

    In the courtroom Thursday, dozens of supporters, church groups and community members stood in solidarity with Johnson.

    “I want him to know that there are members of this community that are really outraged about what has happened to him,” said Beverly Seng, a member of Sojourners United Church of Christ.

    Johnson was arrested by agents from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control on the Corner in March. […]

    Despite still facing charges, Johnson will be heading up to Washington, D.C. for an internship this summer.

    Watkins says he has not yet seen the results of a Virginia State Police investigation into the incident that McAuliffe requested.

    However, he has viewed police reports that were filed by the arresting agents shortly after the incident.

    According to an ABC spokesperson, state police have not given the department the results of its investigation yet.

    The agents who arrested Johnson have been placed on administrative duties pending the results of the investigation.

    I’m glad, at least, that his plans for the summer haven’t been impeded (so far).

    Saturday. May 30th. #BaltimoreUprising

    Thurston Sheriff’s Office seeks witnesses to Olympia police shooting, I hope they get several. Honest people.

    The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is asking anybody with information about last week’s officer-involved shooting on Cooper Point Road to come forward and provide a statement.

    Lt. Cliff Ziesemer said detectives have been canvassing neighborhoods near where the shooting occurred, looking for witnesses.

    “We’re looking for people who may have seen or talked to the two young men before the shooting occurred, we’re looking for people who heard the shots,” Ziesemer said. “Obviously, the more information we have, the better.”

    He said the call for information isn’t a response to criticism that the investigation isn’t been handled properly. During a Tuesday night Olympia City Council meeting, several people addressed the council, saying they were witnesses, but they had not been contacted.

    “This is standard procedure,” Ziesemer said. “We’ve been out doing this canvassing for days. We didn’t know who these people were. We can’t talk to them unless they come forward.”

    Meanwhile, a week after Olympia Officer Ryan Donald shot and wounded Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, people are still taking to the streets protesting the incident. The two men are suspected of attempting to steal beer from the Safeway on Olympia’s west side. They were shot nearby in a confrontation on Cooper Point Road.

    In the most recent protest, about 30 protesters gathered in downtown Olympia on Wednesday night.

    The protesters gathered at about 8:20 p.m. and blocked the streets at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Jefferson Street. The protesters walked down Fourth Avenue to Olympia City Hall, and later turned and walked toward Capitol Way.

    They stood in the street at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Capitol Way for about 10 minutes, then turned and walked back to City Hall. By that time, the number of protesters had dwindled to about 20 people.

    Six Olympia police officers followed them, redirecting traffic.

    While walking, protesters shouted, “Whose streets? Our streets,” “Black lives matter,” “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” and “We want indictment, but these killer cops won’t like it.”

    Olympia Lt. Paul Lower said the protest remained peaceful, and no arrests were made. […]

    A Tuesday night Olympia City Council meeting drew about 100 protesters and 34 people who addressed the council. All but one of the speakers expressed concern about the shooting and the way law enforcement is handling the investigation.

    Protesters gathered again about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and Lower said they appeared to be part of three groups: those protesting the May 21 shooting, people showing their support for local police and people carrying flags representing a known white supremacist group.

    Lower said that although the groups argued, no physical altercations occurred and no arrests were made.

    “When we see groups oppose each other like that, we do pay attention,” Lower said.

    They seem to be handling the protests rather calmly, for now. Smaller community? Smaller city? Better policing?

    Officers in Freddie Gray case taken to jail without handcuffs – is this #CrimingWhileWhite, or #CrimingWhileBlue? I don’t know of any non-police offenders who would be offered the same courtesy.

    “While an individual turning himself in is not a regular occurrence, it is not unusual when an agreement is made between attorneys, the office of the state’s attorney and the department for individuals to turn themselves in to a predetermined location where they will then be taken into custody,” Lt. Sarah Connolly, a spokeswoman, said Wednesday.

    She confirmed the identities of the three officers shown in the video but would not say where they got into the van or how often suspects who face such charges are taken into custody without handcuffs.

    “Members of the department had facilitated those officers who were turning themselves in to that location, at that point of time they were taken into custody,” Connolly said.

    Oh. Well, jsut be calm and peaceful, then.

    @deray since you met @BerkeleyBSU I just wanted to share with you some photos from their walkout, It was powerful.

  272. rq says

    Group seeking Ferguson mayor recall finally able to turn in petition

    A group seeking the recall of the Mayor of Ferguson was unsuccessful in turning in their petition on Tuesday because the City Clerk was out of the office. They were able to turn in those signatures at City Hall Thursday.

    A citizens and protest group called Ground Level Support says the petition to recall Mayor James Knowles was in response to the August shooting death of Michael Brown and a Department of Justice report that was critical of city practices.

    Ground Level Support claims it has collected 2,200 signatures of registered voters in Ferguson. The protest group said it needed about 1,800 signatures for the recall effort. They were able to to turn the signatures over to the Ferguson City Clerk.

    The petition will be sent to the St. Louis County Election Board which will have 20 days to to verify the signatures. A spokesman for the group who wanted to just go by his first name Phil told me the city can’t move forward with Knowles still in office.

    A Ferguson city spokesman said Mayor Knowles was unavailable for comment. In the past, he has said an effort to push him out of office would set the city back and divide the community.

    If the county election board does verify the petition signatures a recall election vote may be set for November.

    Our case to oust county prosecutor Bob McCulloch is being heard this Friday at 10 AM, St. Louis County Courts Judge Walsh #Ferguson That’s another on-going issue.

    BLAVITY BULLETIN – they have one??

    1. Black Women held down the front lines this week with #SayHerName protests; an action organized nationwide to address police violence against Black women.

    2. President Obama finally got a Twitter account and the trolls provided a warm, racist welcome. PSA: it’s a felony to come for @POTUS, so watch your subtweets.

    3. This week the internet realized Beyonce never, ever misses a beat and of course someone made an Instagram account dedicated to the best videos. Prepare for your productivity to be ruined.

    4. Akon launches “Solar Academy” that will supply electricity to 600 Million africans. Don’t say Akon ain’t never did nothing for his people now.

    5. Accomplished writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie kept it 100 this week encouraging girls and women to get over “being liked.” Watch her inspiring words.

    6. While you were sleeping Lil Mama released a new video via Worldstar. Lets just say that Black Twitter wasn’t impressed.Here’s the video and best reactions. Warning: May inadvertently cause a serious ab workout.

    7. Seems like every time a Black person experiences police brutality they are portrayed as a criminal. Here’s a quick break down on how the media talks about Black folk.

    8. Civil rights leader @Deray Mckesson got threatened on Twitter this week, the offender was suspended but it sparked a much needed discussion around internet safe spaces and freedom of speech.

    9. News Flash: Marc Jacobs invented bantu knots. Oh wait… Africans invented them thousands of years ago. Blavity’s Jay Dodd gives a quick refresher on cultural appropriation and hair.

    10. Memorial Day was last Monday. The NYtimes takes a moment and remembers the Black History of the national holiday.

    And a video to survive the haters in there, too.

    Black auto shop workers file class-action suit against NYPD – they’re really that obvious?

    The NYPD’s auto shop needs a major tune-up, says to a racial-discrimination class-action lawsuit filed by black workers who say they are kept in lower-paying jobs compared to their white colleagues.

    Three Fleet Service Division employees — David Binyard, Ricky Davis and Tyrone Taylor — are suing the NYPD, the city and their bosses claiming that they’ve been routinely denied promotions for mechanic positions that pay $80,000 — twice what they earn.

    Those jobs are given primarily to white people who are “less experienced and less qualified,” the Manhattan Supreme Court suit claims.

    The three named plaintiffs, have a combined 30 years on the job. They all have prior experience in the auto industry.

    The plaintiffs are stationed at a Maspeth, Queens facility where, out of 50 mechanics, only two are black, according to court papers.

    “For the most part defendants intentionally relegate black and African-American workers to auto service positions, positions which are inferior, subordinate, and lesser paying than the positions afforded to the white mechanics,” the suit says.

    The suit seeks unspecified back pay, loss of future income and other compensation.

    The division fixes patrol cars and other NYPD vehicles.

    A spokesman for the Law Department said, “All allegations will be reviewed.”

    May 29, 1973: Tom Bradley, grandson of slaves, is elected 1st (only to date) Black mayor of L.A. #todayinblackhistory

    Lawyer: Police-Involved-Shooting Victim’s Autopsy Refutes JSO Story. Nothing new under the sun.

    Jacksonville police shot 28-year-old D’Angelo Stallworth this month at a Westside apartment complex. The Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate, but Stallworth’s family’s attorney says a new autopsy points to a different narrative than what police have said happened that day.

    Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tom Hackney has said Stallworth held a gun at an officer’s chest, and after wrestling with the officer he dropped the gun and ran away. Hackney said officers shot Stallworth only after he turned to face them again.

    During an appearance on WJCT’s “First Coast Connect,” Stallworth family attorney Rick Block said, “The problem is that he wasn’t shot when he was fighting with police. He was shot when he was 40 feet away running from police.”

    One of the justifications the sheriff’s office gave for the shooting was the officers feared for their lives.

    But Block says the main question is how the police officers could have feared for their lives if Stallworth was running away. He points out, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office made that statement before actually talking to the officers involved.

    “If he’s trying to get away from police officers, why would he turn at them unarmed?” Block asked.

    The sheriff’s office has said investigators found a gun and 128 grams of marijuana at the scene after the shooting. But Block says Stallworth had no criminal history with drugs or guns.

    “There were eyewitness statements that had refuted what JSO had released to the press,” Block said. “They did not see D’Angelo Stallworth with a gun. They did not see marijuana on the balcony.”

    Block says the shooting highlights the need for police officers to wear body cameras.

    “Maybe the officers are justified. Wouldn’t it be nice to know on video?” he said.

    Ten officer-involved shootings happened in Jacksonville last year, and police have shot six people so far this year.

    As the investigation continues to unfold, Block says he hopes to find more answers for the family. So far all gatherings and vigils on Stallworth’s behalf have been peaceful, and Block says the family would like for the peaceful response in Jacksonville to continue.

  273. rq says

    Missing Minutes From Security Video Raises Questions

    Chicago police officers deleted footage from a security camera at a Burger King restaurant located fewer than 100 yards from where 17-year old Laquan McDonald was shot and killed, according to a Chicago-area district manager for the food chain.

    McDonald was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer on the night of October 20, 2014. Nine of the shots struck McDonald in the back, according to the Medical Examiners report.

    The 86-minutes of missing video runs from 9:13 p.m. to 10:39 p.m., according to the lawyers for McDonald’s family. He was shot at approximately 9:50 p.m.

    The Burger King sits at 40th and Pulaski and has a series of outside security cameras. On the night of the shooting, McDonald was trailed by Chicago police officers through the Burger King parking lot after a call about a man with a knife, according to attorneys for the McDonald family.

    Just south of the restaurant, McDonald was shot after police on the scene said he posed a “very serious threat” to the officer’s safety. But that claim is disputed by attorneys for McDonald’s family and by some eyewitnesses that night.

    “One witness, this witness told us this was an execution. That’s his word,” said attorney Jeff Neslund, who along with Michael Robbins, represents McDonald’s family.

    After the shooting, according to Jay Darshane, the District Manager for Burger King, four to five police officers wearing blue and white shirts entered the restaurant and asked to view the video and were given the password to the equipment. Three hours later they left, he said.

    The next day, when an investigator from the Independent Police Review Authority asked to view the security footage, it was discovered that the 86 minutes of video was missing. […]

    “We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete files,” Darshane said. “I mean we were just trying to help the police officers.”

    The missing video, all sides agree, would not have shown the actual shooting but attorney’s for McDonald’s family contend it could have shown events leading up to the shooting.

    “Our first time down at the Burger King restaurant when we started talking to employees, watching the Burger King video, when we realized video had been deleted, or is missing, absolutely we knew something was up,” said Jeff Neslund.

    While the video from the Burger King is missing, the shooting of McDonald was captured on a police dashboard camera. That video has not been made public.

    The FBI, the U.S. Attorney and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office are all investigating the McDonald shooting.

    As is the Independent Police Review Authority.

    “I don’t regard them as independent and I don’t regard them as investigators,” said attorney Candace Gorman. She represents the family of Divonte Young who was shot and killed by a Chicago Police officer in August 2012. The officer said he was in fear of his life after Young shot at him.

    IPRA in calling the shooting justified noted, “No weapon was found on or near the Subject so it was surmised that a civilian had removed the gun.”

    In a civil rights case filed in federal court, Gorman contends IPRA investigations are a whitewash.

    83 fuckin’ minutes. Wow.

    ICYMI: Toscana Management in Irvine, CA has noise guidelines specifically for their African American residents:
    Explain @EquityRes. A friendly reminder to African-American residents, to keep the noise down from 10PM to 7AM. Specifically a friendly reminder for them. o.o

    A comment on this, Bout to call and be like “I’m in the apartments to the far left. How loud am I on a scale from 1 to B*TCH WAYER?!”

    Apparently the newest rumor is that I am a member of the illuminati. The trolls are desperate and creative. Smearing activists seems to be a pretty hot hobby these days.

    Trumbull deputy gets 30-day unpaid suspension for Facebook post

    A hearing officer has issued a 30-working-day unpaid suspension to a Trumbull County Sheriff’s deputy who purportedly wrote a Facebook post commenting on the man who died in police custody in Baltimore.

    Maj. Tom Stewart of the sheriff’s office served as hearing officer for an appeal by Deputy Michael Geer of a finding by Maj. Harold Firster that Geer should be fired for the comments.

    After a hearing, Stewart informed Geer’s union representative May 22 that Stewart was reducing the proposed punishment from firing to a 30-working day unpaid suspension and sensitivity training. The unpaid suspension began Monday, Stewart said.

    Atty. Randall Weltman of the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, who represents Geer, said by phone Wednesday the suspension is “outrageous” and also will be appealed “through a grievance.”

    Stewart also conducted the investigation, which resulted from a complaint to the sheriff’s office by Helen Rucker, a Warren council member, who provided the sheriff’s office with a copy of the post.[…]

    According to a copy of the post provided by Firster, the post says, “Hi, I’m Freddie Grey [sic] and I’m a great guy! It doesn’t matter how many of your friends, family, adults, young and old, and yes teenagers and young children that I have helped getting them hooked on the drugs that I sold them. It doesn’t matter how many have overdosed and died. It doesn’t matter if I have robbed, stolen or even assaulted you, a friend, or even a family member.”

    It continues, “Why do you ask? Because, I am a nice guy! I too could be a son of Obama’s. So let me end by saying THANK YOU to the President, Mayor, NAACP, and all you other raciest [sic] mother… out there that hate and blame the cops and White’s [sic] for your problems. Thank [sic] for burning down the place that YOU dumb … live! Keep the [sic] showing the world how dumb and [sic] who the true raciest [sic] really are. Keep desecrating your own flag that great men and women, White, Black, Indian, Hispanic and Asian all who bravely died so that you can stand there showing the world your gratitude for their sacrifice.”

    Firster wrote a May 12 memo to Geer indicating that Geer had violated three articles of the rules and regulations of the sheriff’s office.

    One was exercising common sense and affirmatively promoting the organization’s values. Another was committing or condoning illegal or forbidden harassment. The third was discriminating or establishing patterns of discrimination in the performance of duties.

    Stewart indicated in his May 22 email to Weltman that he was dismissing Firster’s finding that Geer had violated the discrimination rule.

    Weltman said a decision to punish Geer for the post “is subversive of his rights to free speech. It was not his intention to make a racial point. It was to make a comment on the victim in Baltimore, how he should not be turned into a hero or a martyr.”

    Funny, that comment seems to have had a racially-skewed effect. What was that about implicit bias?

    Graphic: Homicides and shootings spike while arrests decline in Baltimore City . Dammit, it looks like I’ll have to search upthread for that article that noted that this spike has been occurring well before the unrest related to Freddie Gray’s death, not as a result of. *fumes*

  274. says

    From Jezebel–
    Irvine apartment company reminds black residents to keep it down:

    Nothing to see here, just a normal sign from a cool residential management company with specific noise control instructions for black people. No big deal at all.

    I saw this screenshot via @lenubienne on Twitter, and my immediate response, as yours might be, was it had to be Photoshopped. But it’s from a woman who Instagrammed the flyer from her apartment complex elevator last night. She took a second photo, and a video that shows the flyer clearly. “This is what it means to be black in Irvine,” she says. “Generalizations.” Her friend chimes in: “Blatant racism, with no regard to our personal feelings.”
    “Only two are posted, and it’s just in my building,” she says. “And I’m black. WE ALL BLACK.”

    (Shoutout to this girl, though; her nails look great.)

    This is the most blatant racism I’ve seen in a minute, and 100% illegal under multiple provisions of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the Unruh Civil Rights Act. We’ve called Toscana Management and are awaiting their comment.

    Updated: Marty McKenna, a representative for Equity Residential—the publicly traded company that manages 400 apartment complexes in 12 states, including the Toscana Apartments—told me by email, “This flyer was not created or posted by Equity Residential. We are investigating the source. We are outraged by the content and it does not match our core values as a company.” McKenna also told Gawker that “it is unlikely that a Toscana employee would post the notice without the knowledge or authorization of Equity Residential.”

    There’s an image of the sign at the link.

  275. rq says

    I need a song for every time I put a post in moderation. Any takers? Mod!ER!AY!SHUNNN!!!
    Last one for tonight:
    Larry Sanders Walked Away From the NBA and $27 Million, and He’s Never Felt Better

    There’s a story unfolding in Sanders’ head that he’s trying to put into words. “Automobiles,” “electricity,” a three-century era of technological progress that, for him, feels like too much, too soon: “We just exploded in time, and now we’re in this point where we’ve been living this way for, what, 300 years almost, not even that,” he says. “People have displaced emotions, anxieties; they need to create. That’s what we come from. We’d lived that way for 15 million years. Now, it’s this 300-year span, and everyone’s working, unfortunately.”

    It’s funny to hear from someone who is just 26 years old and technically retired. On February 26, after playing just 27 games of the 2014–15 season, Sanders left the NBA. He had recently entered himself into the Rogers Memorial Hospital in Milwaukee to receive treatment for a mood disorder, anxiety, and depression—issues which, in the past, he has tied to his turbulent upbringing. Many congratulated Sanders for making the tough and unconventional decision to walk away, even at the steep financial cost attached to his choice. Others criticized him for the money left on the table—$27 million, to be exact—along with who knows how much in potential future contracts and endorsement deals. A handful of cynics readied us for the slow, post-spotlight decline, the stories of bankruptcy and drug-related arrests to come.

    However, a few months after his exit from the Association, life is still far from over for Sanders. He appears calm and happy, speaking passionately, listening intently, looking closely. He’s traded his basketball goggles for a pair of gold Guess frames, and in place of his signature Converse shoes, he wears black and gold Jordan 1s, size 18. An olive green Supreme Fugazi hat hangs from one of the belt loops of his jeans.

    On his right ring finger, he wears a silver and gold ring in the shape of a mask. On one side is the face of comedy—on the other, tragedy. It’s only one piece of jewelry among the many that Sanders is wearing, but it has a notable, albeit brief, history with him: The night before, he says, he entered into a long conversation with a city jeweler who, so inspired by Sanders’ journey of self-discovery, gave him the piece for free. “It’s, like, a $10,000 ring,” he says, but what its ownership implies is something more powerful than its market value: His story is one worth hearing.
    […]

    Regardless, Sanders is happy to be away from pro ball. He misses his teammates, the chance to see multiple cities in the span of a week, and occasionally the game itself, but the freedom to live his own life is more important.

    “When I was playing basketball, you’d get put on that pedestal,” he says. “I saw it, and I rebelled against it so much. People thinking that you’re more than a human, that you have some sort of secret emotion or some power that—” he stops and laughs. “No, no, not at all.”

    It’s an idolization that Sanders feels many players aren’t truly prepared for when they first enter the NBA. This is the crux of Sanders’ frustrations with the league. The stresses and responsibilities of stardom weigh heavy on the shoulders of young men who are barely out of—or are still in—their teens. He believes that the NBA could have better programs in place to help athletes struggling with issues of mental health. More important, he believes that the league’s approach is reactionary and, too often, punitive. He advocates for a more holistic approach to problems like drug use (for which he has received suspensions in the past), tactics to understand the how and the why of an offense, as opposed to the what. To him, the league is more interested in punishing a player than providing a solution. And when punishments are brought to light, they begin to morph how the player is perceived.

    “I hated the way that they displayed me,” he says. “For 20 minutes a day, I’m now this angry man, getting all these technical fouls. No one knows my life from that point on, no one knows my day. Some people go through things, y’know? But that’s who you are, y’know? You’re just a basketball player, you’re just a performer.”
    […]

    The factory-like nature of professional sports is no longer a secret to anyone. The stories of broke and broken-down players are too many to name. A player is valued for their intelligence during the game—the ability to make rapid-fire decisions, or to react in the clutch. But a lesser premium is placed on their mental health outside of it. To that end, the dollars that players are paid are expected to take care of their anxieties. “We don’t do a very good job with mental health,” an NBA team executive told espn.com’s Kevin Arnovitz in a story about Sanders published in February. “We don’t have any answers, and we’re not doing a good job looking for them.”

    “It’s a business,” Sanders says. “Damaged product. I’m taking a desk or chairs: If the chair has a rip in it, or the chair has a faulty wheel, then I don’t want that chair. Give me another chair. That’s ’cause there’s a million of them out there. That’s the business. I don’t have the time to repair this chair; I have the time to go out and buy 10 more, though.”

    This reality, Sanders believes, is why he’s still close with many players who continue to work for the league.

    “They understand what I did,” he says. “They understand. Because everyone knows that there’s a life after. There’s so much more.”

    “They want to relax and not think about it. But they know, with each year, each injury.”

    “I want to work to set up a system for guys, just so they can be happy with themselves after basketball,” Sanders says. “Because no one’s going to be there. You don’t get a call. You don’t get a text. You don’t get a ‘How you doing? How’s your family?’”

    The NBA isn’t the only league coming up short, either. Consider the case of Dallas Cowboys defensive end Randy Gregory, a former Nebraska star who was slated as a first-round selection during much of this year’s pre-Draft chatter. Gregory is fast and lengthy, if unpolished as a defensive end; he racked up 10.5 sacks and 17 tackles for a loss for the Cornhuskers last season. In March, nfl.com’s Bucky Brooks projected him as the No. 13 pick in the Draft. Then, it was learned that he had failed a drug test at the NFL Combine for his use of marijuana as a means to treat his anxiety. In an attempt to be as forthright as possible, Gregory had spoken to NFL teams about his drug use during his pre-Draft interviews. Still, in April, football analyst Charles Davies expected the Bengals to select Gregory with the 21st selection. By the end of the month, Gregory had either fallen to the bottom of the first round, or out of it altogether, a slide punctuated by a report from nfl.com’s Ian Rapoport and Albert Breer, which described the “concerns” teams had about Gregory’s ability to handle “pro football’s mental rigors.” […]

    Sanders, mind you, doesn’t subscribe to any religious denomination in particular. He carries a collection of texts which range in subject matter and spiritual belief: Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace (“This is a quantum physics book. When I say ‘pan out’—and look at 15 million to 300—that’s what I hear when I read stuff like this.”); Lao Tzu’s fundamental text Tao Te Ching; Skyguide: A Field Guide to the Heavens, originally published by Golden Books in 1982; and The Shift, by self-help author Wayne Dyer. Sanders’ philosophy is loose, open-ended, and exploratory. He believes in universal energy and the connectedness of all things. He’s a walking, talking book of proverbs and parables, Jaden Smith-esque.

    As such, Sanders can be seen as an easy target for skeptics. There are times when you’re unsure about what exactly he’s doing these days. What does he want to talk to us about? He mentions a pair of goggles that he’s focused on designed: “They’re really dope, Mad Max-feel, skateboarding, all-purpose goggles.” He briefly describes a project that he has in the works: He wants to pair eight different artists to design eight different skateboards to be auctioned off to eight different charities. He loves to skate, a passion which takes us to Pier 62 Skatepark in Chelsea where, on a borrowed board, Sanders cruises around in the concrete bowls, the sun shining overhead.

    For the most part, though, Sanders is focused on himself, figuring out exactly who that is, and communicating the importance of this process for everyone. He knows that this freedom—to be something one day and another thing the next—is rare, but he has also emphasized in the past that his desire for it is hardly uncommon.

    “I’m no different from the person whose 9-to-5 isn’t their dream job,” Sanders wrote in the Players’ Tribune in February. There is, of course, an obvious disparity between Sanders and the average working person: Per the buyout that he arranged with the Milwaukee Bucks, he’ll earn $1.9 million per year for the next seven years.

    However, despite his clear financial advantages, he believes that happiness is within reach for those who are willing to take a risk for it: “If you make time for yourself and you’re led by your intuition, you’ll be taken care of. It’s a leap of faith,” says Sanders. “Life is here and gone. Not a dollar is going to add a day, or mend a relationship. [My money] can be seen as financial security, but like I said earlier, guys lost $150 million in a year.”

    So, even if Sanders no longer inspires the kid who one day wants to play in the NBA, he can still provide an example for the working people in America who go to work every morning and ask themselves, “Why?” As you learn more about him, it’s evident that this question has been on his mind for years.

    “I don’t get along with guys whose lives revolve totally around basketball,” Sanders told Sport Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins in 2013. “Someday that rubber ball will stop bouncing, and if you’ve built your whole identity around it, who will you be?”
    […]

    “I’m a father, that’s the first thing,” he says. “And I would like to think of myself as a vessel. I’m a man. I’m still a man.” He pauses. There’s a strong wind blowing off the water and onto Chelsea Piers. There are people walking by, enjoying one of the first warm days of spring, some of whom stare at Sanders, maybe because they know him from television, maybe because they just wonder why he’s being photographed. Earlier, in the lobby of the Time-Life Building, as we were passing through the turnstiles from the elevator bank, one man shouted his name. “Larry Sanders!” he said. Nothing else. Sanders was friendly and courteous to him; it was something that he had surely grown accustomed to. But, for a moment, I found it so fascinating. It was the most childlike thing to do, to simply say someone’s name, to recognize them like a baby recognizes a ball.

    That’s just what Sanders is to some people: The man who once wore the uniform, the letters pressed onto the back. But to himself? It’s less certain, less clear. Maybe it always will be. And maybe that’s the way he prefers it.

    “Y’know, the timeline of your life, playing it out, no one is ever anyone until they’re not here anymore,” he says. “So, y’know, I can’t say who I am. I’m still figuring it out. I’m still coming to me.”

    The burden of pro sports, I suppose.

    Also, Baltimore Development Corp. has set up a Business Recovery Team. Impacted businesses can sign up for help at http://www.BaltimoreBusinessRecovery.org .

    The details of the East St. Louis “race riot,” aka massacre of innocent black people, are absolutely infuriating.
    East St Louis race riot, you ask?
    White Mob Riots in East St. Louis Over Threat of Black Labor

    On May 28, 1917, in East St. Louis, Illinois, a meeting of 3000 white union members marched on the Mayor’s office to make demands about the job competition resulting from the city’s growing African American population. The disgruntled union members were upset that African Americans who had migrated from the South were being hired by companies who wanted to weaken the bargaining power of white unions. The large group quickly devolved into an angry mob, and rioted through the streets of East St. Louis, destroying property and physically assaulting African Americans at random.

    Local law enforcement was unable to control the large crowd and the National Guard was deployed to regain order in the community. After the riots were calmed, little action was taken to prevent the violence from restarting and none of the union’s participants were arrested. New agreements were not established with white unions and local police were not better equipped to handle large mobs.

    The National Guard withdrew in mid-June despite the fact that racial tensions in the city remained high. In July, attacks began again; this time they lasted for four days and resulted in the deaths of more than 100 African Americans. Another 6000 were forced to flee their homes to escape the violence.

    Like holy shit.

    Pres Obama and VP Biden w 97-yr-old Vivian Bailey, who raises money so kids from local school can take field trips.

    Back tomorrow.

  277. says

    With apologies to Kool and the Gang:

    Yahoo!
    Moderation
    Yahoo!
    You’re now in moderation

    Moderate my posts, come on!
    (It’s moderated)
    Moderate my posts, come on!
    (It’s moderated)

    There’s a thread that’s goin’ on right here
    And moderation of posts up to my ears
    So bring your Storify and your long reads too
    PZ gonna moderate your posting with you

    Come on now, moderation
    It’s all moderated, be here in good time
    Moderation
    PZ gonna moderate and handle it fine

    It’s time to post together
    What’s stopping you, what’s your tether?
    Everyone around the world stay woke!

    Yahoo!
    It’s in moderation
    Yahoo!

    Moderate my posts, come on!
    (It’s moderated)
    Moderate my posts, come on!
    (It’s moderated)
    …

  278. says

    New Jersey police officers shoot and kill suspect in public library:

    An armed suspect was shot and killed by police inside a New Jersey library Friday after he struggled against police officers who attempted to detain him and then charged at them with a knife, authorities said.

    I wonder if there’s any security footage available, bc at this point, I need another source to corroborate the police’s story.

    Two police officers spotted the suspect, who had a warrant for his arrest, walking into the Lyndhurst Public Library on Valley Brook Avenue at about 2:30 p.m., according to Lyndhurst Police Chief James O’Connor.

    The officers approached the suspect, identified by prosecutors as Kevin K. Allen, 36 — who also has an alias of Kevin Hall — on the top floor of the library and attempted to detain him, according to O’Connor.
    Allen struggled and continued to fight even as the officers attempted to use pepper spray and a baton, O’Connor said. The suspect then pulled a knife out and rushed at the officers, and that’s when they fired.

    Witness Jayne Thorne was leaving the library when the shooting happened.
    “Not even a minute I was outside the library, and all of a sudden two plainclothes men and one cop comes running by,” she said. “I rushed into the library, and the next thing I know they were dragging someone out on a stretcher.”

    The chief said the shooting was justified and the officers had no choice.
    “There was nothing else they could have done,” he said.

    Bullshit. Police batons. Tasers.

    The two officers were not injured but were transported to the hospital for trauma, according to O’Connor.
    There were people inside the library, and several witnessed the shooting, including a child, according to authorities. No bystanders were hurt, which neighbors deemed lucky considering how many children go to the library on a Friday afternoon.
    “If that would have happened a half-hour earlier or later, there would have been kids doing projects, or just weekend stuff, and God forbid if the gunman escaped or held peoploe hostage,” said neighbor Robert O’Dell. “When you’re a parent, that goes through your mind.”
    No one answered the phone at the library.

    Dude, he had a knife. Not a gun.

  279. rq says

    Tony
    At this point, I’d be all about NO TASERS too, but it’s better than a gun, I suppose – for some definition of ‘better’.

  280. rq says

    Cait
    Need that wrapped and recorded, please, ASAP. :)

    +++

    In other news, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be inadvertently taking breaks on Saturdays. But we’ll see. :)

    Tomorrow! Lotsa reading! Including a comparison between white ‘protestors’ (appearance and media portrayal) and black protestors (appearance and media portrayal). Stay tuned!

  281. rq says

    You know what’s heartbreaking?
    Among all the other stuff, I’ll be introducing you to a few more hashtags today. Incl. the man mentioned above by Tony, shot in a library.
    But unfortunately, he is not the only one.
    To work, then.

    +++

    Let’s start with some music, though, okay?
    Lil Mama’s ‘Sausage’ Might Have You Dancing This Weekend

    Lil Mama knows a thing or two about getting all eyes on her. Never one to shy away from the spotlight, the Harlem singer/rapper/actress turned the Internet upside on Thursday evening with a funky new video called “Sausage.”

    Granted, half of the Cyberspace chatter was shade, but her meat certainly had folks chatting about the hilarious messaging and use of popular lines on the record. To really get a sense of what the hell we’re talkin’ about, press play above.

    And some basketball: Bomani Jones Takes the Dismal Science to ESPN

    You have three degrees in economics, which I assume is not common among your colleagues at ESPN. Do you still consider yourself an economist? Yes. Being an economist is much more about a thought process than it is anything specific about your job. It’s thinking about how to maximize utility and the allocation of scarce resources — that’s what I’m doing every day now.

    Do you still do research? No. One thing I learned in the course of doing more research in economics is that I had more of a master’s-degree level of curiosity than a Ph.D. level of curiosity.

    The Clippers were knocked out of the playoffs already. Last year around this time, you were arguing that the Donald Sterling controversy was a nonissue, that people reacted in a way that missed the point. Why? The topics of race that we’ve discussed in the last year, as they relate to sports, are still as flimsy and inconsequential as ever. Donald Sterling was one of the great perpetrators of housing discrimination that we have seen in this country in modern times, and we ignored that. Instead, we’re still trying to catch people saying the wrong thing. We didn’t learn a thing from the Donald Sterling story. Not one single thing.

    You also raised some eyebrows a while back when you said that Stevie Wonder might not really be blind. Your evidence was mainly that Stevie was interested in being on “Dancing With the Stars” and that you know a guy who sold him three plasma-screen TVs. O.K. It’s a somewhat inappropriate joke that has taken on a life of its own. A buddy of mine and I used to joke about this when I was in college. Now I joke about it a little bit on ESPN. Then next thing you know, it became a thing — a huge thing. It’s probably what I’m most recognized for.

    So can he see or not? If it turned out Stevie could see, I wouldn’t be shocked.

    Have you heard from Stevie on this? I have not heard from Stevie. There’s no telling exactly how it would go.

    Given how outspoken you are, how do you avoid criticizing ESPN? It is such a colossus in the sports world. They sign my check, so I can’t just go open fire on ESPN when they do something I don’t like. And occasionally they do. But I don’t think anybody at ESPN is going to get in trouble for saying something that is factually undeniable.

    Interview continues at the link.

    A different kind of racism. Mohammed cartoon contest: Protest held outside Phoenix mosque, pics and commentary to come, in the meantime, you can read the article (it has video).

    Judge defers ruling on probe into handling of Ferguson case

    A judge on Friday deferred ruling on a request by activists for an independent probe of a prosecutor’s handling of grand jury proceedings in the Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown, but he again gave strong indications he might toss the lawsuit.

    St. Louis Circuit Judge Joseph Walsh III heard an hour of arguments over the lawsuit by four activists pressing for a special prosecutor to review St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s handling of the process. Walsh said he would take the matter under advisement and start working on a ruling after his vacation planned for next week.

    The hearing Friday continued one the judge began a month earlier, when he told the activists’ attorneys an outside investigation might be unnecessary since the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge the white officer who shot and killed the unarmed, black 18-year-old. The county grand jury already had chosen not to prosecute officer Darren Wilson, who later resigned.

    Lawyers for the activists argued that the grand jury decision in November was inappropriately influenced by McCulloch’s conduct.

    “Mr. McCulloch put his thumb on the scale,” attorney Maggie Ellinger-Locke told the judge Friday. “I’m arguing the process was skewed from the beginning.”

    Walsh countered that McCulloch had assistant prosecutors run the grand jury proceedings and “wasn’t the one asking the questions.” The judge also pointed to the Justice Department probe that cleared Wilson. The federal agency did, however, release a scathing report that cited racial bias and racial profiling in Ferguson policing and in a profit-driven municipal court system that frequently targeted blacks.

    “The Department of Justice doesn’t take issue with anything that was done (during the grand jury process), and they came to the very same conclusion” as the grand jury, Walsh said.

    He then told Ellinger-Locke: “You’re just nitpicking at certain things that were done or not done.”

    Ellinger-Locke said the federal findings are irrelevant to the push for a special prosecutor. She insisted the scope of the U.S. government’s investigation was merely to determine whether Wilson violated Brown’s civil rights.

    “These proceedings are about whether the grand jury process was conducted appropriately,” she said.

    Walsh retorted that the Justice Department did an independent probe that included FBI interviews of the same witnesses who offered grand jury testimony, and roughly a dozen of them corroborated Wilson’s account.

    Ellinger-Locke disagreed, saying, “I think he would have been indicted had this process been aboveboard.”

    The grand jury decision touched off angry, sometimes violent, protests in Ferguson similar to the unrest that occurred in the St. Louis suburb immediately after Brown’s death in August. His shooting also led to demonstrations in other cities and spawned a national “Black Lives Matter” movement seeking changes in how police deal with minorities.

    I guess done is done and nobody really gives a shit about McCullogh anymore (except those who do) but that man had some serious race an authority issues he was unwilling to tackle. Please have a special prosecutor.

    It was absolutely legitimate for @deray to be concerned for his safety and suspending Johnson was the right thing to do. @Slate = trash. I have since misplaced the relevant Slate article, but it wasn’t pretty.

    Crissle West Is Magical For Taking Down White Privilege

    Last night, Crissle West of The Read sat on a panel hosted by WNYC. At the event, “Micropolis: Funny or Racist,” she and three other comedians discussed how comedy and racial discourse intersect. After the floor was opened for questions, a White male audience member suggested that Sarah Silverman’s sketch in Blackface should not be taken at face value. He said that he did not believe that she was “making fun of Black people when she does Blackface” because “Black entertainers had to do Blackface to get jobs.” Crissle was having none of that and set the man straight. Watch the epic takedown below.

    Fuckin’ A. It sounds good. Except the video won’t play for me. :( I’ll do a youtube search later, in case anyone else has issues.

  282. rq says

    The FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws, a post by Ophelia Benson on government-sponsored segregation.

    ABC on the latest McCullogh issue: Judge Defers Ruling on Probe Into Handling of Ferguson Case

    St. Louis Circuit Judge Joseph Walsh III heard an hour of arguments over the lawsuit by four activists pressing for a special prosecutor to review St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s handling of the process. Walsh said he would take the matter under advisement and start working on a ruling after his vacation planned for next week.

    The hearing Friday continued one the judge began a month earlier, when he told the activists’ attorneys an outside investigation might be unnecessary since the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge the white officer who shot and killed the unarmed, black 18-year-old. The county grand jury already had chosen not to prosecute officer Darren Wilson, who later resigned.

    Lawyers for the activists argued that the grand jury decision in November was inappropriately influenced by McCulloch’s conduct.

    “Mr. McCulloch put his thumb on the scale,” attorney Maggie Ellinger-Locke told the judge Friday. “I’m arguing the process was skewed from the beginning.”

    Walsh countered that McCulloch had assistant prosecutors run the grand jury proceedings and “wasn’t the one asking the questions.” The judge also pointed to the Justice Department probe that cleared Wilson. The federal agency did, however, release a scathing report that cited racial bias and racial profiling in Ferguson policing and in a profit-driven municipal court system that frequently targeted blacks.

    “The Department of Justice doesn’t take issue with anything that was done (during the grand jury process), and they came to the very same conclusion” as the grand jury, Walsh said.

    He then told Ellinger-Locke: “You’re just nitpicking at certain things that were done or not done.”

    I guess it’s mostly the same text. But yeah, it doesn’t look good.

    Hashtag one: Deputies shoot 17-year-old after car chase in SeaTac. 17.

    A 17-year-old boy was shot in the head by a King County sheriff’s deputy Thursday evening after he allegedly tried to ram a car into an officer during a stolen-vehicle pursuit.

    The teen was spotted in what King County sheriff’s deputies believe was a stolen vehicle on International Boulevard around 8:20 p.m., according to sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Stan Seo.

    Two deputies in separate cars tried to pull the car over, but were unsuccessful, Seo said. The two patrol cars were able to surround the vehicle, and both deputies got out of their cars.

    The teen shifted the vehicle into reverse, ramming a patrol car close to a deputy, Seo said. The other deputy then shot the teen twice, striking him in the head, Seo said.

    “The car was being used as a weapon,” Seo said.

    The sheriff’s office originally said the suspect fired at deputies but later said the teen was not armed with a gun.

    The teen was taken to Harborview Medical Center with gunshot wounds. His injuries were considered non-life-threatening, Seo said. […]

    The two deputies will be placed on administrative leave, Seo said. There will be a criminal and internal investigation into the shooting, he said.

    The deputy who shot the teen is 41 and an 11-year veteran of the sheriff’s office.

    The sheriff’s deputies work in SeaTac, which contracts for police services with the King County Sheriff’s Office.

    Two dozen neighbors gathered outside the shooting scene at South 208th Street and 32nd Lane South Thursday night as officers collected evidence.

    Jessica Schneider said her children were part of a group playing outside that witnessed the shooting.

    “They shot him in front of people,” Schneider said. “This wasn’t necessary.”

    Yah but shot in the head? What are the chances of lasting damage?

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Important Message to Girls: “Forget About Likability”

    Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was honored at this year’s Girls Write Now Awards, where the mentoring organization dedicated to helping underserved young women find their voices through writing celebrates the women who helped pave the way for the teen girls.

    Adichie, who has authored award-winning novels such as Americanah andHalf a Yellow Sun, delivered a poignant and humorous short speech upon accepting her award, and imparted key words of wisdom on finding your voice as a young female writer.
    “I think it’s important to tell your story truthfully, and I think that’s a difficult thing to do–to be truly truthful. Because it’s only natural to be concerned about offending people or possible consequences,” Adichie says in the speech. The writer goes on to share the advice she gives her young students, especially the girls, to “forget about likability.”

    “I think that what our society teaches young girls–and I think it’s also quite difficult for even older women, self-confessed feminists, to shrug off–is the idea that likability is an essential part of the space you occupy in the world, that you’re supposed to twist yourself into shapes to make yourself likable.”

    “That is bullshit,” she says, to loud applause.

    “If you start off thinking about being likable, you’re not going to tell your story honestly,” Adichie adds. “The world is such a wonderful, diverse, multi-faceted place, that there’s going to be someone who likes you. You don’t need to twist yourself into shapes.”

    Video at the link.

    Nevada Abolishes Death in Prison Sentences for Children. I’m so, so, so sad for a world where this is even necessary.

    This week, Nevada abolished life without parole sentences for children, joining a growing list of states to reject harsh and excessive sentences for juveniles.

    The Nevada legislature unanimously passed AB 267 and Governor Brian Sandoval signed it Tuesday. The legislation was supported by a bipartisan coalition that includes victims’ families, formerly incarcerated youth, and prosecutors.

    The new law retroactively bars the imposition of a life without parole sentence on any person who was under eighteen at the time of the crime. It provides for an opportunity for parole after serving fifteen or twenty years depending on the crime, and it requires judges to consider the differences between juvenile and adult offenders when determining an appropriate sentence for a child.

    The Nevada law continues a nationwide trend. Vermont, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Wyoming, and Texas also recently eliminated death-in-prison sentences for children.

    Children. Fucking children.

    The FBI’s Response to Another Killer Cop Set Free? More Surveillance For Protestors. Feeling safe yet? Can’t cite because it’s alternet, so you’ll just have to read.

  283. rq says

    Okay, this appeal re: the #BreloTrial is actually just challenging the judge’s logic and cannot change the outcome re: Brelo. So what’s the point?
    And what is he talking about?
    Prosecutor challenges legal analysis of Brelo verdict

    McGinty is challenging the legal analysis of the verdict, citing:

    – The trial court used the wrong standard on causation in announcing its verdict. Under established Ohio law, the State did not have to prove that shots fired by Officer Brelo were solely responsible for the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

    – The trial court incorrectly applied the law regarding the affirmative defense of justification when police officers use deadly force. Police officers who recklessly expose themselves to danger, violate training and kill civilians violate the Fourth Amendment and should be held criminally liable.

    – The trial court’s verdict considered the wrong lesser included offense to the indicted charge of Voluntary Manslaughter. The court should have considered Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault if it chose to acquit the defendant on Voluntary Manslaughter. Felonious Assault, the alternative the court said was considered, is not a lesser included offense of Voluntary Manslaughter.

    Legal experts tell WKYC Channel 3 that, even if granted the decision of Judge John O’Donnell is final and can not be overturned, Brelo, 31, can not be retried.

    Those experts add, the goal of the 31-page appeal is to challenge the legal rational the judge used for part of the decision and to assure he does not use the same rational in future cases.

    Besides misspelling ‘rationale’, it makes sense. Sadly, it will do nothing for justice in this situation.

    Crime went down during NY police slowdown. Crime went up during Baltimore police slowdown. Public safety doesn’t depend on law enforcement.

    More Claims of Misconduct by McCulloch in Ferguson Grand Jury Investigation

    We still don’t know whether a special prosecutor will be appointed to look into questions of misconduct against St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch.

    A second hearing before Circuit Judge Joseph Walsh saw attorney Maggie Ellinger-Locke arguing on behalf of several community activists who want to see McCulloch booted from office for acting in bad faith during the grand jury proceedings in the Michael Brown case.

    “Mr. McCulloch failed to fulfill his duty of office. So a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the grand jury proceeding, itself. Not whether or not Michael Brown was unjustifiably killed. That’s not the question we’re asking,” Ellinger-Locke said.

    Professor Bennett Gershman flew in from New York to argue for those who say McCulloch was negligent in his duties in not securing an indictment of officer Darren Wilson.

    “I was a prosecutor for a long time, and I know how prosecutors can deal with grand juries,” he said. “And prosecutors can basically get a grand jury to do what it wants to do.”

    Despite Gershman’s long trip, he was not allowed to testify in open court, though he did submit an affidavit.

    Judge Walsh recessed court without making a decision, saying he would likely hand down a ruling in about a week.

    Still no charges for Cleveland Police nearly seven months after killing Tanisha Anderson. I feel like Cleveland police like to drag things out in the hopes that people will forget.

    “They killed my sister,” Joell Anderson, Tanisha’s 40-year-old brother said as he fought back tears. “I watched it.”

    Suffering a mental health breakdown on the evening of November 12, Tanisha’s family called 911 so that she could be taken to a hospital. Instead of an ambulance, the police arrived. Like so many other families who sought medical attention for their loved ones, police killed Tanisha just a few minutes after arriving.

    Could you ever imagine the scenario in which people watched two men slam the head of a police officer on the ground, ignore him while he died, and delay medical support until it was too late? Could you imagine six months after such an incident that investigation was still ongoing and no charges had been brought while the men who killed the officer walked free?

    It would never happen. Ever. […]

    In spite of Tanisha’s death being ruled a homicide, the so-called investigation drags on and on—much like the case against the Cleveland police officers who killed Tamir Rice 10 days after her death.

    The officers who killed Tamir haven’t even been interviewed yet, and it makes one wonder if the officers in the Anderson case have ever been interviewed.

    What exactly is being investigated? The autopsy was released months ago. Only a few witnesses exist. These artificial delays are just another injustice forced upon the family of Tanisha Anderson.

    Suspect shot and killed by police in Lyndhurst Public Library, #ReadingWhileBlack. Same as Tony’s above.
    Hashtag two.

  284. rq says

    Meeting with activists of #bringbackourgirls in Abuja, 410 day since the abduction of Chibok girls by Boko Haram. Yep, that hasn’t ended, either.

    Tangential: Twitter trolls, your days are numbered: The Department of Justice is finally taking online harassment like #Gamergate seriously . Let’s hope they address racist trolls, too.

    Prosecutor McGinty is appealing the Brelo verdict. This characterization followed by those typos = p.o.’d prosecutor.

    Closing argument: Victoria White ’15, taking action against injustice

    In a way, the seeds of Victoria White-Mason’s activism were planted long before she was born. Her grandfather was the first black man to graduate from Duke University, where he faced prejudice and discrimination. Her great-grandfather operated a business in Durham, N.C.’s Hayti district, a thriving African-American community during a time of segregation. Her family history helped raise her awareness of racial injustice and also the strength of black people in the face of adversity.

    But it was the events of Ferguson, Mo., last year that inspired her to take action against the injustice she saw and the problems that still linger when it comes to race in America.

    “I’ve always cared about these kinds of issues,” she says. “I guess I didn’t know what my place would be in trying to solve them. For Ferguson, it was sort of an awakening for me and I felt like I couldn’t — just for fear of not knowing what to do — not do anything.”

    During her final year of law school, after the killing of Michael Brown, White-Mason traveled to Ferguson on behalf of the Ferguson Legal Defense Committee, which worked to ensure the rights of protesters. She was there, at the police station in fact, when the decision came down not to indict the police officer responsible for the shooting. The memory of the shock and trauma she witnessed still remains with her, she says.

    White-Mason also sought to bring the lessons of Ferguson back with her to Cambridge when she returned after nearly three weeks away. She helped organize a march on Harvard, mobilizing students from different Harvard schools to converge in Harvard Yard as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. She also helped bring together faculty and students at HLS to discuss how the curriculum could more closely reflect upon issues of social injustice.

    “Just to get people a space with which to grieve and to try to find hope, I think that probably was the highlight of my Harvard experience,” she says.

    There were other highlights too. HLS gave her a launching point to see the world, including internships in London and Australia and as a representative of the Harvard Black Law Students Association to the Africa Summit in Tanzania; all told, she traveled to 20 countries since she started law school. She also served as co-president of the Harvard Law Documentary Studio, for which she helped produce student films. […]

    “As a kid who grew up with not the most available to her, the fact that with hard work, pushing through it, persevering, I’ve got myself to the point where doors are opened,” says White-Mason. “And that’s all I really need to be able to do some amazing things at some point in my life I’m hoping.”

    The world is yours, young black woman! Go get it!

    There’s a protest action scheduled in Baltimore today. There will be infinitely more officers there than were at the Mosque last night. Bet. Ah yes, the mosque. Getting to that.

    Real:
    Systematic Racism
    Police Brutality
    Marginalized Voices
    Patriarchy

    Not Real:
    Reverse Racism
    White Genocide
    Gay Agenda Misandry
    In case anyone needed a reminder.

  285. rq says

    Any black guy who wore a durag was assumed to be in a gang but for whites its fashion #MyCultureIsNotCouture A fashion statement.

    For Rekia, LaVena, and Shereese: The Importance of #SayHerName

    Patriarchy surrounds and consumes us. In communities across the nation where black men are viewed as violent and criminal, women are believed to be less impacted by mass criminalization because handcuffs are not placed on them as much, or because they are not slashed by broken window policies as much. But less than does not tell the entire story. Less than obscures the particular ways in which black women experience criminalization through policies such as stop and frisk.

    As much acknowledges that something is happening to whom or whatever is in comparison. Black women were not lynched as much as black men. But they were lynched. Black girls are not suspended or expelled from school as much as black men. But they are expelled and suspended. Black girls and women are not murdered in incidents of community gun violence as much as black boys and men. But they are still gunned down.

    Why do anti-gun violence activists refuse to say her name?

    Black girls and women are not killed by police as much as black boys and men. But, yes, agents of the state kill them. No, black transgender women are not killed as much as black and brown men. But they are murdered.

    Why do most anti-police brutality advocates refuse to say her name?

    If we are to remain in the realm of comparative suffering, then we must offer that black women are sexually assaulted more than men. Black women are victims of domestic abuse more than men. Consider how accepting we are of using the term “wife beater” to describe a type of undershirt because, according to urban folklore, in old black-and-white movies a man wore this type of undershirt as he beat his wife. In the US military, women like LaVena Johnson who enlist to fight for their country are brutalized, killed, and have their stories quieted by the same military and government they fight for.

    Why does the military refuse to say her name?

    De-emphasizing the collective harms visited upon a group of black people, and our Latino brothers and sisters, by state agents, institutions, and government systems is antithetical to the best interests of our communities. It reflects a narrow comprehension of racial justice. If more of us saw these issues in gender-inclusive terms, however, it would require us to unlearn everything that makes us secure and safe—religion, century-old traditions, the comfort of capitalism. It would compel us to let go of the belief that places men at the head of the table by default.

    This unlearning would destroy our comfort zones; it would shatter our paternalistic misunderstandings that tell women they are here to wholly support men in every endeavor of life, even when these men are not deserving or capable of that responsibility.

    The new learning would shift how we mentor young people and how mentoring programs are funded (see: My Brother’s Keeper). Mentoring programs focused on boys would be complemented by programs that target the concerns of women and girls; and not exclusively in the context of intimate relationships, such as a mother or girlfriend. This new learning would enlist women to lead alongside men who facilitate the mentoring process.

    The new learning would require those of us who work diligently and passionately against intra-community gun violence to shift our understanding of who is affected by it.

    The new learning would require those of us who organize against state violence like police brutality, mass incarceration, mass deportation, and mass suspensions in poor-to-middle class black and brown communities to indict a system that damages all of us and not just some of us. We would have to seek out black and brown women, lesbian, cis, or transgender persons for our panel discussions, community roundtables, Sunday prayers at church, and policy meetings. […]

    In New York City, this past Wednesday, hundreds gathered in Union Square for a vigil sponsored by the African American Policy Forum. The vigil was called #SayHerName. We gathered to hear and say the name of the black women and girls who have been lost to state violence. I stood next to Martinez Sutton, the brother of Rekia Boyd, as he relived the pain of living without his little sister. Piper Anderson, the host of the event led chants of “Say Her Name.” We followed in unison. We were not the same size crowd as we were when we marched for Tryavon, Mike, and Freddie. It felt as if the lives of these women did not matter as much. Our conditioning, this patriarchal bullshit, tells us not to acknowledge these women; most of us we are hardwired not to say her name.

    Laughing at boyish violence toward girls nurtures a lie: It says this girl, and her pain, are invisible. Lifting only the stories of black men who are brutalized by each other and the state equally makes the pain of black girls and women invisible, just like what I did to Shaka.

    Once a person becomes invisible they no longer matter…

    …like Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Natasha McKenna, Kyam Livingston, Tarika Wilson, Sheneque Proctor, Kimberlee Raandle-King, Alexia Christian, Tyisha Miller, Shereese Francis, Kayla Moore, Pearlie Golden, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Alberta Spruill, Frankie Perkins, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, Shelly Frey, Eleanor Bumpurs, Latanya Haggerty, Kendra James, Shamel Edwards, Shantel Davis, Miriam Casey, Gabriella Nevarez, Mya Hall, Marissa Alexander, LaVena Johnson…

    New learning would require us to #SayHerName.

    That’s a lot of names.

    Imagine, for one second, what would go down if a #BlackLivesMatter protestor showed up like this guy in Phoenix. There’s your first look at the ‘protestors’ at the mosque. Yep, they’re protesting people who have done nothing against them. Is that even a legitimate protest? Like, they’re not oppressed by muslims. … Are they?
    Think angry whites have never marched on non-white churches before? Think again; this #IsYourAmerica #PhXMosque
    Being Muslim is not violent. Showing up to a mosque threatening Muslims with assault rifles and Nazi symbols is violent. #PHxMosque Oh yes, the Nazi symbols.
    The KKK used to do this to black churches in the Deep South that encouraged blacks to vote. It was hate then, it’s hate now #PHxMosque

  287. rq says

    More from baseball: Tonight’s #shutdownbaseball action. #GoCards #ABanks #conciousfriday #endpolicebrutality #BlackLivesMatter

    Strong police presence still at the #PhxMosque protest @statepress I heard there was a counter-protest, too, and the police stood between, but I don’t have anyhting specific on that.

    Calvin Holiday, Navajo, says even Indian religion was outlawed. #PHxMosque Racist white people in love with their guns = hateriots, according to his sign. Love it. Also remember when they were pilgrims in search of religious freedom, yeah, that.

    Racism in Japan: Biracial Beauty Queen Challenges Japan’s Self-Image

    WHEN Ariana Miyamoto was crowned Miss Universe Japan 2015, participants said she stole the show with a saucy strut, an infectious smile and a calm self-confidence that belied her 21 years. But it was not just her beauty and poise that catapulted her to national attention.

    Ms. Miyamoto is one of only a tiny handful of “hafu,” or Japanese of mixed race, to win a major beauty pageant in proudly homogeneous Japan. And she is the first half-black woman ever to do so.

    Ms. Miyamoto’s victory wins her the right to represent Japan on the global stage at the international Miss Universe pageant expected in January. She said she hoped that her appearance — and better yet, a victory — would push more Japanese to accept hafu. However, she said, Japan may have a long way to go.

    Even after her victory in the national competition, local journalists have had a hard time accepting her as Japanese.

    “The reporters always ask me, ‘What part of you is most like a Japanese?’ ” said Ms. Miyamoto, who has the long legs of a foreign supermodel, but shares the same shy self-reserve of many other young Japanese women. “I always answer, ‘But I am a Japanese.’ ” […]

    “Even today, I am usually seen not as a Japanese but as a foreigner. At restaurants, people give me an English menu and praise me for being able to eat with chopsticks,” said Ms. Miyamoto, who spoke in her native Japanese and is an accomplished calligrapher of Japanese-Chinese characters. “I want to challenge the definition of being Japanese.”

    HER self-proclaimed mission has raised eyebrows at a time when race relations are receiving new scrutiny in Japan, which had long seen itself as immune to the ethnic tensions of the United States.

    The Fuji Television Network’s plans for a musical show featuring singers in blackface was canceled only after pressure from antiracism groups. A right-wing novelist and former adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also raised hackles at home and abroad for advocating apartheid-style segregation of races.

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    However, many here see Ms. Miyamoto’s victory as proof that Japan is slowly embracing a more multicolor image of itself.

    With outright immigration still restricted to a trickle, much of Japan’s new diversity comes from the ethnically mixed children of marriages between Japanese and foreigners. These hafu — a term that comes from the English word “half” — have gained increasing social prominence, especially in sports and on television.

    Japanese of mixed race also account for a small but growing portion of the overall population: According to the Health Ministry, some 20,000 children with one non-Japanese parent are now born here annually, about 2 percent of total births.

    “Ariana gives us another opportunity to challenge the old assumption that you have to look Japanese to be Japanese,” said Megumi Nishikura, a half Japanese, half Irish-American filmmaker who is co-director of the 2014 documentary “Hafu.” […]

    “Ariana is the most talked-about Miss Universe Japan ever,” said Stephen Diaz, the Japan-based reporter for Missosology, a website that covers pageants. He said Ms. Miyamoto dominated a contest that required contestants to show off their dance moves and don elegant evening gowns, in addition to the obligatory bikini competition.

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    “I mean, we were all thinking, this is Japan. They’re not going to crown a black girl,” he said. “But then she was so far above the other contestants.”

    While Ms. Miyamoto credits her visit to the United States with making her comfortable with her black ancestry, she said her time there also taught her that she is Japanese.

    She spent two years with her American family, enrolling at a local high school. But she soon faced difficulties fitting in. Frustrated by her lack of native English skills, and treated as a foreigner by white and black classmates alike, she found herself growing homesick and pining for Japanese food unavailable in rural Arkansas.

    “I was born and raised in Japan, so this is where I belong,” she said.

    Seems a similar struggle everywhere (witness Aminata Savadogo, Latvia’s Eurovision entry – she says she’s Latvian, others question her origin… assholes.)

    Thabo Sefolosha reflects on incident, says he’s always been a professional

    Hawks forward Thabo Sefolosha, who has blamed Manhattan police for the season-ending leg injuries he suffered during his April arrest in the city, told ESPN on Friday that the incident, in addition to carrying a physical toll, has damaged his reputation.

    “I was injured in the hands of the police, and it took away a lot from my everyday life,” Sefolosha said during an interview at his home. “From being able to help put the kids in bed, going up and down the stairs.

    “We are talking about the stress that it has brought to the entire family, you know, my mom and dad in Switzerland, my brothers and sisters, my wife. Also, the damage to my reputation. I’ve had people texting me about what they saw in the newspaper and things like this. Every aspect of my life was affected by something like this, and I think putting light on the aftermath of something like this, I think that’s also something that’s important.”

    The Hawks’ season ended this week with their elimination in the Eastern Conference finals. They secured the top seed in the East on March 27 and went on to win 60 games. The night before their April 8 game in Brooklyn against the Nets, Sefolosha went out with others to enjoy their success.

    “That night we had quite a bit to celebrate,” he said. “We had secured the first spot in the Eastern Conference. And I like New York. It’s a city I enjoy. I have friends there. So me and one of my teammates decided to go out and have a good time in the city.”

    Sefolosha was arrested at the corner of 10th Avenue and West 17th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea district in the early hours of April 8. The police report filed by officer Johnpaul Giacona of the 10th Precinct stated that Sefolosha was interfering with the establishment of a crime scene in front of 1Oak Club, where Indiana Pacers forward Chris Copeland was stabbed in a separate incident.

    But a pair of videos later published on TMZ challenge several specifics from the report.

    One video, shot by a witness, appears to show an officer pulling out his baton as a group of officers wrestled Sefolosha to the ground. In addition, the arrests of Sefolosha and Hawks center Pero Antic appear to be more than 100 feet from the site of Copeland’s stabbing.

    Sefolosha suffered a broken fibula and ligament damage.

    Asked how the injury was specifically caused or whether the police’s use of force was acceptable, Sefolosha again said he’s limited in what he can say about the arrest and his injuries.

    “I’m looking forward for the truth to come out and for me being able to speak on it, but right now I think it’s not the right time to do it,” he said.

    The New York Police Department has not responded to a request for comment.

    Being a professional athlete will not protect you.

    Intro, of sorts, more next comment – O’Malley, Maryland, protest. The Effects of Mayor O’Malley’s Zero Tolerance Policies #CityThatBleeds Protest at Federal Hill #Baltimore @deray

  288. rq says

    So, O’Malley. No doubt you have heard: Martin O’Malley, former governor, jumps into 2016 Democratic race. Why is this relevant? Because he’s the mastermind of the Zero Tolerance policy that Baltimore had in effect that, essentially, contributed to the further criminalization of black bodies and black lives. (Mano Singham takes a quick look here, just the candidacy not the policies, but I can’t say that I agree.)
    Not a lot of people were too pleased.
    Some commentary, and some photos probably next comment:
    “We made our city safer for our children” #OMalley2016 99.9% sure he’s talking about white people.

    They are escorting Black people out of fed hill #OMalley2016 Yep, that was at thing.
    The guys sent to follow my every move #OMalley2016 That was a thing, too..

    One of the security guards told us that his supervisor gave him orders to follow us around all day. #OMalley2016 @GovernorOMalley

  289. rq says

    The @bmorebloc die-in has started at the Martin #OMalley presidential) campaign announcement #BaltimoreUprising
    This Your #BlueLivesMatter crew inciting violence at the #Baltimore City Hall against #BlackLivesMatter @deray
    Another 20 #BPD Cops Arrive at the #BlackLivesMatter vs #BlueLivesAggitate confrontation Baltimore City Hall

    #BlueLivesMatter protestors are taunting black protestors here in #Baltimore
    The police have now come to watch the Black protestors #Baltimore #
    The police have said that any Black person that steps off of the stoop at city hall will be arrested #Baltimore #BlueLivesMatter

  290. rq says

    Late’s take a look at Phoenix, for a moment:
    Here’s What Happened at the Anti-Islam Protest and ‘Draw Muhammad’ Contest in Arizona. See the pictures. These people? Terrify me a lot more than black people protesting for their lives.

    Dubbed the “Freedom Of Speech Rally Round II,” a large anti-Islam protest in Arizona drew a crowd of 500 or so on Friday evening outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix (ICCP). Organized by Jon Ritzheimer, a Marine Corps veteran, the protest was a response to the Curtis Culwell Center attack in Garland, Texas on May 3, where two gunmen opened fire at a Muhammad drawing contest.

    The Freedom of Speech Rally exploded on social media around 24 hours before the protest as organizers, including a motorcycle clan called RidersUSA, encouraged folks to also exercise their Second Amendment rights, i.e. to come fully armed.

    Tensions ran high as police blocked off roads in the neighborhood, forcing protestors to park several blocks away. A few helicopters circled the area, and several high-tech security cameras were installed on street lamps the night before. The protest — especially the part about folks bringing guns — made several local businesses and a charter school uneasy, so they closed early for the day.

    Wearing blue shirts, playing music, and holding signs that advocated for love and world peace, volunteers and members of ICCP organized a solidarity wall to protect people attending prayers at the mosque. Valley Anarchist Circle and Wave of Action PHX, another local anarchist chapter, organized a counter-protest in what they called an “Emergency Antifa Call To Action.” Antifa is a common abbreviation for anti-fascism.

    By 6pm, the protest was well under way, with a large police and FBI presence and enraged demonstrators from both sides standing nose-to-nose. Chants of “U-S-A” and “Islam is evil” clashed with shouts of “pussies” and “cowards” from the anarchist side. After one demonstrator angrily got in the face of a police officer, cops in riot gear separated the two sides with police tape and barricades. […]

    “Anyone who wants to utilize their First Amendment rights and draw a picture of Muhammad, you can do so knowing there’s plenty of armed Americans that support your freedom of speech,” Ritzheimer said. Only two people took up the offer. Ritzheimer announced that both “cartoonists” had won the contest, and gave each $100 in proceeds he made from selling his “Fuck Islam” shirts.

    “I want the American people to have the freedom to draw a cartoon if they want without having to be threatened or have their lives threatened,” Ritzheimer told the crowd. He claimed that his address was posted online, and that he and his family were forced into hiding after receiving death threats.

    “I shouldn’t have to go into hiding in my own country for a cartoon or a shirt. Nobody should,” he said.

    “I don’t care if I offend anyone,” said Paul Griffin, a man in a large straw hat and “Fuck Islam” shirt. “This is America. If you don’t like it, tough shit.” [yeah, and black people want equality in America, if you don’t like it, TOUGH SHIT]
    […]

    Mullins said he found “a common humanity” with Muslims, and that some of them became his closest friends. He even said his Muslim friends had saved “my wife’s life and my life in various settings.”

    “One of the main reasons why we set up here on this sidewalk right now is to create a physical barrier between the mosque and our Muslim friends and potential violence and hostility,” Mullins added. “So that if they suffer, we suffer with them. To stand in between the potential pain and danger they are in in the same way that Jesus stood in between it for us.”

    By 9pm, the protest had dwindled down to almost no one, and no violence had broken out.

    Sounds like the police behaved.

    Okay, and yeah: Anderson Cooper Confronts Anti-Islam Rally Organizer: Aren’t You ‘Promoting Violence?’ Are you?

    The Phoenix man behind an anti-Islam rally and yet another “Draw Muhammad” contest joined CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday night to explain why he is “encouraging hundreds of armed people to gather outside of a mosque during prayer service wearing t-shirts saying ‘f— Islam.’”

    “I’m trying to achieve exposing Islam and that truth what is written in the Koran,” Jon Ritzheimer told Cooper, comparing himself to the signers of the Declaration of Independence because he doesn’t want to “live in fear.”

    The former Marine had some trouble answering Cooper’s questions about how he justified defending an Islamic government in Iraq with his hatred for that religion. He said he doesn’t believe Americans serving in Afghanistan today are supporting terrorism but does believe that “true Islam is terrorism.”

    Asked by Cooper if he is “playing into the narrative of ISIS, of Al Qaeda, which is basically trying to say there is a war between Islam and the West,” Ritzheimer replied, “Sure,” without elaboration. Moments later, he said, “I don’t believe in a war.”

    “You don’t think bringing guns to a mosque while families are praying inside and wearing t-shirts that say ‘f— Islam’ and shouting whatever it is you’re going to shot at them, as they come and as they go, you don’t think that is promoting violence at all?” Cooper asked.

    Ritzheimer would only say in response that he finds the cartoon contest “stupid and ridiculous, but it is what needs to take place in order to expose the true colors of Islam.”

    Grand success, non?

    And one more: ‘Neo-Nazis with flags’: Twitter users respond to Phoenix ‘Draw Mohammad’ contest with #NotMyAmerica “This is not who we are.” Sadly, that is who some of you are.

    With a heavy police presence standing between them, bikers and their supporters confronted defenders of a Phoenix mosque Friday night over a so-called “Freedom of Speech Rally Round II” featuring a “Draw Mohammad” contest.

    Thrown together by former Marine Jon Ritzheimer, the event was reportedly “in response to the recent attack in Texas where 2 armed terrorist [sic], with ties to ISIS, attempted Jihad.” The protest comes weeks after two men were killed by police after they attacked a similar event in Garland, Texas.
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    On the event Facebook page, Ritzheimer wrote, “This Islamic Community Center is a known place that the 2 terrorist [sic] frequented. People are also encouraged to utilize there [sic] second amendment right at this event just in case our first amendment comes under the much anticipated attack.”

    On Twitter, users commented on the event that many felt was needlessly provocative — pointing out that Ritzheimer wears and sells t-shirts reading “F*ck Islam” — by using the hashtag #NotMyAmerica, which drew tweets from both sides of the controversy.

    Supporters of Ritzheimer attacked Islam or used the opportunity to state their belief that being criticized for the drawing contest was anti-1st Amendment and therefore un-American.

    And the guns, guns, American guns everywhere.
    Somehow the media calls this a “peaceful protest” Astonishing. #PHxMosque

    As a veteran, it’s hard to watch civilian mosque protesters pretend to be soldiers while they harass fellow Americans.
    And no National Guard, no overblown hype about imminent violence, no tear gas, nothing… While unarmed black people cannot congregate without being, in some way, harrassed. *spits*
    Small break, more later in the evening.

  291. HappyNat says

    @deray continues to educate. For anyone who says twitter is a waste of time follow him. I’d never heard of Fred Hampton or his murder, of course it wasn’t taught in school, but I’m ashamed I hadn’t heard of him until now. Murdered by the Federal and Local government at the age of 21.

    http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton

    ” We don’t think you fight fire with fire; we think you fight fire with water. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re still here to say we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.

    Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we’re asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don’t even understand what peace means. And we’ve got to fight them. We’ve got to struggle with them to make them understand what peace means.”
    – Fred Hampton

  292. HappyNat says

    Also today is the anniversary of the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Something else I’m ashamed I just learned about a few months ago. Keeping up with the way USA white supremacy has terrorized POC for 400 years is more than a full time job.

    http://sfbayview.com/2011/02/what-happened-to-black-wall-street-on-june-1-1921/

    http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405#axzz3bj08dvIK

    “The term “race riot” does not adequately describe the events of May 31—June 1, 1921 in Greenwood… In fact, the term itself implies that both blacks and whites might be equally to blame for the lawlessness and violence. The historical record documents a sustained and murderous assault on black lives and property. This assault was met by a brave but unsuccessful armed defense of their community by some black World War I veterans and others.

    During the night and day of the riot, deputized whites killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921.”

  293. rq says

    Ex-Cop uses Facebook to Taunt the Family of an Unarmed Man he Killed (VIDEO)

    In an almost unbelievable turn of events, an account purporting to be that of the cop that killed Joey Tucker almost six years ago mocked the victim’s family on Facebook this week. He commented about how little their son’s life was worth in the settlement, and antagonized the victim’s family through the memorial page that had been set up for their child. However, the most shocking part of this event is the fact that in the process of mocking the family, the officer restates the story that let him walk free. The videos of the shooting are publicly available today. You can decide for yourself if it matches.

    Joey Tucker was shot multiple times by Salt Lake City Officer Louis “Law” Abner Jones after he failed to pull over on Interstate 80. The drama began earlier in the day when Tucker failed to take his insulin, entered diabetic shock, and began making irrational decisions. The cop says he was under the impression Tucker was suicidal. Either way, it was a mental distress call or health distress call. This was not a murder suspect, armed robbery suspect, or anything along those lines. In a storyline that is now familiar to Americans, the cops were called to help someone and they killed the person instead.

    In whatever disoriented state he was in, he was cornered in a parking lot and the police allowed him to leave at one point during the day. During his drive throughout the day, he was involved in two low speed accidents that were described as “fender benders” in court documents. After the cops rammed him and executed him on the side of the road, these hit and run accidents became the reasoning behind his murder.

    And while the victim isn’t black this time, the reasoning and lojik of the police was, of course, that their lives were threatened.

    Fannie Lou Hamer’s Powerful Testimony, “Freedom Summer” clip 19

    Former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer’s Congressional testimony is so powerful that President Johnson calls an impromptu press conference to get her off the air. But his plan backfires.

    Also, must get my hands on that documentary. Looks powerful.

    Rawlings-Blake says city won’t return to days of ‘mass arrests’ under O’Malley. That’s something, i guess.

    Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake released a statement this afternoon, saying her police department would not return to the days of “mass arrests” under Gov. Martin O’Malley’s tenure as mayor.

    “Returning to the days of mass arrests for any and every minor offense might be a good talking point but it has been proven to be a far less effective strategy for actually reducing crime,” Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

    Recently, the governor has argued for increased arrests in Baltimore as a way to combat violent crime. O’Malley, who advocated zero-tolerance policing policies while mayor, says he is concerned that Baltimore has stalled in its crime-fighting efforts, emphasizing that arrests are only half of what they were during his time as mayor.

    But Rawlings-Blake notes that homicides dropped under 200 in 2011, using a strategy of targeted arrests focusing on the most violent offenders.

    About 50,000 people were arrested last year in Baltimore, compared with 100,000 in 2005 under O’Malley.

    So far this year, only about 500 people have been arrested without charges, compared with more than 20,000 in 2005.

    FULL STATEMENT OF MAYOR STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE:

    “While I appreciate Governor O’Malley’s concern about crime in Baltimore it’s simply inaccurate to suggest more arrests leads to less crime. The fact of the matter is when Baltimore had more arrests under previous administrations the homicide rate and crime overall was much higher. Mass arrests only led to more distrust in local communities which actually make it harder for police to do their job. My Administration is focused on more targeted arrests of the most violent and repeat offenders while modernizing our police force. Returning to the days of mass arrests for any and every minor offense might be a good talking point but it has been proven to be a far less effective strategy for actually reducing crime. There is still more work to do, but we get there by working with communities not by making them feel under siege from mass arrests.”

    This is the same O’Malley now presenting himself as Democratic candidate.

    We’ve had 70 murders in St. Louis City in 2015 & @SLMPD spends its time harassing & tasing a group of people with signs. Seems legit.
    Given their consistent, unnecessary escalation of aggression, I’m fearful @SLMPD will kill a protester during this long summer. God help us.

    Self-defense claim raised in Zimmerman shooting – sweet, sweet irony.

  294. rq says

    @Nettaaaaaaaa I’m not ok I’m here at the justice center and they will not release my stuff and there important expensive things in it;
    Now STL PD Central Booking says they don’t have @DhorubaShakur ‘s bookbag & Justice Center says they don’t have it either.
    Police are targeting our most vocal and active activists. They are arresting to intimidate and thwart further protests.
    Yes, that happened, too.

    Sister, Friends Of 20-Year-Old Honors Student Fatally Shot By Long Beach Police Lash Out.

    Long Beach authorities say a man fatally shot by police after jumping out of a second-floor window and struggling with officers was identified Saturday as Feras Morad, 20, of Woodland Hills.

    Authorities said Morad was shot after officers made several unsuccessful attempts to subdue him Wednesday evening.

    According to a police statement, an apparently intoxicated Morad jumped out of a window after acting erratically with a group of friends.

    Morad landed on the street and began advancing rapidly toward an officer. Police say they used a stun gun and physical force to try and contain him. According to the Long Beach Police Department, Morad was shot again after approaching the officer and saying he would attack him.

    Morad died later at an area hospital. The shooting remains under investigation.

    On Saturday evening, the man’s distraught friends and family spoke to KCAL9’s Cristy Fajardo.

    “I am so angry no words can explain what I’m feeling,” said Feras’s sister. She says the family’s grief is compounded by the fact they didn’t know Morad was dead for two days.

    “What if I hadn’t called [his friends],” Ghada Morad said, “Nobody!”

    The family says on Wednesday night Morad went to Long Beach to study for a debate.

    He invested ‘shrooms which they say was out of character for the honor roll student He had a bad reaction and jumped out a second story window.

    Hurt and bleeding in an alley his friends, including Ryan Fobes, say they called 911 for help.

    In a statement police say the officer had been told Morad had been in a fight with friends. When the officer arrived Morad kept advancing towards him despite being ordered to stop.

    “The next thing after the handgun was the gun we were screaming don’t shoot he’s not armed he was shirtless and bleeding,” says Fobes.

    Loved ones told Fajardo that Morad was a brilliant student whose high grades at Moorpark College had gotten him accepted to top school but that he chose to tranfer to Long Beach so he could save money for law school.

    Now the family says they will be hiring an attorney saying no one who calls for help should be left grieving.

    And on that note… Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide – with the summer still ahead.

    In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car. In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

    The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

    “These shootings are grossly under­reported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

    A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty. The Post looked exclusively at shootings, not killings by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.

    Using interviews, police reports, local news accounts and other sources, The Post tracked more than a dozen details about each killing through Friday, including the victim’s race, whether the person was armed and the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter. The result is an unprecedented examination of these shootings, many of which began as minor incidents and suddenly escalated into violence.

    Among The Post’s findings:

    ●About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred. [bolding mine – rq]
    ●The vast majority of victims — more than 80 percent — were armed with potentially lethal objects, primarily guns, but also knives, machetes, revving vehicles and, in one case, a nail gun.

    ●Forty-nine people had no weapon, while the guns wielded by 13 others turned out to be toys. In all, 16 percent were either carrying a toy or were unarmed.

    ●The dead ranged in age from 16 to 83. Eight were children younger than 18, including Jessie Hernandez, 17, who was shot three times by Denver police officers as she and a carload of friends allegedly tried to run them down.

    The Post analysis also sheds light on the situations that most commonly gave rise to fatal shootings. About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations: A homeless person behaving erratically. A boyfriend threatening violence. A son trying to kill himself.

    Ninety-two victims — nearly a quarter of those killed — were identified by police or family members as mentally ill. […]

    Although race was a dividing line, those who died by police gunfire often had much in common. Most were poor and had a history of run-ins with law enforcement over mostly small-time crimes, sometimes because they were emotionally troubled. […]

    Dozens of other people also died while fleeing from police, The Post analysis shows, including a significant proportion — 20 percent — of those who were unarmed. Running is such a provocative act that police experts say there is a name for the injury officers inflict on suspects afterward: a “foot tax.”

    Police are authorized to use deadly force only when they fear for their lives or the lives of others. So far, just three of the 385 fatal shootings have resulted in an officer being charged with a crime — less than 1 percent.

    The low rate mirrors the findings of a Post investigation in April that found that of thousands of fatal police shootings over the past decade, only 54 had produced criminal ­charges. Typically, those cases involved layers of damning evidence challenging the officer’s account. Of the cases resolved, most officers were cleared or acquitted.

    In all three 2015 cases in which charges were filed, videos emerged showing the officers shooting a suspect during or after a foot chase:

    ●In South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager was charged with murder in the death of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, who ran after a traffic stop. Slager’s attorney declined to comment.

    ●In Oklahoma, reserve deputy Robert Bates was charged with second-degree manslaughter 10 days after he killed Eric Harris, a 44-year-old black man. Bates’s attorney, Clark Brewster, characterized the shooting as a “legitimate accident,” noting that Bates mistakenly grabbed his gun instead of his Taser.

    ●And in Pennsylvania, officer Lisa Mearkle was charged with criminal homicide six weeks after she shot and killed David Kassick, a 59-year-old white man, who refused to pull over for a traffic stop. Her attorney did not return calls for comment.

    In many other cases, police agencies have determined that the shootings were justified. But many law enforcement leaders are calling for greater scrutiny. […]

    The most troubling ­cases began with a cry for help.

    About half the shootings occurred after family members, neighbors or strangers sought help from police because someone was suicidal, behaving erratically or threatening violence.

    Take Shane Watkins, a 39-year-old white man, who died in his mother’s driveway in Moulton, Ala.

    Watkins had never been violent, and family members were not afraid for their safety when they called Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies in March. But Watkins, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was off his medication. Days earlier, he had declared himself the “god of the fifth element” and demanded whiskey and beer so he could “cleanse the earth with it,” said his sister, Yvonne Cote.

    Then he started threatening to shoot himself and his dog, Slayer. His mother called Cote, who called 911. Cote got back on the phone with her mother, who watched Watkins walk onto the driveway holding a box cutter to his chest. A patrol car pulled up, and Cote heard her mother yell: “Don’t shoot! He doesn’t have a gun!”

    “Then I heard the gunshots,” Cote said.

    Lawrence County sheriff’s officials declined to comment and have refused to release documents related to the case.

    “There are so many unanswered questions,” she said. “All he had was a box cutter. Wasn’t there some other way for them to handle this?”

    Catherine Daniels called police for the same reason. “I wanted to get my son help,” she said. Instead, officers Peter Ehrlich and Eddo Trimino fired their stun guns after Hall hit them with the metal end of the broomstick, according to investigative documents.

    “Please don’t hurt my child,” Daniels pleaded, in a scene captured by a camera mounted on the dash of one of the patrol cars.

    “Get on the f—ing ground or you’re dead!” Trimino shouted. Then he fired five shots.

    Police spokesman Mike Wright declined to comment on the case. Daniels said no one from the city has contacted her. “I haven’t received anything. No apology, nothing.”

    But hours after her son was killed, Daniels said, officers investigating the shooting dropped off a six-pack of Coca-Cola.

    “I regret calling them,” Daniels said. “They took my son’s life.”

    Photo Raises Doubts About Police Shooting of Jermaine McBean. Aiee.

    After Florida police shot Jermaine McBean to death as he walked home with an unloaded air rifle, they said there was no reason to believe he did not hear their orders to drop the weapon and that he pointed it at them.

    But a newly emerged photo that shows headphones in McBean’s ears immediately after the 2013 shooting raises questions about the police version of events, including why the white earbuds were later found stuffed in the dead computer expert’s pocket.

    And another aspect of the police account is also being contradicted — by a man who called 911 in alarm when he saw McBean walking around with the air rifle but who also says McBean never pointed it at police or anyone else.

    Michael Russell McCarthy, 58, told NBC News that McBean had the Winchester Model 1000 Air Rifle balanced on his shoulders behind his neck, with his hand over both ends, and was turning around to face police when one officer began shooting.

    “He [McBean] couldn’t have fired that gun from the position he was in. There was no possible way of firing it and at the same time hitting something,” McCarthy said. “I kind of blame myself, because if I hadn’t called it might not have happened.”

    Nearly two years later, the shooting is still the subject of an “active investigation” by prosecutors. McBean’s family filed a wrongful death and misconduct lawsuit against the sheriff’s office several weeks ago.

    Their attorney, civil rights lawyer David Schoen, says the photo of McBean with the headphones — which he provided to NBC News — is evidence of a “coverup.”

    The witness who took it, a nurse who asked to remain anonymous, says she pointed out the earbuds to police at the scene, after they rebuffed her offer to provide first aid to the dying man.

    A transcript shows that Deputy Peter Peraza, who fired the fatal shots, repeatedly told sheriff’s investigators that he did not see anything in McBean’s ears.

    And the homicide detective who led an internal review told McBean’s relatives in an email that officers on the scene “confirmed” he was not wearing a earpiece — after the family explained that he always had them on when he was out walking. The detective said the buds were found in his pocket, with his phone, at the hospital.

    “I was highly upset,” McBean’s mother, Jennifer Young, said of the moment she learned about the photo. “I said, ‘They lied to me. What else have they lied about?'” […]
    McBean’s older brother, Alfred McBean, an IT architect who lives in Pompano Beach, said he was a gentle soul who loved his work, liked going to amusement parks with his nieces and nephews, enjoyed deep-sea fishing and doted on his mother.
    He said he is certain of two things: that his brother did not hear police because he was listening to loud music on the earbuds he always wore and that he would not have defied police if he did hear them.

    “They could have just tackled him, or just tased him. Why shoot him three times?” Alfred Mc Bean said. “Criminal charges need to be filed.”

    His mother agreed.

    “He’s very missed, he was very loved and he was a loving and caring person himself,” she said. “I can’t wait to get justice for him.”

    Don’t listen to music on earphones while black?

  296. rq says

    More on Jermaine McBean, A Florida Police Killing Like Many, Disputed and Little Noticed

    Newly obtained photographic evidence in the July 2013 shooting of Mr. McBean, a 33-year-old computer-networking engineer, shows that contrary to repeated assertions by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, he was wearing earbuds when he was shot, suggesting that he was listening to music and did not hear the officers. The earphones somehow wound up in the dead man’s pocket, records show.

    “I want justice for something that went totally wrong.” Mr. McBean’s mother, Jennifer Young, said in an interview. She added that she believed officers had profiled her son because he was black.

    A federal wrongful death lawsuit filed May 11 accused the Broward Sheriff’s Office of tampering with evidence and obstructing justice. The suit alleges that the deputy who shot Mr. McBean perjured himself and that the department covered it up by giving him a bravery award shortly after the killing, while the shooting was still under investigation.

    From Ferguson, Mo., to Baltimore to Cleveland, the nation seems awash in disputed, high-profile cases of police violence. But a look at disputed cases in Florida is a reminder of how frequently they arise far from the limelight and how many questions surround the way they are investigated. The issue is particularly acute in Florida, where State Department of Law Enforcement statistics show the number of fatal police shootings has tripled in the past 15 years, even as crime has plummeted.

    In South Florida’s Broward County, no officer has been charged in a fatal on-duty police shooting since 1980, a period that covers 168 shooting deaths.

    “The court never goes against the police,” said Rajendra Ramsahai, whose brother-in-law, Deosaran Maharaj, was killed by a Broward County deputy last year. “They are always ruling in the officer’s favor.”

    In civil wrongful death cases throughout South Florida, lawyers discovered that files were missing, that dashboard camera videos had been erased and that police department accounts sometimes did not match the evidence. Cases like Mr. McBean’s underscore how law enforcement agencies that handle their own shooting investigations can be exposed to criticism years after the crime-scene tape has been taken down and the television cameras are gone.

    Nearly two years after his death, and months after The New York Times began inquiring about the case, the state attorney for Broward County has subpoenaed a key witness to testify before a grand jury and assigned the case to a public corruption prosecutor.

    There are signs that some cases are getting more attention. The death of a black man struck multiple times by Coconut Creek police officers firing Taser stun guns was ruled a homicide this month by the Broward County medical examiner’s office. The death led to the resignation of the police chief, Michael Mann, in March after it was revealed that three of the four officers involved were not certified in Taser use. The family of the victim has asked the United States attorney general for an independent investigation.

    In 2013, law enforcement agencies around the state asked the Department of Law Enforcement for help in 50 use-of-force and shooting investigations. A year later, the requests had more than doubled, to 103. Department officials asked the Legislature for $1.6 million to hire 14 additional special agents to handle the load.

    “In general across the country, I don’t think the communities trust their police enough anymore,” said Charles Drago, a Broward sheriff reserve officer who was deputy chief of staff for law enforcement for former Gov. Charlie Crist. “They demand more transparency.”

    More at the link.

    The things a black kid is often taught not to do that his white friends can do are heartbreaking. A talk by Clint Smith, seen before, worth another look, with text on general racism encountered.

    We’ve looked at conditions in men’s prisons, so here’s a look at women’s prisons (or at least one of them): “You call this a medical emergency?”

    JACKIE’S DEATH APPEARS to fit a pattern; a series of health care-related deaths alongside the never-ending reports of brutality in the Rikers men’s jails have dominated headlines in recent months. Last year, the AP reported that poor medical care at Rikers had helped precipitate at least 15 inmate deaths over the past five years. After medical staff failed to treat a 59-year-old inmate for constipation, he died of complications from an infected bowel. Another man went into a diabetic coma and died within two days of being incarcerated. According to a complaint filed by his family, a 19-year-old boy who complained of chest pain for seven months was never given an X-ray and died in 2013 from a tear in his aorta. The New York Times recently detailed another death, that of Bradley Ballard, an inmate with schizophrenia and diabetes who died after being locked in his cell for six days without medication or running water.

    But “women prisoners often get overlooked,” says Amy Fettig, a senior counsel at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. The island’s women’s jail, known as Rosie, is home to about 600 of the 11,000 inmates at Rikers. “In some facilities you might not see beat-ups, but you’ll see the violence of not receiving appropriate health care,” she says. Medical records, inmate complaint data, and interviews with current and former inmates bear this out.

    Pharmaceutical errors like the ones that may have contributed to Jackie’s death aren’t uncommon at Rosie. Between July of last year and April 2015, the Legal Aid Society — the largest provider of legal services to the city’s poor — received complaints from 17 Rosie inmates who said their prescriptions had gone unfilled or their meds were discontinued for no apparent reason. Two Rosie inmates The Intercept spoke with described recent instances in which they received the wrong medication or the wrong dosage.

    Last September, Kim Midyett went down to the clinic because she was feeling sweaty and shaky. According to medical records, her blood sugar had plummeted. Midyett told a doctor that earlier that morning, a nurse had injected her with 12 units of insulin instead of the prescribed six. That’s not a trivial error, says Dr. Josiah Rich, a prison health care expert at Brown University. “The wrong dose of insulin can kill you.”

    Virdie Emmanuel, who landed on Rikers in January 2014, has dark circles under her eyes, a sweet smile and a grand larceny conviction. Emmanuel’s health problems began at age 10, when her appendix ruptured. By 20, she had Crohn’s disease and says she “basically lived at Mount Sinai [Hospital] for weeks at a time.” The diseases and disorders kept piling up. Now, on top of Crohn’s, the 41-year-old has rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, fibromyalgia, morbid obesity, anemia, asthma, PTSD, anxiety and depression, according to medical records. By 2013, Emmanuel says she was buried in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills. She was arrested for — and pleaded guilty to — charging $1.3 million worth of personal expenses to her employer’s account. Emmanuel says it was to pay off her medical debt.

    Once in jail, her health began to deteriorate further. Emmanuel takes about a dozen pills a day to manage her conditions. Last winter, her prescription for Lyrica, a fibromyalgia drug, was allowed to lapse, causing her severe muscle pain and numbness. And she submitted complaints about receiving the wrong meds several times over the past year. In January, medical director Lisa Choleff admitted in a response to a complaint form Emmanuel had submitted that she had “received the wrong medication for several months, then when it was caught, medical did not prescribe it to her, yet pharmacy had been dispensing it to her.”

    After an inmate death in 2010, the New York State Commission of Correction ordered Corizon, which is the largest private correctional health care provider in the country, to evaluate why patients’ medications were often discontinued after admission. And in 2011, after another death, the commission demanded the company fix problems with its dispensation of psychotropic meds and review its pharmacists’ professional qualifications.

    Corizon says its employees “work hard to provide our patients with appropriate care — including providing all treatment and medication that is clinically indicated.” And yet the company — which services 345,000 inmates in 531 jails, prisons and detention facilities around the country — has built itself a reputation for cutting costs and putting patients’ lives at risk. Corizon was reportedly sued 660 times for malpractice between 2008 and 2013, and has been implicated in class action lawsuits filed by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The company says its “patient population is highly litigious,” and that the “existence of a suit is not necessarily indicative of quality of care or any wrongdoing.”

    New York City attempted to prevent the company from cutting corners when it hired Corizon’s corporate predecessor, Prison Health Services, in 2000. The city’s cost-plus contract with the company keeps Corizon from skimping on lab tests or specialty care or prescriptions in order to jack up profits. And DOHMH provides heavy oversight of health care on the island.

    But inmate medical care involves treating high volumes of very sick people in a grim and often dangerous setting, and attracting good staff can be hard for any jail health care operation. Since last fall, two Corizon staffers at Rikers have been arrested for smuggling contraband into the jail. In July 2010, a Rikers doctor was arrested for sexually abusing a female inmate. That same month, another doctor resigned over questions about the validity of his certification to provide medical care to inmates. And in 2000, before Corizon hired her, medical director Lisa Choleff had her license restricted for several years on a rare disciplinary action over charges of “gross negligence, gross incompetence and negligence, and incompetence on more than one occasion.” She notes in her public profile at the New York State Department of Health that the disciplinary action “has now been resolved.” She did not respond to a request for comment. […]

    TOWARD THE END of May 2014, Conteh and several other inmates at Rosie noticed that Jackie had stopped eating and kept nodding off. As the days passed she became disoriented and then delusional, attempting to lie down in other inmates’ beds and mistaking a pantry for the bathroom. “A couple of days she wasn’t eating, and then she started throwing up,” says Diana Mack, an inmate in Jackie’s unit. “But she didn’t have nothing in her stomach to throw up, so the bile came up, and then the blood came.” By June 1, according to the notice of claim, Jackie was throwing up blood and bodily tissue.

    A guard immediately alerted the clinic, and two medical personnel arrived with a stretcher. But when an incoherent Jackie wouldn’t get on, the staffers left, according to the notice. They said she was refusing medical attention, despite her cellmates’ insistence that she was no longer capable of making rational decisions. Eventually, Tiffany James, known as Buddha — who had bonded with Jackie over their shared birthday — dressed Jackie and carried her down to the clinic with another inmate. When they arrived, a doctor took a look at Jackie and said, “You call this a medical emergency?”

    “That’s people just not giving a shit,” Widing says.

    Forty-five minutes later, EMS finally picked Jackie up and transported her to the ER. The Rikers clinic had told 911 operators that Jackie needed to be picked up because she was “emotionally disturbed” — not because she was having a medical emergency, according to the medical expert hired for the case. When she arrived at Elmhurst, lab tests confirmed she was in acute liver failure.

    Corizon says that “in the case of an emergency, we call 911 immediately.” […]

    Legal Aid also gets frequent complaints from inmates about delays in getting specialty care at Elmhurst and Bellevue, the two hospitals that service Rikers. In July 2014, a Rosie inmate who asked to remain anonymous was arrested on charges of prostitution and failure to show up at court. At the time of her incarceration, the 32-year-old was pregnant and had a large and painful ovarian cyst pressing into the left side of her abdomen. She ended up waiting four months for an appointment at Elmhurst to have it removed. Meanwhile, she miscarried. “I woke up in my dorm in a pool of blood,” she says. Though the cyst was benign, “it sounds like that was a significant delay,” says Dr. Scott Allen, a prison health care expert at the University of California Riverside, who did not view medical records but was briefed on summaries of inmate cases.

    In February 2014, shortly after her arrest on a drug possession charge, Diana Mack, 54, had a chest X-ray that revealed an unidentifiable mass in her right lung. Mack had to wait three months to get a CT scan at Elmhurst, and says she never received the results before she was released four months later in September. Mack only found out that the scan of her lung was inconclusive after The Intercept requested the results from Elmhurst. “Why they didn’t see to it that I got that information?” she wondered.

    One reason for the delays in getting care at Elmhurst, a city official says, is that the hospital has too little space and staff to meet Rosie’s needs. And inmates often complain to Legal Aid that DOC, which is responsible for transporting inmates to their outside appointments, brings patients to their specialty clinic appointments too late, or not at all. Corizon says its “process is consistent with how you might schedule a specialty appointment in almost any health care setting.”

    Several doctors The Intercept asked to weigh in on summaries of inmate cases contend that patients at public hospitals across the country face the same issues of access and delays. But that may be a false equivalence, Allen says: “They don’t have the liberty to seek alternative care themselves, do they?”

    Changes could be coming soon to Rikers. In 2013, the city downgraded Corizon’s performance rating from “good” to “fair.” After the death of Bradley Ballard, a state review recommended against renewal of Corizon’s contract, which expires at the end of the year. And city council members are pushing the mayor’s office to turn inmate health care over to the city’s public Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs hospitals like Elmhurst and Bellevue.

    The reason New York City has kept Corizon around for so long despite the company’s many failings is that no one else has wanted to take over the contract. When the city put out a proposal request in 2000, Corizon’s corporate predecessor was the only entity with the proper capacity to bid. Since then, according to two former city officials familiar with the bidding process, no other provider with the infrastructure to handle such a huge system has expressed any interest in taking over care of inmates on Rikers Island.

    Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.

    Mother of Tamir Rice could not be here today because “big announcement expected in the case today,” we are told here at Black Women’s Forum. Here’s hoping more on this later.

    We’re on day 295 since #Ferguson. And in all these days, we’ve discovered how weak white supremacy is. And that, my friends, scares folks.

    Black Women in San Francisco are Nearly 50% of City’s Arrests, and only 6% of the Female Population. Alternet again, so no citing.

  297. rq says

    HappyNat mentioned Fred Hampton upthread, so here’s more:
    WATCH: “The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther”

    Today marks the 45th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. In this 2009 interview from the Democracy Now! archive, Amy Goodman and Juan González speak with attorney Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.

    Well worth the read.

    @deray this is thunderous – Fred Hampton Speech: “Why don’t you die for the people” http://youtu.be/_7F8RfnDhkA

    The wall, from Ferguson to Palestine #PalFest15 #Ferguson #Palestine

    Racist Little Boy Taunts Black Man And Daughter With Racial Slurs (VIDEO) It starts young.

    A video, which was apparently leaked to Hip Hop News on May 27, shows a 7-year-old white boy taunting a black man and his daughter in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.

    According to the man who recorded the video, as he and his young daughter were enjoying the day in Lincoln Park, they were approached by 7-year-old Caleb. At the very beginning of the video, Caleb can be heard teasing the little girl, saying “I know, she’s picking her butt”. The girl’s father then asks him to repeat what he just said to him, before he brought out the camera.

    Without flinching, the 7-year-old kid says “You’re a n*gger”.

    “Wait a second,” the man says, directing the camera at himself, before panning around the park. “We’re at Lincoln Park right now. This is Caleb and he wants to tell me something. What was that?”

    In response, Caleb says “You’re a black n*gger” or “You’re a bad n*gger.” Since the boy is missing most of his front teeth, it’s difficult to understand what he’s saying at certain points in the video.

    He goes on in a mocking tone “Hey, I need some money”.

    The young father who is recording the kid’s racist tirade says “I have no idea where his parents are. I don’t even know this little guy.”

    Although the young dad is handling the situation calmly, at this point he says “I have never, ever wanted to strike a kid, but he… kinda makes me want to want to”.

    There’s no doubt that Caleb is the product of bad parenting. We don’t even need to hear the ugly, racist language coming out of this kid’s mouth to know that he’s not being properly supervised or cared for. A 7-year-old has no business being in Lincoln Park by himself, in the first place. A 7-year-old has no business walking up to random strangers and starting conversations, regardless of the subject matter.

    And then we hear what he says, and we know that he’s gotten a horribly disturbed view of the world, obviously from the adults who are supposed to be raising him. We can guess by the way he interacts with others that he’s probably being bullied at home. We see how he tries to taunt and bully the man and his little girl. We can assume that he’s living out what he’s learning from the grown-ups in his life, and that is incredibly sad.

    And from our very own Tony, Black lives are devalued in Barstow, California

    And that’s one of the scariest things for many African-Americans terrorized by law enforcement officials. There’s nowhere for them to turn to. No one to help them. And that includes the courts. Sure, victims of police brutality and harassment can sue the city. They often win such cases too, but that doesn’t ensure that they’re safe from police harassment and brutality in the future.

  298. rq says

    Via Tony, White Privilege, Explained in One Simple Comic.

    White privilege can be a tricky thing for people to wrap their heads around. If you’ve ever called out white privilege before, chances are you’ve heard responses like “But I’m didn’t ask to be born white!” or “You’re being reverse racist.”

    The next time that happens, just show the nay-sayer this succinct comic by Jamie Kapp explaining what white privilege is — and what it isn’t.

    10 Things All White Folks Need to Consider about the #BaltimoreUprising, also via Tony.

    As I reflect upon the most recent Baltimore Uprising taking place in the wider movement for racial justice in the United States, I can’t help but be simultaneously frustrated and inspired by the White people in my life.

    I’m inspired by White friends and mentors who are striving for accountable solidarity to Black people within the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and I am constantly taking notes about how I can do more to advance the cause of racial justice through my own work, words, and activism.

    But I’m also frustrated and disappointed in how so many of us are choosing to direct as much energy as possible to blaming people of Color for their own oppression and to condemning them for expressions of grief and rage that make us uncomfortable and afraid.

    So as I reflect on those simultaneous feelings, I wanted to reach out through the medium of my writing, one White person to another, in hopes of inspiring us to think and engage more critically as people of Color literally fight for their lives.
    1. As White People, We Are Not Victims of Racial Oppression

    There is not a statistical measure that exists by which White people are oppressed while people of Color are privileged.

    As such, we get zero say in how people who are oppressed respond to their oppression. […]

    2. A Movement of Nonviolence Has Been Occurring – We Just Weren’t Paying Attention

    So many of us call on oppressed people to act nonviolently when they are being brutalized by violent police, institutions, and systems, but people of Color have been in the streets nonviolently for years calling for an end to racist police violence.

    Where were we? […]

    3. The Destruction of Property Pales in Comparison to the Destruction of Lives

    Why is it that we as White folks seem to be ten times more outraged by the destruction of property than by the fact that police kill Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people every 19 hours in 2015

    Why are we ten times more outraged by the setting of fires than by the racist, capitalist systems that produce the poverty that devastates communities of Color?

    We can say all we like that we are “feeling for the small business owners and individuals who lost their property,” but every one of those broken windows can be replaced and every burnt building can be rebuilt.

    The lives of people taken by police and consumed by our systems’ endless appetites for Black, Brown, and Indigenous suffering can never be returned.

    4. Dr. King Wasn’t Here for Us – And He Still Isn’t

    Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is not a cudgel for White people to use against Black people who respond to their oppression in ways that we do not find palatable.

    The Rev. Dr. King was a radical revolutionary who called for a complete overturning of the racist, capitalist system in which we live. We do not get to coopt and distort his legacy or that of any civil rights leaders to maintain the status quo. […]

    5. Stop (Seriously, Stop) with #AllLivesMatter

    When we say #AllLivesMatter, we are participating in the erasure of the lives who sadly do not matter within our systems of oppression while injecting our own need to be centered into a movement for racial justice.

    #BlackLivesMatter is a revolutionary call for change in systems where Black lives, cultures, and communities are devalued. […]

    6. Having a Black President Doesn’t Absolve Us of Racism

    It’s racist and tokenizing to point out individual Black people in positions of power while ignoring the vast oppression that impacts the lives of Black people in an attempt to prove that racism is over.

    Citing that “we have a Black president” while ignoring the ways that Black people and other people of Color suffer in racist education systems, “justice” systems, healthcare systems, and economic systems is disingenuous at best and downright racist at worst.

    The existence of individual Black politicians or a Black police chief or a Black mayor doesn’t undo the daily oppression Black people experience in our systems, particularly when Black elected officials often must tow the lines of racist oppression to stay in office.
    7. Silence Is Violence

    No matter how wonderful our intentions or how good we may be in our daily lives, if we are silent in the face racial injustice, we are complicit in its violence.

    Worse, when we actively try to police the actions of those people of Color who are fighting for their freedom, we are committing subtle yet clear acts of racial violence.
    8. ‘Being a Race Traitor’ Isn’t a Thing – It’s Called Humanity

    To stand against the systems of oppression that afford us privilege does not inherently mean self-hate or White guilt.

    To stand against injustice means that we are choosing to get in touch with our own humanity and to divest from systems of Whiteness while working in our own flawed and complicated ways to invest in justice and in anti-racist ways of being in the world as White people.
    9. Instead of Investing in Whiteness, Invest in the Movement

    If we are willing to listen, show up, and follow the Black, Brown, and Indigenous leadership of this movement, we can find incredible community filled with great love, accountability, and loyalty.

    Whiteness attempts to isolate us, to make us invest in our access to oppressive systems rather than in community and people. […]

    10. Use Your Time and Energy to Call in Other White People

    Our voice, energy, and labor is needed in calling in White people – our people – to change.

    In doing so, we must act in ways that are accountable to people of Color and that draw upon the history of White resistance to white supremacy.

    And, after those short lessons for us white folk, Onwards!
    US police ‘shot dead almost 400 people’ in 2015 – Al-Jazeera has picked up the story.

    US police have killed almost 400 people nationwide in 2015, The Washington Post reported on Sunday, using its own tally for lack of complete federal statistics.

    The newspaper reported that at least 385 people have been shot and killed by US police during the first five months of the year, a rate of more than two a day.

    According to its report, the figures are twice as high as the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade.

    “These shootings are grossly under-­reported,” Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to improving law enforcement, told the Washington Post.

    “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings, if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

    The Post looked at shootings specifically, and not killing by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.

    Through interviews, police reports and local news accounts, the Post tracked its details.

    Kanye West Returns to Los Angeles Trade Technical College, just for fun.

    Last night, #blacklivesmatter protesters @DhorubaShakur and Eli returned to Ballpark Village outside Busch Stadium.
    #blacklivesmatter protesters outside Busch Stadium in Saint Louis Friday night.

  299. rq says

    Some protestors got tasered for nothing in STL,
    see here and here (more on this later).

    Picking up the Pieces, a Minneapolis case study.

    The numbers show a startling disparity in the way police enforce low-level offenses, particularly in the neighborhoods within North Minneapolis, South Minneapolis, and the city center where more low-income and minority communities live. Black people in the city are 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for low-level offenses, like trespassing, disorderly conduct, consuming in public, and lurking. Native Americans have it no better. They are 8.6 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people. Although the ACLU tried to do a similar analysis for the city’s Latino population, the police did not reliably include the ethnicity of the people arrested in the data officers recorded. Similarly, the ACLU tried to obtain data about officer-initiated suspicious persons stops that did not result in an arrest, but the Department informed the ACLU that it does not systematically collect that data.

    “We’ve become the new South,”10 warns Anthony Newby, executive director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change in North Minneapolis. “We’ve become the new premiere example of how to systematically oppress people of color. And again, it’s done through our legal system, and so low-level offenses, as an example, are just one of the many, many ways that Minnesota has perfected the art of suppressing and subjugating people of color.”

    An arrest, even if it doesn’t end in a conviction, is a restriction on liberty, and its consequences often snowball, especially for poor people of color.11 A low-level arrest, according to District Court Judge Kevin Burke of Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, “can end up taking somebody who just got a job at Taco Bell and have him fired because they missed work because they were in jail for driving after a suspension case.”12

    Once ensnared, the criminal justice system continues to squeeze poor people of color. “Because they missed [work], they’re now behind in their child support,” he says.13 “Because they’re behind in their child support, the county attorney’s office will try to hold them in contempt, to hassle them to get them to pay child support. And so it’s really a very ineffective way of dealing with human behavior.”14

    Picking Up the Pieces – Policing in America, a Minneapolis Case Study digs into 33 months of data the ACLU obtained from the police department and explores the who, what, when, where, why, and how of low-level arrests occurring in a city known for its affluence and liberal politics. The report also recommends reforms to begin the process of improving police-community relations and ensuring that all Minneapolitans are policed fairly.

    For a detailed methodology, click here.

    The Minneapolis data adds to a growing body of ACLU data analysis that demonstrates law enforcement across the nation are over and inequitably policing communities of color and that police practices are in need of sweeping reform. Reports from New York, Chicago (both this year and last), Newark, Philadelphia, Boston, metropolitan Detroit, and Nebraska all describe police departments that reserve their most aggressive enforcement for people of color.

    Lots and lots and lots of information, but the site has weird gifs, large ones, so it might be slow loading for some people (it was jerky for me).

    Comparison: White guy in Idaho ordered out of car by cops takes 15-20 minutes to comply.http://www.idahostatesman.com/2015/05/30/3828279_boise-man-arrested-after-allegedly.html?rh=1 … Versus, say, this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/24/watch_a_police_officer_taser_pepper_spray_a_man_who_is_suffering_a_massive.html …

  300. says

    More from Everyday Feminism–
    4 Reasons why the US police force is an extension of slavery and white supremacy (that you were probably never taught:
    (note-I’ve only included the 4 reasons; there is material that precedes them)

    1. The Police Were Tools Used to Protect the Institution of Slavery

    During the period when chattel slavery was blatantly and technically legal in the United States, poor white men were hired to enforce pro-slavery/anti-black laws – such as slave fugitive laws.

    For centuries, they were paid to search for, capture, and re-enslave Black people – legally recognized as the sub-human property of whatever wealthy White person owned them – who managed to escape slavery. And since most of America’s money came from slave plantations, they were also protecting our nation’s wealth.

    Many might suggest that these folks were not police officers because that was not their titles, but language and positions change as years pass (consider how, for most of the 19th and 20th century, the Republican Party was more progressive than Democrats – not that that means much).

    Similar to how a police officer’s job is to enforce laws and protect the peace, a fugitive slave catcher’s job was to enforce the laws of slavery and to protect the peace of wealthy white land/slave owners.

    These people were also hired to suppress slave rebellions – which translates to capturing and killing Black people who tried to liberate themselves from the atrocity of being someone else’s property.

    And in case y’all forgot, being enslaved in America meant working 10-14 hour days; being beat, mutilated, or killed for not obeying your “owner” or “overseer”; being raped to breed more enslaved people; being sold (or your children/partner being sold) at someone else’s whim; and having absolutely no personal rights – from birth to death.

    2. The Police Were Used to Enforce Black Code/Vagrancy/Jim Crowe Laws

    After slavery technically ended, the United States (and especially the South) lost its most significant force of labor – free labor – and hence, its wealth.

    The poor white folk that previously made their income by overseeing slave plantations or kidnapping Black people attempting to escape also lost their employment, and those who didn’t took major pay cuts.

    Umm, white supremacy was not happy.

    So immediately after slavery “ended,” Southern States passed Black Code Laws, which – depending on the state – made it illegal for Black people to purchase or own property, testify against white people in court, own their own businesses, be out after curfew hours, travel from one place to another without written permission from a white person, or—you know—make a white person upset in any way, form, or fashion.

    And once Black people “broke” those “laws,” they were arrested by the police, taken to court, usually seen without a jury, and sentenced guilty.

    And because many folks didn’t have money to pay court fines, the court would then lease them to corporations and local governments, where they did highly dangerous labor (like mining) or work-farms/chain-gains, usually until they died.

    Translation: Black folks were arrested for breaking bullshit laws that only they were required to adhere to, and then sold to governments and private corporations as labor.

    This went on in some states on through World War II.

    And y’all thought slavery ended in 1865.

    3. The Police Are Still Used to Enforce Racist, Anti-Black Laws

    Those racist laws that only attack Black people never ended.

    They simply expanded to be somewhat inclusive of other people of color (not to exclude the massive waves of colonial violence and attempted genocide that targeted Native People the moment Europeans began settling this land – all of whom have also had their own unique and horrible experiences with white supremacy).

    And hence, the war on drugs.

    In its initial incarnation, drug criminalization became a tool of systemic oppression to validate extremely racialized, xenophobic violence. They used opium-fear to promote anti-Chinese hostility, eventually leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act – which happened a few years before the dawn of the Great Depression. Note: This is yet another correlation between loss of white American dollars and the vilification of racially marginalized people.

    It was police officers that worked to locate, arrest, and support the deportation of Chinese and other Asian peoples.

    Also during the Great Depression, police officers from Texas to California began reporting on something called the Mexican Menace – also known as marijuana.

    Supposedly, and to the surprise of every pothead who has ever existed, marijuana causes people to commit violent crimes, like shooting the police. What a perfect excuse to incite mass fear and hatred of Chicanx and Latinx people – and to validate the horrific police and military violence targeting that group during that time (and still today).

    Now, you might be wondering what this has to do with Black folk.

    Forty-ish years later, Richard Nixon formally initiated the War On Drugs.

    And under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, that war took our non-violent/drug related prison population from about 50,000 people in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997.

    By 2013, 37% of men in prison were Black – the highest percentage by ethnicity. That same year, we were only 13.2% of the nations population.

    This led to the development of the prison industrial complex, growing revenue for private corporations and state governments, while relying on America’s pre-established and irrational terror of Black people and of non-dangerous drugs (like marijuana) to validate arresting an unprecedented amount of our people.

    But further, politicians were also able to lie and blame economic woes on feeding and housing “drug addicted, Black criminals,” and victim-blame Black people who were murdered in the crossfire.

    And FYI, marijuana, the same drug that validated so many arrests and murders of Black and Brown people (as in, 80% of the increase in drug-related arrests from the 1990s were due to marijuana possession), is now, literally, recognized as a medicine and prescribed in 23 states.

    The War on Drugs was purely contrived to get more rich white people in office and more people of color in prison captivity.

    And America’s white supremacist legacy continues.

    4. Police Presence and Surveillance Do Not Make Black Communities Safer

    It was the War on Drugs that made police presence in our neighborhoods even more excessive.

    While the quota system is supposedly illegal, it’s common knowledge that officers are encouraged (as in threatened) to make a minimum number of arrests – each day.

    Because predominately Black, urban communities have more poverty – which often results in more instances of survival crime, like drug selling and purchasing, sex work and trafficking, and thievery – a higher presence of police officers are dispensed into those communities with the specific intention of targeting and arresting Black people.

    These officers are rarely from the communities they patrol, and they’re more likely to utilize stereotyping and racial profiling to identify potential criminals. This means that all of us are potential criminals.

    Consider what happened with New York’s Stop-and-Frisk policy.

    In 2013, New York City had a population of 19,746,227 people – 17.5% were Black, and 57.2% of them were white. But of the 191,558 people stopped and frisked, 56% of them were Black and only 11% were white.

    Literally, the determining factor in who gets stopped is whether someone looks criminal – and in this case, criminal is clearly Black. (FYI, 89% of the people they stopped were innocent.)

    When I was growing up in the predominately Black and Latinx community of South Central, Los Angeles, my father, siblings, and I would play a little game called “How Many Times Will We Get Pulled Over When Daddy Picks Us Up from School This Week.”

    And we were pulled over – nearly every week – for usually the same reason: a car that fits this description was reported stolen, or “there was a recent robbery and you match the description.”

    Something about both these examples make police officers seem a lot like those fugitive slave catchers I talked about earlier.

    Let’s make it clear: The police are not protecting our communities.

    They do not keep us safe, nor are they invested in our safety. Not even police officers of color – white supremacy is state of mind and socio-political practice, not a skin color.

    They are hired agents of the white supremacist nation that born and caused the violence for which Black people are scapegoated.

  302. says

    Police Brutality around the world-
    In Chile-Repression of students day of action against police brutality:

    Students took to the streets today outraged by last weeks brutal injury of Rodrigo Aviles who was assaulted by a water cannon during a demonstration against cuts to education funding, that has left him clinging to life in a medically induced coma with severe brain trauma at the Carlos Van Buren Hospital. (Live video feed and updates from tonight’s ongoing demonstration are below)

    Reuters released a series of photographs today that show the exact moments when the 28yr old student Rodrigo Aviles, was hit by the water cannon of lanzagua police during the march on May 21. The images are in direct contrast to the original police statement that claimed they had not caused the fall that injured Aviles, blaming the poor traction of his shoes and slippery environment as the cause of his fall. The police statement added that even if they had caused the fall it would be considered an accident and they were not under any responsibility. aviles1-449×300 (1) aviles2-449×300 aviles3-449×300 aviles4-449×300 The day of action began before dawn with students of the Metropolitan University of Technology (UTEM) burning barricades on various corners of the Alameda, Santiago’s main avenue and other surrounding streets. At the same time, students occupied the headquarters of the private Diego Portales University and a group of students from the University of Chile occupied the public television network TVN

    The police water cannon assault used a different tactic then the students had experienced in the past demonstrations. Instead of solely blasting the students directly with the water cannons police heavily mixed the water with capsaicin, the active ingredient in pepper spray. A practice not uncommon for repressive regimes. Many people reported skin burns. Totals of injuries have not yet been calculated as protests continue at the time of writing.

    ****

    In Brazil-
    Military police murder unarmed, injured man on public street in front of crowd:

    Victoria County, 180 km from Sao Luis, Brazil, dozens of people witnessed the murder of Irialdo Battle on the public streets at the end of yesterday afternoon, Thursday, 5/28. A terrifying scene that will not soon be forgotten by the locals. The incident occurred near the square of Our Lady of Nazareth near the city of Viana.

    Lying injured from a gunshot already, sprawled out with open arms, Irialdo Battle, dressed in jean shorts and red shirt, agonizes along the roadside, being observed by dozens of people.

    People around the man argued that he is still alive, when a person comes over and puts his hand on the victim’s neck to see if his heart is still beating: “The guy is breathing,” says the resident.

    When suddenly appears a man wearing black boot’s, military pants and with gun in hand, a member of the military police. He steps on the head of the wounded man, pushing from one side to the other. Upon realizing that the semi unconscious victim is still alive, without hesitation he shoots the fallen man directly in the face, firing twice at close range.

    WARNING:
    There is a brutal, graphic video at the end of the above link that shows the actions of the military officer as described at the end of the quoted material.

  303. says

    2 newspapers-one of them British-hope to accurately count number of people killed by US police:

    The lack of official data has fed some of the growing public frustration over a series of police killings since the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August touched off weeks of sometimes violent protests.

    On Monday, The Guardian unveiled a database it dubbed “The Counted,” which encourages readers and witnesses to contribute.

    An interactive map identifies the number of people killed by age, region or ethnic background.
    “Within minutes, we had submissions,” Jon Swaine, a lead reporter on the project, told AFP.

    He expressed hope that readers — who can send photo or video documentation anonymously — will become the main source of the database. Each submission is verified by journalists.

    The Post, which reported its initial findings at the weekend, found that relative to the overall population, blacks were killed at three times the rate of other minorities or whites in the police killings so far this year that it analyzed.

    The report noted that most of the people killed were armed with potentially lethal objects — mainly guns, but also knives and other items. Sixteen percent were carrying a toy or were unarmed.

    Among the unarmed victims, two thirds were black or Hispanic.

    “The police departments are not required to refer to the federal authorities” about killings at the hand of law enforcement, explained the Post‘s Wesley Lowery.

    “They can do it voluntarily.”

    He called for Congress to pass a law mandating federal statistics and funding data collection.

    Five months, 400 dead

    The Post found that so far this year, at least 385 people have been shot and killed by police across the United States — a rate of more than two a day.

    The Guardian counted 464 dead over the same period.

    Data on shooting fatalities is “easier to collect and it’s more accurate,” Lowery explained.

    But Swaine explained that if only police shootings are counting, then that excludes victims like Baltimore resident Freddie Gray, whose death from a spinal injury suffered in police custody sparked riots.

    A quarter of those killed suffered from mental illness, according to the Post.

    In one case, in Florida, police killed a schizophrenic man who was waving a broomstick.

    His mother had called law enforcement because she was unable to get him to come back inside despite cold temperatures.

    Here is a link to the Guardian database.

  304. says

    Going by the Guardian’s database, 2 people have already been killed in June, 82 in May, 96 in April, 114 in March, 84 in February, and 90 in January.

    It’s mentioned in the text quoted above, but remember the Guardian is counting all police homicides, while the Post is counting those shot to death.

  306. says

    The Guardian says it will rely to some degree on submissions from readers (after being vetted of course):

    The US government has no comprehensive record of the number of people killed by law enforcement.

    So the Guardian has embarked on a special project – to work from an inaccurate standard toward a more perfect accounting, and tell the stories of people killed by police. But we need your help.

    Do you have information about an officer-involved death that the public deserves to know? This is the place to share the truth about police killings. Send us your tips, images, video and more – and we’ll use it in our reporting.

    Here is the link to the tip submissions page.

  307. says

    The Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation to probe shooting by reserve deputy:

    Robert Bates, a 73-year-old white reserve deputy, has been charged with manslaughter for shooting Eric Harris, 44, an African-American, on April 2. Bates thought he was using a Taser instead of his gun, the Tulsa sheriff’s office said of the incident that was videotaped and shown in the media.

    The Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office, which has asked the district attorney in nearby Okmulgee County to handle the case, requested the bureau investigation to look for possible misconduct at the sheriff’s department.

    The bureau, which did not specify the nature of its probe, opened an investigation on Friday. It is a statewide agency for criminal investigations.

    ****

    Police shooting of Southern California college debater sparks anger:

    The shooting last Wednesday in Long Beach, a city just south of Los Angeles, occurred only after the officer tried to restrain the man with an electronic control device, police said.

    Long Beach police did not name the man, but his family and friends have identified him as Feras Morad, 20, and said he was a nationally ranked debater at Moorpark College.

    A group plans to hold a candlelight vigil in Los Angeles on Wednesday to honor Morad, whose shooting death has been criticized as unjustified in a social media campaign and comes amid heightened public scrutiny of police use of force.

    Morad was at a residence in Long Beach when he began acting erratically, the city’s police department said in a statement. His friends tried to restrain him before he broke loose and jumped through a second-story window, police said.

    Firefighters were called in to help Morad, who was on drugs, and they called police to assist them, police said.

    An officer drove up to the scene and saw Morad with a large cut, covered in blood. The officer told Morad he was there to help him get medical assistance and in reaction Morad walked toward the officer, police said.

    The officer, believing Morad intended to assault him, used verbal commands, an electronic control device, an impact weapon and physical force in an effort to control Morad, said the statement from police, which did not provide more details on those methods.

    Morad again advanced toward the officer and said he was going to attack and the officer responded by shooting him, police said. Morad was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

    Kareem Morad said his cousin Feras had tried hallucinogenic mushrooms for the first time shortly before his shooting and his erratic behavior stemmed from a bad reaction.

    “He was in desperate need of help,” said Kareem Morad, who contends the shooting was unnecessary.

    Feras Morad was a star debater at Moorpark College and was going to attend California State University, Long Beach, Kareem Morad said.

    The shooting is under investigation and the officer has not been identified.

  308. says

    US tightens airport security after undercover tests reveal terrible failure rate:

    Airport screeners, who are employees of the Transportation Security Administration, did not detect banned weapons in 67 of 70 tests at dozens of airports, ABC News said, citing officials briefed on a report by Homeland Security’s inspector general.

    Johnson, whose department oversees the TSA, was briefed last week on the trials, which were completed recently, ABC News said.

    In one test, the network said an undercover agent was stopped when he set off an alarm at a checkpoint but that TSA screeners then failed to find a fake explosive device taped to his back when they patted him down.

    Johnson issued a statement on Monday saying the results of the security checks were classified but that he had directed the TSA to revise screening procedures “to address specific vulnerabilities identified” in the undercover operation. He also ordered training for all TSA officers and supervisors across the country and testing of airports’ screening equipment.

    Johnson said there would be more random covert testing at checkpoints.

    “The numbers in these reports never look good out of context but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security,” Johnson said. “We take these findings very seriously in our continued effort to test, measure and enhance our capabilities and techniques as threats evolve.”

  309. rq says

    Thank you, Tony, for keeping things going!

    +++

    .@BYP_100: Unapologetically BLACK. #BlackWorkMatters #FightFor15 VIDEO:

    This @WashingtonPost infographic re: police violence should say, “according to police.” Remember, #WalterScott. You can put that alongside the Guardian Count (I’ll link to it again later).

    Ohio Prosecutor Slams Judge in Acquittal of Cop in Execution Style Slaying

    che Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office asked an appellate court Friday to correct legal errors made by Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell in his ruling on the voluntary manslaughter trial of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo.

    In a motion filed with the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals, prosecutors acknowledge that Brelo’s acquittal still stands. But they argued that the errors are “egregioius” and need correcting so they do not “contaminate future rulings in the trial court and the entire Court of Common Pleas.”

    The voluntary manslaughter charges against Brelo stemmed from a Nov. 29, 2012 police chase that ended in the deaths of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell. Brelo was one of 13 officers who shot at the pair, but prosecutors argued that his actions went beyond those of the other officers present that night.

    Prosecutors contend O’Donnell erred by:

    Misinterpreting a legal test for determining who causes a death, and concluding that it was impossible to determine that Brelo fired the fatal shots;
    Wrongly applying the law that determines when an officer is justified in using deadly force; and
    Considering the wrong lesser-included offense. O’Donnell considered felonious assault. Prosecutors argued the correct lesser offenses in this case are attempted voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault.

    In his verdict, O’Donnell concluded that prosecutors failed to prove that Brelo’s actions caused the deaths of Williams and Russell because several other officers on the scene also fired lethal shots. O’Donnell further concluded that Brelo was justified in his use of force throughout the shooting because he feared for his life.

    O’Donnell was not available to comment on the motion. Whether he concedes or disputes the prosecutors’ argument will not alter his verdict.

    The state has no right to appeal an acquittal, according to Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Lewis Katz.

    “The judge can’t change his mind,” Katz said. “Once he enters his judgment, he loses jurisdiction in this case.”

    But prosecutors argue O’Donnell can amend his verdict to prevent flawed legal logic from being used in any future cases.

    So yes, it’s the same appeal as seen before, but this one actually links to the appeal itself.

    A word from Noam Chomsky, from 1999. See how much has changed! Domestic Terrorism: Notes on the State System of Oppression

    The lesson of Watergate is simple. American liberalism and the corporate media will defend themselves against attack. But their spirited acts of self-defense are not to be construed as a commitment to civil liberties or democratic principle, despite noble and self-serving rhetoric. Quite the contrary. They demonstrate a commitment to the principle that power must not be threatened or injured. The narrow “elites” that control the economy, political life, and the system of conventional doctrine must be immune to the means of harassment that are restricted, in the normal course of events, to those who raise a serious challenge to ruling ideology or state policy or established privilege. An “enemies list” that includes major corporate leaders, media figures, and government intellectuals is an obscenity that is seen as shaking the foundations of the republic. The involvement of the national political police in the assassination of Black Panther leaders, however, barely deserves comment in the national press, including the liberal press and journals, with rare exceptions.

    The Cointelpro operations of the 1960s were modeled on the successful programs of earlier years undertaken to disrupt the American Communist Party. Though details are unknown, these programs were no secret, and were generally regarded as legitimate. The programs directed against the Communist party continued through the 1960s, with such interesting innovations as Operation Hoodwink from 1966 through mid-1968, designed to incite organized crime against the Communist party through documents fabricated by the FBI, evidently in the hope that criminal elements would carry on the work of repression and disruption in their own manner, by means that may be left to the imagination. 5

    From the evidence now available, it appears that the first FBI disruption program (apart from the CP) was launched in August 1960 against groups advocating independence for Puerto Rico. In October 1961, the “SWP Disruption Program” was put into operation against the Socialist Workers Party. The grounds offered, in a secret FBI memorandum, were the following: the party had been “openly espousing its line on a local and national basis through running candidates for public office and strongly directing and/or supporting such causes as Castro’s Cuba and integration problems…in the South.” The SWP Disruption Program, put into operation during the Kennedy administration, reveals very clearly the FBI’s understanding of its function: to block legal political activity that departs from orthodoxy, to disrupt opposition to state policy, to undermine the civil rights movement.

    These basic commitments were pursued in subsequent years. For example, the Phoenix office of the FBI noted in a memorandum of October 1, 1968, that Professor Morris Starsky of Arizona State University, “by his actions, has continued to spotlight himself as a target for counterintelligence action.” These “actions” consisted of the following crimes against the state: “He and his wife were both named as presidential electors by and for the Socialist Workers Party when the SWP in August, 1968, gained a place on the ballot in Arizona. In addition they have signed themselves as treasurer and secretary respectively of the Arizona SWP.” Nothing further is alleged, though an earlier memorandum (May 31, 1968) identifies Starsky as one of those who have provided “inspiration and leadership” for “New left organizations and activities in the Phoenix metropolitan areas,” so that he is one of “the most logical targets for potential counterintelligence action.” The memorandum suggests that “reliable and cooperative contacts in the mass media” should be helpful in this particular program of “Disruption of the New Left.” The documents in the Starsky case also indicate that prior to the targeting of Starsky on October 1, the FBI had somehow influenced the board of regents that controls the university to “find cause to separate Professor STARSKY from the public payroll” on trumped-up charges. 6

    Similarly, the comprehensive program to “expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of the various New Left organizations, their leadership and adherents,” secretly put into operation in May 1968, was motivated by the fact that New Left activists “urge revolution,” are responsible for unspecified “violence and disruption,” “call for the defeat of the United States in Vietnam,” and “continually and falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize unlawful acts to further their so-called cause.” They have even “on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses,” where, naturally, the state’s political police should be free to operate with impunity. The latter offense was particularly grave since, as is now known, FBI provocateurs were engaged in extensive efforts throughout the country to instigate campus violence, disrupt student groups, eliminate radical faculty, and the like, and FBI agents were, for example, engaged in such actions as stealing documents from campus groups and burglarizing the offices of professors supporting them. 7

    The commitment of the FBI to undermine the civil rights movement, despite an elaborate pretense to the contrary (and even some actions as government policy vacillated on the issue), will come as no surprise to people with first-hand experience in the South in the early 1960s. As late as summer 1965, FBI observers refused to act within their legal authority to protect civil rights demonstrators who were being savagely beaten by police and thrown into stockades (some, who tried to find sanctuary on federal property, were thrown from the steps of the federal building in Jackson, Mississippi, by federal marshals). These efforts continued in later years, as, for example, when the FBI, under Cointelpro, succeeded in driving a black minister from the Jackson Human Rights Project in early 1969, causing him to leave the South altogether, by sending him a “spurious, threatening letter” and encouraging school and church officials to file complaints against him on the basis of charges which (according to his ACLU lawyer) were fabricated by the Bureau and “derogatory” information provided by the Bureau. 8

    There is no dearth of other examples to illustrate what the Pike Committee Report calls “FBI racism.” The campaign to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King is a case that is now well-known. In October 1963 the FBI sought permission, which was granted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to install wiretaps on King’s home telephone and at two offices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King headed. In November 1964 the FBI sent King the following unsigned note:

    King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it. (This exact number has been selected for a specific reason.) It has definite practical significance. You are done. There is but one way out for you.

    Enclosed was a tape obtained from electronic surveillance. The note was received 34 days before Dr. King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and was, quite naturally, taken to be an effort to drive him to suicide. The Bureau also harassed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party in 1964 and attempted to destory two civil rights groups in St. Louis by sending forged letters accusing members of marital infidelity, in 1969 and 1970. The Bureau took credit for helping to break up the marriage of a white activist, who was forced to curtail her civil rights work, by these means. An FBI memo reads: “While the letter sent by the St. Louis division was probably not the sole cause of this separation, it certainly contributed very strongly.” 9 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch commented editorially (November 19, 1975) that these disclosures make it “hard to imagine that there was any tactic too sordid for this federal agency to use,” referring to the efforts “to undermine the effectiveness of ACTION and the Black Liberators in St. Louis,” and the general program of which they were a part.

    In still another example under Cointelpro, revealed in the Pike Committee Report:

    the FBI authorized interfering with a Mellon Foundation’s decision of whether to give Unity Corporation, a black organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a $150,000 grant. The FBI contacted a confidential source within the Mellon Foundation, the grant was denied, and the Unity Corporation subsequently went bankrupt.

    Chalk up another victory for law and order. We return directly to examples of “FBI racism” of a considerably more serious nature.

    Predictably, the most serious of the FBI disruption programs were those directed against “Black Nationalists.” These programs, also initiated under liberal Democratic administrations, had as their purpose “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.” Agents were instructed “to inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant.” Specifically, they were to undertake actions to discredit these groups both within “the responsible Negro community” and to “Negro radicals,” also “to the white community, both the responsible community and to `liberals’ who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalists simply because they are Negroes…”

    And there’s more, of course, A lot more. Is it any different, now, with protestor surveillance, etc.?

    Where have all the good cops gone? Denver Sheriff Whistleblower: ’I Was Ordered To Destroy Videotape’

    CBS4 has learned that an internal investigation is underway into the interim head of the Denver Sheriff Department, Elias Diggins, and the captain in charge of the Denver Sheriff’s Internal Affairs Bureau after an internal affairs investigator blew the whistle, saying he was ordered to destroy a videotape that showed an inmate being humiliated and degraded.

    “This is the definition of corruption,” said Brent Miller, who believes the sheriffs department fired him earlier this month for refusing to destroy the tape. Miller worked for the Adams County Sheriff’s Office for nearly 26 years before retiring. He then agreed to go to work for the Denver Sheriff Department as a civilian internal affairs investigator, brought on to help clear up a backlog of internal affairs cases. […]

    Personnel at Denver Health Medical Center felt the inmate had been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment by being forced to walk nude through the hospital hallways so they filed a complaint with the Denver Sheriff Department. The complaint was assigned to Miller. On May 11, Miller and a second investigator traveled to Denver Health Medical Center to obtain a copy of hospital videotape showing Colbruno in the hospital.

    When he returned to his office with the tape, Miller said he was approached by Captain Paul Ortega, who leads the Sheriff Department’s internal affairs bureau.

    “He asked me if I had uploaded this video yet and I told him I had not and told me,’good, don’t do that because they’re making that go away, it’s not going to be a case anymore.’”

    CBS4 asked Miller a second time to recount what he was told by Capt. Ortega, “He told me don’t upload it they’re making it go away. Who is they? He said the sheriff then told me to get rid of the video. Do not upload it get rid of the video and I immediately told him that’s not ethical to get rid of evidence in a case.” […]

    “I was told I was being terminated by the Denver Sheriff Department because I was too opinionated and they wanted to go in a different direction,” said Miller.

    The termination order obtained by CBS4 was signed by Sheriff Elias Diggins, who Ortega said had told him to have the tape destroyed.

    Contacted by CBS4, Diggins declined to discuss the CBS4 report, “I cannot talk about any internal investigation.”

    Captain Ortega did not respond to multiple inquiries from CBS4.

    “I believe I was fired because I stood up to what I perceived to be unethical behavior and corruption by the Denver Sheriff’s Department and the Manager of Safety’s Office,” said Miller. “I expressed those opinions that what they were doing was unethical, improper and corrupt and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I cannot be part of losing evidence or getting rid of evidence or letting those collusions of corruption go on within the city. I don’t want to be a part of that.”

    After CBS4 began making inquiries, Stephanie O’Malley, Denver Executive Director of Safety released this statement: “I have directed the Internal Affairs Bureau of the Denver Police Department to investigate allegations of misconduct by command officers in the Denver Sheriff Department,” wrote O’Malley. “This investigation was initiated immediately after I learned of the allegations and their nature.”

    So… there they are.

  310. rq says

    Ta-Nehisi Coates had a long twitter exposition (tweet-by-tweet) the other day about black-on-black crime, and its significance coming from both white and black people (the argument, I mean, not the crime). I’ve pulled some quotes from him, but now I’m not sure if they illustrate the point anymore, because there was a lot more.
    Anyway, something like this:
    And since slavery “What about black crime?” has been offered up by both white and black people, failing to understand their circumstance.
    “What about black crime?” has basically been the answer to any movement for black equality since slavery.
    Anyway attempt to change the subject to “black crime” is neither new, nor original, but a standard time-tested feature of American racism.
    [mention and quote of black leaders using black-on-black crime argument, examples from W.E.B. Dubois within this article here: The Conservation of Races]
    And to be clear I’m not bashing Du Bois, Terrell and Turner. They lived in a certain era and were trying to negotiate the politics.
    No one should be known by their worst moments. But it gives you some sense of how old these invocations of “black crime” are.

  311. rq says

    Right, there was talk of Fred Hampton previously. This is a bit late, but c’mon, education is never too much. The Black Panther Raid and the death of Fred Hampton

    Racial tensions, police suspicion and the Panthers’ radical politics had already proved a volatile combination. Founded in 1966, the party quickly became a menacing, yet romanticized, force. In the two years before the raid, police and Panthers had engaged in eight gun battles nationally, in which three police officers and five Panthers died. Four of the shootouts, including one in which two police officers were killed, occurred in Chicago.

    In the angry controversy after the raid, police maintained they were justified in opening fire, but the Panthers saw the raid as a pretext for killing Hampton.

    The Tribune became part of the uproar when it published a photograph showing holes in a door jamb that it identified as coming from bullets fired from inside the apartment. They proved to be nail heads.

    Months later, a federal investigation showed that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, although that number remained in dispute. Police fired 82 to 99 shots.

    The raid ended the promising political career of Cook County State’s Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. Bernard Carey, a Republican, defeated him in the next election, in part because of the support of outraged black voters.

    Plus, it’s a short article.

    Police are fatally shooting people at twice the rate reported by FBI, analysis finds

    The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal killings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

    “These shootings are grossly underreported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

    A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police this year, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty. The Post looked exclusively at shootings, not killings by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.

    Using interviews, police reports, local news accounts and other sources, The Post tracked more than a dozen details about each killing through Friday, including the victim’s race, whether the person was armed and the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter. The result is an unprecedented examination of these shootings, many of which began as minor incidents and suddenly escalated into violence.

    Among The Post’s findings:

    • About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.

    • The vast majority of victims — more than 80 percent — were armed with potentially lethal objects, primarily guns, but also knives, machetes, revving vehicles and, in one case, a nail gun.

    • Forty-nine people had no weapon, while the guns wielded by 13 others turned out to be toys. In all, 16 percent were either carrying a toy or were unarmed.

    • The dead ranged in age from 16 to 83. Eight were younger than 18, including Jessie Hernandez, 17, who was shot three times by Denver police officers as she and a carload of friends allegedly tried to run them down.

    The Post analysis also sheds light on the situations that most commonly gave rise to fatal shootings. About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations: A homeless person behaving erratically. A boyfriend threatening violence. A son trying to kill himself.

    Ninety-two victims — nearly a quarter of those killed — were identified by police or family members as mentally ill.

    The other half of shootings involved nondomestic crimes, such as robberies, or the routine duties that occupy patrol officers, such as serving warrants.

    It’s a rehash of the Washington Post article on police killings. (Also, small haha, the Washington Post apparently dropped that article in the middle of the night, and there was some wondering why (on twitter) – and I think it’s because they wanted their investigation and count out before the Guardian published theirs.)

    O’Malley seeks path to White House. Again, don’t get too excited about that.

    O’Malley will be helped in that effort by a whirlwind of liberal accomplishments he achieved as governor, particularly during his second term. His administration shepherded the legalization of gay marriage, a minimum-wage increase, tougher gun laws, a repeal of the death penalty and landmark policies to help immigrants who are in the country illegally.

    But he’ll have to fend off setbacks faced by his administration, including the loss of his lieutenant governor, Anthony G. Brown, in last year’s gubernatorial election. Republican Larry Hogan won in part by tying Brown to O’Malley’s policies — specifically tax increases on income, gas, and sales.

    A few elected officials turned out for O’Malley on Saturday — including Attorney General Brian E. Frosh and Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III — but most already have endorsed Clinton.

    “I’ve worked with him,” said state Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, a Baltimore Democrat who was wandering through the crowds. “I think his record is second to none.”

    O’Malley’s record was a theme he raised repeatedly during the speech. He said his administration represented a new approach to governing that would work well in the White House. His newly designed campaign signs included the slogan “new leadership,” a subtle dig at the Clinton legacy.

    “Recently, the CEO of Goldman Sachs let his employees know that he’d be just fine with either Bush or Clinton,” O’Malley said.

    “I bet he would.”

    Analysts say O’Malley must camp out in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The Iowa caucuses dramatically shifted the course of the race for the Democratic nomination in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama upset Clinton there by running as a change candidate. O’Malley was set to visit both states this weekend.

    “You need to really spend time here doing retail politics,” said Tom Henderson, the Democratic chairman in Polk County, Iowa, home to Des Moines. “It’s getting in a van and going from town to town and meeting with voters.”

    O’Malley may be best known as the young, brash, guitar-playing councilman improbably elected to lead a majority African-American city beset by poverty, blight and violent crime. He embraced a new way of thinking about management — relying on data to measure the time it took to fill potholes and fix streetlights — and a tough policing strategy that drove down violent crime.

    The strategy was controversial then, and recent high-profile police brutality cases have only elevated the debate. Though he is eight years removed from City Hall, O’Malley’s record became a central political issue in the riots that erupted after the death of Freddie Gray. […]

    O’Malley addressed the riots Saturday. He said the experience, for him, was about more than just policing or race.

    It was, he said, “about everything it is supposed to mean to be an American.”

    “For all of us who have given so much of our energies to making our city a safer, fairer and more prosperous place, that was a heartbreaking night for all of us,” he said. “For us, Baltimore is our country and our country is Baltimore.”

    But the nod to the West Baltimore neighborhoods out of view from Federal Hill didn’t appease a small group of protesters who heckled O’Malley during his speech, blowing whistles and shouting.

    “What about Freddie Gray?” one man yelled.

    “Black lives matter,” shouted another.

    Because the state’s primary comes late in the calendar, what Marylanders think about O’Malley — good or bad — ultimately might not matter.

    Outside of the state, supporters see O’Malley’s executive experience as a major selling point. The shouts from the protesters Saturday could be heard clearly by those in the park, but they didn’t register for those watching on television.

    “He just needs to do what he’s always done, which is be a leader,” said Boyd Brown, a former South Carolina state lawmaker who is supporting O’Malley. “He’ll show his vision for America and for the next generation. I think he’s the only one capable of doing that.”

    Libraries and the homeless and the poor: Critical Linking: May 31, 2015

    This photo story on the homeless using California’s public libraries got me in my heart space hard. […]

    White boys appeared to be the least enthusiastic readers, with nearly one in six saying they had not read a book of any type in the previous month, while only one out of 20 black girls said the same.

    In contrast, 16% of black girls said they had read at least 10 books or more during the previous month, the highest reported figure among all ethnic groups of the children who responded.

    These reading stats are fascinating — and let us ask again why black girls aren’t seeing themselves in fiction like they should be?

    Links at the site.

    Is it just me, or are white people killed by police in mysterious circumstances getting more media time now? (Not a bad thing.) Pastor shot dead by cops who say they were trying to SAVE him from flood: Wife questions officers’ claim he attacked them because he didn’t want to leave his truck.

    I’ll be requesting that @ChiefSLMPD and witnesses come discuss this incident before the Public Safety Cmte.

  312. rq says

    Woman Walking on Sidewalk Records St Louis PD Taser Her Repeatedly – the video is not easy to watch.

    A silent protest organized by the Black Lives Matter movement under the banner of #ShutDownBaseball on Friday night began at Kiener Plaza around 8:15 p.m. before marching to the Cardinals game at Busch stadium in downtown St Louis. The goal: to raise awareness and call for an end to police brutality on people of color.

    The demonstration was largely peaceful and fairly uneventful outside of people standing with signs, some of them in a line crossing the road at the entrance to the stadium, an area already closed off and crowded by baseball fans. […]

    It wasn’t until the last 13 remaining protesters started to head home around 11:30pm when things got out of hand. People still motivated to bring attention to their cause had decided to leave the sidewalk and walk in the street. Faced with a myriad of options, when the commands given to leave the roadway were not met Lt Dan Zarrick made the decision to make arrests. What we see in the video below (supplied by the female taser victim) shows what happened after that decision was made.

    When the video starts off two people are already in custody and at least 6 officers are already on the scene. Some people had left the area already when arrests began, leaving 6 trying to walk away on the sidewalk. At that point you can hear an officer say “Grab anybody, they were all in the street,” and then an officer with a taser in hand hurries to head off the people who were walking at a normal pace away from the scene of arrests. Seconds later aiming his less than lethal weapon at a man who was at the front of the small group that officer says “get back.” Obviously not wanting to be tased and to avoid being arrested the man tries to evade the officer with a sidestep, when he is then tased.

    The woman taking the video and the other 3 people are grabbed from behind when another officer begins to deploy less than lethal force by firing his taser on her. It is unclear why this officer felt it necessary to deploy less than lethal force on a woman walking away instead of simply or at least attempting to place her under arrest without incident. She is then heard agonizing in pain saying repeatedly “Ow my god, Ow my god” and asking “why did you do that?” I didn’t do anything.” An officer can be heard saying “put your hands behind your back,” she replies repeatedly “Please Stop, please stop, your hurting me, I can’t, it hurts, I can’t, it hurts so bad” when we hear the sound of her being tased yet again by the officer. She then says, obviously in a severe amount of pain “why are you doing this to me, I’m on the ground” before the video ends.

    And Fox2 on the tasing, Outrage after video surfaces of police using tasers on protesters

    There is outrage tonight after video surfaced of police arresting and using a taser two people after hours of protests in downtown St. Louis.

    Police say officers used tasers on two demonstrators who resisted arrest after they allegedly put themselves and drivers in danger during hours of protests Friday night in downtown St. Louis.

    Surveillance video shows what appears to be a couple dozen demonstrators gathered outside Busch Stadium during the Cardinals Dodgers game.

    Just after 11:45, police say they walked into traffic at Washington and Tucker, forcing drivers to either stop or hit them. Just a few minutes earlier the marched up the center of Washington Avenue, in spite of repeatedly being ordered to the sidewalks.

    After several near accidents, officers moved in to arrest several protesters. During the arrest, 2 protesters were tased for resisting arrest. In total, 8 protesters were arrested for impeding traffic.

    That seems a very blase attitude and description. Huh.

    Kanye West Returns to Los Angeles Trade Technical College, ’cause we haven’t had some Kanye in a while.

    Dr. Kanye West returned to Los Angeles Trade-Technical College on Friday, the former home of his community service-inspired teaching engagement. West was in attendance for LATTC’s Golden Thimble Fashion Show, a presentation of fashion students’ own work united by a predetermined theme.

    Speaking to LATTC graduates, West delivered an expectedly quotable sermon on the virtues of independence, creative bravery, and self-empowerment. “When you’re the absolute best,” West told students, “you get hated on the most.”

    Might be worth a transcript, hopefully one shows up later!

    “I was born again in the streets of Ferguson. And God was queer,” testified @RevSekou at #LeftForum I just love the quote.

    On @60Minutes Black police chief of Cleveland just said he’s never had “the talk” with his 24 year old son. #TamirRice Also interesting…

    Racial Penalties in Baltimore Mortgages, another on the racial disparities in the housing market.

    The mortgage crisis that brought the economy to its knees seven years ago was especially devastating for black communities, where homeowners who qualified for safe, traditional mortgages were often steered into ruinously priced loans that paid off handsomely for brokers and lenders while leaving borrowers vulnerable to foreclosure. The crisis left many middle-class minority communities strewn with abandoned houses, further widening the already huge wealth gap between African-Americans and whites.

    A study published this month in the journal Social Problems lays out how this happened in Baltimore in the run-up to the recession and comes at a time when the banking industry and its friends in Congress are fighting proposed federal rules that would make it much easier to ferret out discrimination and enforce fair-lending laws.

    The research, by the sociologists Jacob Rugh, Len Albright and Douglas Massey, focuses on 3,027 loans made in Baltimore from 2000 to 2008 by Wells Fargo, which in 2012 agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations of predatory lending in Baltimore and elsewhere. The study takes into account credit scores, income, down payments — all of the information that was available to brokers and lenders when these loans were made.

    It found that black borrowers in Baltimore, especially those who lived in black neighborhoods, were charged higher rates and were disadvantaged at every point in the borrowing process compared with similarly situated whites. Had black borrowers been treated the same as white borrowers, the authors say, their loan default rate would have been considerably lower. Instead, discrimination harmed individuals and entire neighborhoods.

    Over the life of a 30-year loan, the researchers say, these racial disparities would cost the average black borrower an extra $14,904 — and $15,948 for the average black borrower living in a black neighborhood — as compared with white borrowers. That money might otherwise have been put into savings, invested in children’s education, or used to improve health or living standards.

    The racial penalty was highest for black borrowers earning over $50,000. This is consistent with other studies showing that brokers who earned more fees for larger, higher-cost loans deliberately targeted black families of means. As the study notes, these facts show that whiteness still confers “concrete advantages in the accumulation of wealth through homeownership” and that pervasive racial disadvantage continues to “undermine black socioeconomic status in the United States today.”

    The discrimination that was apparently widespread in the mortgage crisis has been difficult to document, partly because the data that lenders were required to report to the federal government did not include crucial information like the property value, the term of the loan, the total points and fees, the duration of any teaser or introductory interest rates, and the applicant’s or borrower’s age and credit score. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010 sought to remedy that problem by directing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to require lenders to report this information.

    The bureau needs to resist the pressure and make the final rules as strong as possible. The additional information would make it easier to determine if lenders are operating in accordance with fair-housing law.

    Beyond that, federal regulators need to conduct regular audits of lenders to make sure that racial disparities are flagged and corrected before they become entrenched.

    It’s so obvious and people still can’t see it, because it isn’t loud.

  313. rq says

    Tasers: Perfectly harmless!
    .@ChiefSLMPD: “My officers acted appropriately and no officers or protesters were seriously hurt.” Except for the people tazed…

    For Some in Chicago, Spike Lee’s ‘Chiraq’ Has a Title That Rankles. Apparently they gave him a tax credit (or whatever that is called) to make this movie.

    In his 1914 poem, an admiring Carl Sandburg called Chicago the “City of the Big Shoulders,” a proud label for the working people who called it home. During the winter of the polar vortex 100 years later, as temperatures dipped below zero and bitter winds whipped off Lake Michigan, miserable Chicagoans quipped that they were living in Chiberia.

    Now this city is contending with a newer, grimmer label: Chiraq.

    A reference to the gun violence that has left parts of Chicago feeling like a war zone to many residents, the name is believed to have been coined by local rappers years ago. But it is taking on another life as the working title of a new Spike Lee movie that is expected to be filmed here this summer.

    Local politicians have lined up against the title. Mr. Lee has been confronted by Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who told him in a meeting last month that he was “not happy” about the name.

    An alderman from the South Side, William Burns, was so perturbed by the title that he angrily suggested that Mr. Lee, the renowned director of films like “Do the Right Thing” and “Malcolm X,” should not get the $3 million tax credit that he is seeking for filming here. […]

    Mr. Lee, who declined to be interviewed, has not publicly confirmed the title of the movie, but city officials who have met with him said he had told them that he intended to call it “Chiraq.” The film, Mr. Lee has said, is focused on gun violence on the South Side; some reports, unconfirmed by Mr. Lee, offer the intriguing possibility that the film is a comedic reimagining of “Lysistrata,” the ancient Greek tale by Aristophanes in which women withhold sex to force the men to end the Peloponnesian War.

    Gun violence is a way of life for many Chicagoans, especially in pockets of the South and West Sides. Street gangs have splintered and multiplied in recent years, complicating police efforts to tamp down crime. Every year, warm weather brings increased gunfire and gang activity, as well as a drumbeat of headlines announcing each weekend’s alarming tally: Over Memorial Day weekend, at least 56 people were shot in Chicago, 12 fatally.

    As of May 17, the city had 133 murders this year, a 17 percent increase over the same period last year.

    The seemingly intractable violence has tormented residents on the South Side, where Mr. Lee is planning to do most of his filming.

    During a meeting with Mr. Lee and several City Council members in April, Mr. Burns, the alderman, urged Mr. Lee to reconsider the title, he said. [….]

    “A lot of people have opinions about the so-called title of the film who again, know nothing about the film,” Mr. Lee said. “Way, way back when I made ‘Do the Right Thing,’ there were people who said this film would cause riots all across America, that black people were going to run amok. They wrote a whole bunch of things.
    Englewood residents playing dominoes.

    “But those people ended up being on the wrong side of history,” he continued, “And the same is going to happen in Chicago. They are going look stupid and end up on the wrong side of history. We’re here for peace.”

    To the people who have expressed displeasure over the movie, he said: “Wait until the movie comes out. You don’t like it, you don’t like it, but see it first.”

    Also at Mr. Lee’s side was John Cusack, who grew up in a Chicago suburb and will appear in the film. “I love my city of Chicago,” he said, taking the microphone. “And I would never do anything to hurt it.”

    One fan of Mr. Lee’s who was there, Lamar Brown, 29, a marketing director, said he had recently stood in line to audition as an extra for the film.

    “I’m fine with the title,” said Mr. Brown, who grew up in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood. “This is not a laughing matter here, this senseless violence going on. We just need to portray the realism of this. People are losing their lives over jealousy, hatred. I understand the message he’s trying to bring to us.”

    Hey, it sounds like this movie will be a look at black-on-black crime! What was that about not paying attention to it?

    Brelo was acquitted, and then… Arbitrator rescinds discipline for four supervisors in deadly police chase

    An arbitrator rescinded discipline against four Cleveland police supervisors on Friday, less than one week after a judge acquitted officer Michael Brelo of criminal charges in connection with the same chase.

    Cleveland police sergeants Patricia Coleman, Randolph Dailey, Brian Chetnik and Matt Putnam all will receive back pay from their 2013 suspensions, according to Cleveland police supervisors’ union president Capt. Brian Betley.

    Arbitrator Dennis Minni made the decision late Friday. City spokesman Dan Williams said on Sunday he was aware a decision had been made but was unaware of what Minni decided.

    The city has 30 days to appeal Minni’s decision in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Betley said. Betley declined further comment.

    Two supervisors who won arbitration on Friday are facing criminal charges in connection with the Nov. 29, 2012, chase that ended in the deaths of Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30. The 22-minute chase involved 62 police cars and more than 100 officers, who fired 137 total shots.

    Coleman and Dailey both face criminal charges of dereliction of duty, a second-degree misdemeanor. Their cases are pending in front of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell, who has not set a trial date. Both have pleaded not guilty in the case. Three other supervisors are also charged with crimes and have pleaded not guilty.

    Both Coleman and Dailey invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during Brelo’s trial.

    Coleman was initially suspended without pay for 30 days. Coleman’s was disciplined because she “became so involved in the pursuit” that she sacrificed her ability to supervise, Safety Director Martin Flask said in 2013.

    Dailey will get back pay for the 15 days he was suspended. The city suspended him for failing to ask officers and dispatchers involved in the chase or analyze the situation.

    Chetnik and Putnam were each originally suspended for 10 days without pay. Putnam was accused of ordering officers to join the case after another Third District supervisor ordered them to stop chasing the car.

    Chetnik was suspended for failing to acknowledge the chase, failing to take any supervisory action and failing to supervise a subordinate.

    Arbitrator Nels Nelson determined in June that the city improperly fired Sgt. Michael Donegan, and demoted Capt. Ulrich Zouhar and Lt. Paul Wilson. Nelson ruled that the city “bore some responsibility for the events of Nov. 29, 2012.”

    Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Russo in January upheld Nelson’s ruling that Donegan should be rehired as a patrol officer, receive back pay and returned to the rank of sergeant. The arbitrator also ruled Zouhar be returned to the rank of captain, and Wilson to be returned to the rank of lieutenant.

    It’s disgusting.

    (VIDEO) NAZIS IN OLYMPIA, WA LEARN THE HARD WAY THAT BLACK LIVES MATTER – white supremacists, more than Nazis as such, but it comes to much the same thing. Keeping an eye out for a different source for this.

    Speaking of Confederate flags, here’s a couple on their presence all over: ‘Rebels’ proliferate up north, but what’s their cause?

    IT’S BEEN SPOTTED on license plates in Atlantic City and Collingdale, draped across a truck in a Kohl’s parking lot and flying on poles outside homes in Montgomery and Chester counties.

    You can see it on the side of a building off Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond, hanging inside an apartment near Capitolo Playground in South Philly and painted on the “Dukes of Hazzard” replica Dodge Charger cruising around Delaware County.

    In Camden, it’s practically the official emblem for country-rock tailgate parties outside the Susquehanna Bank Center, where a concertgoer was charged this summer with bias intimidation for allegedly waving it at city residents and spewing racial slurs.

    Even a Philly cop was photographed last year wearing it under his bike helmet while on duty.

    Nearly 150 years after the Civil War ended, the Confederate battle flag – a complicated and incendiary symbol of rebellion, slavery, Southern pride and white supremacy – is seemingly becoming a more frequent sight north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

    “I remember taking a second look and going, ‘Really?’ It was shocking,” said Bryl Villanueva, 35, of Lafayette Hill, who recently saw a rebel flag flying in Conshohocken while on the way to a friend’s house. “Maybe they’re from Alabama.”

    What’s behind the popularity of the flag in the North? Is it the dark underbelly of the rapidly growing country-music scene? Disapproval of the president? An innocent revival of the rebel spirit among Yankees who don’t know – or care – what it means to the rest of society? Or something more sinister?

    “Me, I fly the stars and stripes,” said Dereck Banks, a self-described history buff from Clifton Heights, Delaware County.

    But Banks, 55, who is black, can’t miss the Dixie flag plastered across the back window of his neighbor’s pickup truck parked at the curb. It’s also on the front license plate, with the word “Daddy.”

    “It offends a lot of people. White folks, too,” Banks said. “Slavery is over. This is the new millennium. The South lost. The states are united.”

    Public schools have long been desegregated, too, but some Philadelphia-area residents are flying the same flag that the Ku Klux Klan and others adopted during the civil-rights movement to oppose desegregation. […]

    Some defenders of the Confederate flag say it is not inherently racist and should be flown to honor Confederate soldiers. Others, like Doug Copeland, a medical tech who said he was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., use it to show their fondness for the South.

    “I’m not prejudiced at all. My granddaughter is half-black,” said Copeland, who flies a flag from his home on busy Route 724 near Phoenixville. “I just love the South. If I could live there, I would.”

    But Copeland also knows that some people find it offensive. He thinks they are the ones who removed his prior flags.

    “That’s why I think they stole it. They came to the bus stop and stole the flag. It’s my third one,” he said. “It’s bolted in now, but the one time they snapped it right out of the bolt.”

    Copeland, however, doesn’t seem overly concerned with political correctness, as evidenced by the sign on his door that reads, in part: “Unless you are blind or cannot read this sign, you can bet your ass I am going to stomp the s— out of you if you bother me!”

    Some groups, including the Virginia Flaggers – which has leased land along Interstate 95 south of Richmond and plans to erect a 12-by-15-foot Confederate flag on a 50-foot pole Saturday – have denounced the KKK and others that have used the flag for their own purposes.

    “If somebody broke into your house and robbed you, and they were wearing New York Giants attire, you wouldn’t assume that there was something evil in the Giants association,” said Gene Hogan, chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “You would say, ‘No, that was an evil person that co-opted those garments.’ Same way with the battle flag.”

    Hogan said the SCV, an organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers, encourages people to display the flag in remembrance of those who fought in the Civil War – or the Second American Revolution, as the group refers to the war on its website.

    “It stands for brave men who defended their homeland against an unconstitutional invasion and represents all the good things in America,” Hogan said.

    That’s not how Drexel University sociologist Mary Ebeling sees it. The Falls Church, Va., native questioned whether it’s possible to express regional pride, oppose the expansion of the federal government or just yearn for simpler times, while ignoring the flag’s role as a hate symbol in America’s history.

    “The re-emergence of it is concerning,” Ebeling said. “It’s a brand, a symbol of oppression, violence, and, I would argue, white supremacy.”

    Even though she is white, Ebeling said, she “took it as a threat” when someone taped a small flag to a lamppost in her predominantly black neighborhood in West Philly a couple of years ago.

    “Once these kinds of meanings are attached to those symbols, the meanings endure,” she said.

    Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., agreed. People may have conflicting interpretations of what the flag means now, he said, but that doesn’t change how it was used in the past, including during the civil-rights movement.

    “The flags were raised in a patently racist show of standing by white supremacy and full-out resistance to desegregation,” Potok said. […]

    Last year, the ACLU of Delaware assisted a state Department of Transportation worker who was disciplined for displaying a Confederate-flag license plate on his car parked at work. The department later agreed with the ACLU that he was entitled to display the plate.

    Banks, the Clifton Heights man whose neighbor has Confederate flags on his truck, said the neighbor is a friend, so he doesn’t take offense in that instance.

    “I think it’s stupid, but being in America, you’re free to do whatever you like,” he said. “People are people. If you turned us inside out, you couldn’t tell what color we are.”

    The owner of the truck wouldn’t talk with the Daily News, but his next-door neighbor, Michael Blythe, said the flags are not intended as a hate symbol.

    “It’s not racist at all,” said Blythe, 35, a carpenter. “Everybody loves each other on this block.”

    Jim Matusko, 66, an accountant who flies an American flag year-round at his home around the corner, said self-styled rebels need to grow up and find a new symbol.

    “They got their asses whooped 148 years ago,” he said. “Let it go, already, for God’s sake.”

    Matusko said the apparent popularity of the flag today could be a symptom of a highly polarized country under a black, liberal president. But he doesn’t think its connection to slavery can be severed, either.

    “With the issue of slavery, waving a flag in someone’s face is almost like trying to pick a fight. I don’t think this country needs that kind of s—,” he said. “I don’t like the guy in the White House, either, but the South isn’t going to rise again.”

    It’s just a flag, sure. Can I wear my swastikas now? After all, they’re ancient symbols of power, protection and good luck.
    Anyway, I blame country music.

    Confederate flags fly in Camden for music fest. See, I was right!

    Confederate flags flying in Camden, N.J. – where 48 percent of the population identify as African American – outraged local residents after an annual celebration of country music ended in controversy once again.

    The annual festival from country music station WXTU at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden ended with at least three people hospitalized after a parking lot brawl that left two stabbed and one severely beaten. No arrests were reported.

    Police say privately that it is one of the more difficult concerts to monitor of the year, but some residents said it was the flags that upset them the most.

    “It’s definitely a big slap in the face to the people in the community,” said Walter Hudson, Sr., chairman of the South Jersey-based National Awareness Alliance civil rights group, who heard numerous complaints about the festival from community members.

    “We’re already dealing with an unfair and unbalanced social and economic system, not just in Camden County, but throughout the U.S. So when you see things like that, it’s very upsetting and alarming,” Hudson said. “I believe it’s a message of hate. Look at the symbolism of the Confederate flag.”

    Others expressed their anger on social media.

    “Confederate flag wavers, public urinaters, and brown people haters come to #Camden for the #WXTU concert 5/30,” was how @SeanBrown723 described it on Twitter. “Please respect our city.”

    But flag-waving tailgaters, who arrived at 7 a.m. to wait for the 3 p.m. concert, said the flag was a reference to the antebellum South.

    “More or less, the people flying them are from the south,” said Mike Fallon, 24, of Phoenixville, “or they want to represent the old south, before slavery was abolished.”

    Fallon’s friend, who was flying a Confederate flag on a hockey stick from the back of his pickup truck, asked not to be identified because he recognized that his opinions might not be popular.

    “It’s about when people worked for a living,” he said of the banner of slaveholding states, “instead of getting everything for free.”

    As competing groups of people bouncing in the backs of pickup trucks competed to see which side could get the truck bed to bounce higher, Fallon expressed interest in showing the party was not out of control.

    “Country boys from Phoenixville are respectful, and having the time of their lives,” he said.

    Lamont Ball, 52, who is African American, was working as a parking lot attendant Saturday morning, and said he did not have problems with the revelers.

    He said they offered him beers, which he declined because he was working.

    “I believe in the American flag,” Ball said. “All the others don’t mean nothing to me.”

  314. rq says

    Did I say tasers, perfectly harmless? Huh. Family identifies man Tased by police.

    A man died in southwest Rochester Sunday morning after being Tased by a Rochester Police Department officer, leaving the police chief and mayor calling for calm and his family asking what exactly happened.

    Police Chief Michael Ciminelli declined to release the man’s name but family identified him as Richard Gregory Davis, 50, a former Marine, father of six and grandfather of 11.

    His death, which police and a witness say came after he charged at officers, comes at a time of increased tension across the country between minorities and mostly-white police forces. Rochester police have made an effort to improve relations with residents in poor neighborhoods like the one in southwest Rochester where Davis died.

    Police responded to Tremont Street at about 9 a.m. Sunday upon receiving reports that Davis, driving a red pickup truck, had crashed into another vehicle and Calvary Spiritual Church, at the corner of Tremont and Morgan streets, then fled on foot.

    After police and firefighters arrived, Davis allegedly returned and, disobeying police orders, got back in his truck. He proceeded to crash into a street sign, a fence and a house, where he knocked over a gas meter, Ciminelli said.

    He then locked himself in the cab as officers shouted for him to come out with his hands up.

    Instead, according to police and a witness, Davis waited about five minutes, then came out charging at the police officers with fists clenched. One of the officers on the scene Tased him.

    Ciminelli would not say where the Taser barbs struck the man. He also did not release the name of the officer who fired the Taser, citing departmental protocol.

    Davis received medical attention at the scene from certified emergency medical technicians and was then taken by ambulance to Strong Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Ciminelli said. An autopsy is being conducted.

    The department and the district attorney’s office are working together on an investigation of the incident. There will also be an internal investigation, Ciminelli said. […]

    Mayor Lovely Warren attended the police press conference at the Rochester Public Safety Building after being summoned hastily on a Sunday afternoon.

    “We cannot speculate what caused this incident to occur and we need to wait for the medical examiner’s report to know if drugs, alcohol, mental illness, physical illness or some other factor was at play,” she said. “Further speculation should end now while we wait for definitive answers. What I do know is this matter was taken seriously from the moment neighbors called 911 to report that chaos was occurring on Tremont and Morgan streets.” […]

    Ciminelli acknowledged the anger across the country at a series of black deaths at the hands of police. He said the department hopes its community outreach efforts over the last several months will earn it the respect of citizens.

    “At this point, we’re going to rely on the fact that we’ve been working on a good and trusting relationship,” he said. “Hopefully people will give us the time we need to conduct a thorough investigation. We understand we are accountable to the community for our police officers’ actions, and we intend to live up to that accountability.”

    Floyd Dent, Man Beaten by Michigan Cops on Camera, Settles for $1.4 Million. Repeat post.

    Lenny Henry: There is only one certain way to smash the black glass ceiling in television

    Last year I joined Patrick Younge, Richard Curtis, Paul Greengrass and others in signing an open letter to ITV, the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. It demanded that broadcasters sign up to one very specific means of increasing diversity in the British media. That change was to ring-fence money for BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) productions: shows that meet certain criteria for black and Asian representation both in front of and behind the camera. It could include everything from top-end dramas and science programmes to Panorama.

    We did this for two reasons. First, ­because the problem is serious. The television industry is 94 per cent white and, like some bad washing detergent commercial, it seems to be getting whiter all the time. In February this year Broadcast magazine revealed that the number of BAME people leaving the BBC was at an all-time high. But this is far from just a BBC problem – the corporation is often just more open with its figures. Between 2006 and 2012 the media industry as a whole lost 2,000 BAME people, although it grew by 4,000 overall. For me that’s 2,000 glass ceilings that just proved too hard for black and Asian people to live with.

    The second reason I signed a letter calling for the change is, to misquote Beyoncé, “If you like it then you should have put a ring-fence on it.” When the industry really likes something and wants to make sure it works, it ring-fences money for it.

    When Ofcom, the industry watchdog, wanted Channel 4 to make more programmes from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, it told the broadcaster to ring-fence money specifically for programme spend in the nations and regions. The same is true for the BBC; a spectacular 50 per cent of all BBC network programmes are now made outside London.

    Ring-fencing also works for specific genres. The BBC ring-fences money for children’s programmes, for example. All I’m asking is to have the same rights as Peppa Pig, dammit. If ethnic-minority programmes were given the same status as children’s TV, classics such as Goodness Gracious Me and Desmond’s wouldn’t just be fond memories. Instead, the broadcasters would invest in making their successors work. I dream of the day when we have an ongoing comedy series that renews its cast every two years and that seeks out the best black and Asian comic performers, a Real McCoy meets Saturday Night Live.

    And the focus should not just be on comedy. There is a glaring need for black and Asian people in high-end TV drama (both in front of and behind the camera). All too often broadcasters take the safe option – ­using the same cast and scriptwriters over and over again, with BAME talent hardly getting a look-in.

    Before I get too carried away with this fantasy world of high-end dramas with BAME people producing and starring in them – as well as comedies that do not disappear in a puff of smoke after one outing – it is worth asking what the broadcasters themselves have been doing to address the problem. Well, the BBC has announced several new training schemes: a fast track for six management leaders and six trainee commissioners. Hopefully these 12 people will begin to break the glass ceiling in senior management. The BBC’s director of television, Danny Cohen, has also announced a development fund for programmes with an ethnic-minority focus.

    Meanwhile, Channel 4 has introduced a “two-tick” scheme to increase diversity. Under the scheme, every programme has to be able to tick certain diversity boxes for on-screen and off-screen representation in order to qualify for Channel 4 money. This might be great but it is too early to be able to judge it. The concern is that the criteria are so broad (covering gender, class, race, sexuality and disability) that it is hard to think of a programme in production at the moment that would not already qualify under this system, or could qualify after only very minor tweaking. This was apparent when Channel 4’s deputy chief creative officer, Ralph Lee, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Media Show and was asked how many programmes already passed the new diversity criteria. He was unable to answer.

    Oh, and what happened to the open letter we sent last year, I hear you ask? So far we’ve heard nothing back.

    Racism: not just for USAmerica anymore. :P

    Bringing a Little Color to a Passage at the 191st Street Station, for the art:

    The tunnel that connects Broadway to the 191st Street subway station was a little creepy. And the rats didn’t help. Today, the passage is a different place, made over by artists enlisted by the city as part of its latest effort to brighten a chronically dank, dark space.

    “Estoy Aqui!” or “I am here!” greets travelers in large orange letters at the Broadway entrance of the tunnel. Beside it is written “Seize The Day” in hot pink on a sun-bright yellow background. And across the tunnel is “Bendición,” or “blessings,” etched in a deep blue shade topped with a gold halo.

    The goal was to make the five-minute walk to the 1 train in Washington Heights a bit more vibrant, and perhaps even inspiring.

    The city’s Department of Transportation, working with the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes artists in Washington Heights and Inwood, selected five artists. Each artist was given two 200-foot sections of the wall to paint, with geometric designs and “pop” expected.

    The passage provides an alternative to the station’s main entrance on St. Nicholas Avenue. But the 900-foot tunnel is not part of the station; it’s a city street, maintained by the Department of Transportation. The agency has tried to brighten the space before. Just last year, the tunnel was painted beige, and LEDs were installed. But the effort didn’t inspire.

    “The tunnel always felt gritty,” said M. Tony Peralta, a local artist who was raised in the neighborhood. “There was always water trickling on the sides of the tunnel and from the ceilings, garbage and rats.”

    Rachel Dulitz, 38, who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, said the tunnel was a target for people to “graffiti it.”

    “What they have done many times is repainted it an awful pale yellow shade,” Ms. Dulitz said as she made her way through the tunnel snapping pictures of the art with her phone, taking in the shapes and colors with astonishment.

    “This is mind-blowing,” she said.

    Surveillance video contradicts police officers’ account of Bronx wreck that left motorcyclist dead and passenger brain damaged

    A surveillance video showing an NYPD radio car rear-ending a motorcycle in the Bronx contradicts the cops’ account of how the fatal accident happened, the Daily News has learned.

    Internal Affairs Bureau investigators obtained the video shortly after the Oct. 27, 2012, high-speed chase ended in a crash on Walton Ave., leaving the bike’s driver, Ronald Herrera, mortally injured and his passenger, Leonel Cuevas, brain-damaged.

    The initial police reports on the incident stated the dirt bike was not being pursued by police. Cops claimed the dirt bike was attempting to overtake the radio car when Herrera lost control and wiped out.

    The cops claimed the cruiser’s emergency turret lights were operating during the pursuit through narrow streets in the Tremont section.

    Most significant, the cops maintain in sworn statements that the dirt bike suddenly veered, or swerved in front of their cruiser right before the bike was struck from behind.

    None of those claims appear to be true.

    “It’s appalling and disgraceful that the officers are clearly not telling the truth,” said lawyer Scott Rynecki, who is representing Herrera’s family in a lawsuit against the city and the cops.

    “They were chasing a guy for a traffic infraction, not a felony, and the video clearly depicts the officers were violating the patrol guide by conducting an unsafe pursuit,” Rynecki added.

    Sgt. Robert Fitzsimmons of IAB acknowledged discrepancies in a deposition for the suit, conceding the radio car turret lights were not on, but said he did not view that as a lie or even a big deal.

    “It’s not a severe violation of what transpired, it’s not like saying ‘I was never there,’” Fitzsimmons said.

    He put the blame squarely on the bikers. “I believe it was a safe pursuit,” he said. “I believe it was a culpability of the dirt bike rider and also the double-parked vehicles.”

    Officers Sabrina Alicea, who was driving, and Walkiria Velez, got off with slaps on the wrist for failing to notify the radio dispatcher about the chase and not making make proper entries about the chase in their memo books.

    The Counted

    People killed by police in the US, from The Guardian. It’s a giant infographic, as mentioned by Tony, with photos (where available) and data such as age, etc. And it is a lot, a lot, a lot of names. Each name also has a sort of pop-up cue-card with basic information on the case. We have seen a very, very small fraction of these names on this thread.

  315. rq says

    Take note, that all current databases on police killings in USAmerica are being created by either private activists or media organizations.
    Not law enforcement organizations or the government.

    Back in a bit.

  316. rq says

    Remembering the Tulsa “Race Riot” of 1921 #KnowOurHistory – notice how ‘race riot’ makes it sound like there were two equal sides?

    Around 95 years ago, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma erupted in a large-scale conflict between Blacks and Whites. On May 30, 1921, an encounter on an elevator between two teenagers, one of them a black male, the other a white female, sparked the beginning of the civil unrest. Sarah Page alleged that Dick Rowland assaulted her whilst the two rode the elevator together. This alleged assault coupled with an already racially hostile Tulsa, sensationalist reporting and a wealthy black citizenry in Greenwood (Black Wall Street) was the lighter fluid needed for jealous, hate-filled groups to to set the city on fire.

    It all began when a group of armed Black citizens headed to the jail to ensure that Rowland wouldn’t be harmed (a White man was lynched after being taken from this same jail, so safety was a concern). When a White man tried to disarm one of these men as the group was turning to head back home, the events began. Gunfire was sent back and forth, leaving 12 men dead. This fighting expanded and continued as the Black residents were pushed back to their area of town and as families desperately tried to protect their children and family members from raining bullets from various groups out to attack.

    Spanning over the course of May 31st to June 1st, the city of Tulsa was lit with violence. Whites members of the community set fire to hospitals, churches, businesses and schools that lined the streets of Greenwood. The National Guard was assembled to “assist” in this conflict between the citizens. Property damages were estimated to be in the millions, thousands of community members were left homeless after their property and possessions were destroyed,, and hundreds of Black residents were reportedly killed.

    “The term “race riot” does not adequately describe the events of May 31—June 1, 1921 in Greenwood… In fact, the term itself implies that both blacks and whites might be equally to blame for the lawlessness and violence…” said Linda Christensen in an essay about Black dispossession. The anger over a successful Black Wall Street was no doubt fuel that lit the fire that was the attacks on the Greenwood community.

    There’s a stack (not a huge one) of links with more information at the bottom, there.

    This is tangential, but relevant: What’s wrong with political correctness? on being kinder, more aware, and dealing with one’s own shame at being wrong.

    What has come to be called “political correctness” used to be known as “good manners” and was considered part of being a decent human being. The term is now employed to write off any speech that is uncomfortably socially conscious, culturally sensitive or just plain left-wing. The term is employed, too often, to shut down free speech in the name of protecting speech.

    Recently, prominent writers from Jon Ronson to Jonathan Chait and Dan ­Hodges have been doubling down on the supposed culture of “political correctness” and “public shaming”. It is no coincidence that most of the loudest voices condemning the “Twitter mafia” are white, male, cisgender, privileged and unused to having to share any sort of public forum with large numbers of people who rarely have to worry about which pair of dad jeans will best conceal a pudding-coloured paunch. I’m really sorry if that image offended anyone, because some of my best friends truly are straight white men. Sometimes we do straight white men things together, like eating undercooked barbecue meat, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and threatening women on Twitter with moderate sexual violence. (Not really. Sorry, Chris and Henry.)
    ADVERTISING

    On one level, the pushback against “public shaming” can be read as a reaction from the old guard against the empowerment of previously unheard voices. There is nothing particularly novel about well-paid posh chaps writing off feminists, black activists and trans organisers as “toxic” and demanding that they behave with more decorum if they want to be taken seriously. I think, however, that it’s about more than that. I think it’s about shame and about fear.

    On a very profound level, people who occupy positions of social power – and I include myself in that demographic – are worried not just that the unheard masses are coming for them but that they might be right to do so.

    Most of us like to think we are good people. I do, although once, in a moment of extreme stress, I did tell a Telegraph journalist to go and die in a fire. When you are faced with a barrage of strangers whose opinions you actually care about yelling at you that you’re hateful and hurtful, that you’re an idiot and a bigot, when all you’ve done is make a mistake – well, the easy option, the option that feels safest and most comfortable, is to wall yourself off, decry your critics as prigs and bullies and make a great many ominous references to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Which is silly, because internet feminists are really not a lot like totalitarian dictators; but if we are I want to know when I’m getting the drone army and the snazzy Hugo Boss outfit.

    It’s easy to criticise call-out culture, especially if the people calling you out are mean and less than merciful. It’s far harder to look into your own heart and ask if you can and should do better. Like almost every other human being, I don’t like it when people shout at me, unless I’m at a punk show and have paid good money to have people shout at me. I’m quite a sensitive bunny. I am mortified by the thought of hurting other people, even by accident. I’ve spent very dark days, following social media pile-ons, convinced that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve to draw breath. I am not afraid of the sexist trolls who send me boring porn gifs on Twitter. I am afraid – frequently legitimately afraid – of letting people down. Of letting my community down. Of making a mistake I can’t move on from. I think everyone with a social conscience and a Facebook profile worries about this.

    There is an enormous difference between being brought to task in public for making mistakes and the ritualised shaming of women, queer people and ethnic minorities online. There is a difference, a difference that critics such as Ronson and Chait are keen to smudge over, between marginalised people clamouring against instances of oppression, and everyday cyberbullying and harassment – what Monica Lewinsky, in her phenomenal Ted talk, calls “public shaming as a blood sport”. The difference is all about power: who has it and who doesn’t.

    A few other nice thoughtful things in that article, which I enjoyed a lot, and could relate to. Probably has a few issues, too, but oh well.

    @__Trail__ @Nettaaaaaaaa @the_blueprint, the ‘I’m not racist but…’ cartoon. Brought out last night for the non-transphobic transphobes.

    Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted coverup exposed

    On July 31st, 2013, Jermaine McBean, an experienced 33 year old computer engineer with no criminal record whatsoever, paid $100 for a camouflage BB gun at his local pawn shop. As he walked to his home with his headphones on, listening to music, he was shot and killed by police in Oakland Park, Florida – after they claimed he ignored their requests to put down his weapon and then aimed the gun, which was empty, at them in an aggressive manner.

    Now, nearly two year later, it turns out the police told multiple lies in attempt to cover up their senseless murder of Jermaine. Below we will expose each of the lies they told.

    The usual disparities between witness statements and some photos and the police narrative.
    The ‘usual disparities’. How is that even a phrase in this context?

    Protesters Were Tased on Sidewalk Before Arrest for “Impeding Traffic,” Video Shows, back in St Louis.

    The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is now investigating whether officers’ taser user in this incident complied with police policies, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

    Original story continues below:

    On Friday night, police said, a peaceful protest ended in eight arrests after activists blocked traffic on a busy downtown street, refused officers’ orders to return to the sidewalk and almost caused multiple car accidents. Two of the protesters resisted arrest, the department claimed, and had to be subdued with a taser.

    But the story may not be quite that simple.

    A disturbing video of some of those Friday night arrests is raising familiar questions about how the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department responds to civil disobedience, the department’s protocols for using tasers and the trustworthiness of its incident reports.

    According to a protester arrested that night, the police-issued narrative ignores the full sequence of events that ended with two people — including a University City school board member — writhing in pain on the ground and charged for resisting arrest.

    “I’ve seen it happen a few times, I’ve seen aggression from them,” says LaShell Eikerenkoetter, a veteran protester who experienced her first arrest four days after the August 9 death of Michael Brown. “But to experience someone being tased next to me? Hearing her scream, and the police showing no concern? That was just something so heartless.”

    About those policies, some tweets on that later.

    Ranting About Feminism: It’s racist for you to ask me to overlook no diversity. And I’m not fucking doing it. An article on Fury Road and it’s whiteness. Women, yes. Women of colour, not so much (people of colour, not so much…). Would be even more awesome.

    I don’t know how many of you guys know about it but this new movie, “Mad Max” just came out and has already reached critical acclaim. I haven’t seen it , but it’s supposed to be this groundbreaking masterpiece and a huge step for feminism. Which is all good and dandy In theory. But on tumblr there’s been a lot of criticism because the ALL white cast (with the minor exception of Zoe Kravitz). One of the most frustrating things about these types of movies and conversations is that there’s ALWAYS these white feminists that want to tell POC that we have to overlook lack of diversity and basically “take one for the team” (the team being feminism/woman). No. I’m not going to do it. It is fucking disrespectful and borderline racist for you, a white person, to tell minority women that we have to ignore not being represented. Since turning 18 and starting to really think about racism and the media, it is especially uncomfortable for me to watch movies and tv shows with NO people of color. This world is mostly non white and it simply doesn’t make sense for our media to not represent it. And as for feminism, this is not the first time this has happened. When Girls came out, minority women were expected to ignore the show having an all white cast because it was written and directed by Lena Dunham. And anyone who dared to not ignore this issue was considered “non progressive”. This is why I don’t identity as feminist. Because this is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable for these huge steps for feminism to not include people of color. And if you’re white and telling people to get over it, you’re a part of the fucking problem.

    It’s a tumblr, weird format, so here’s a response:

    Okay, I don’t want to take away from some really great points you’re making about how white feminism often downplay or outright dismiss the representation of women of color, especially in discussions of mainstream media WOC are often silenced or ignored.

    However, I need to point a few errors that are a common form of microaggression that I see pop up all the time in intersectional discussions of representation, specifically in regard to the recognition of indigenous women of color.

    There are THREE women of color in Mad Max Fury Road. Zoe Kravitz (which you already listed), but also Courtney Eaton and Megan Gale. Eaton and Gale are biracial Maori women. The presence of Polynesian women in this film and a fictional future are incredibly important on multiple levels.

    […]

    Polynesians often are erased, or mistakenly seen as white passing often because White Western culture only teaches how to see black or white, ignoring or wholesale erasing all the many colors in between. One of the really ugly truths behind why so many indigenous people are “white passing” is because of the long legacy of us being raped by white oppressors. Many of us only being valued as “pretty” sexual objects for the enjoyment and consumption of white men.

    There is a BIG difference between being white passing and having your ethnicity erase from mainstream awareness. People, even POC, default code Polynesian women as white because they only SEE the parts of our features that are stereotypically viewed to be “white.”

    I immediately recognizing Fragile and The Valkyrie as women of color, and was deeply moved about how their presence and individual roles in this film reflects the struggles of many indigenous women throughout history and to see them empowered and fighting back against their oppressors made my heart soar.

    Also there ARE other people of color in the film, though by virtue of the dominate culture in the film being literally white male supremacy, the only men of color we see are in the lowest cast of society. Not uncommon in colonialism either, given how white men see MOC as a threat to their power and masculinity.

    My only real complaint about race in this film is the lack of Indigenous Australians in leading roles. There are a few of them crowd shots of the Citadel’s lower class, and at the end of the film we see a disabled Indigenous Australian man become the focus of a full two second shot, acting as the face of the oppressed class as he is quite literally is lifted up to salvation by women of color.

    There are powerful visual moments in this film, that tell not just a story of punching down the patriarchy, but of the dismantling of colonial oppression where indigenous women play key roles in the fight and future of the world.

    So please don’t steal this context from the these women. It is very important to many women of color.

    There’s a couple of other great responses re: biracial people and having colour erased due to passing as white, and the article itself ends with:

    Yeeeah. I saw this post and was like…yes, of course the film needed more non-white people in it. BUT there was definitely more than one non-white person in that cast, and ignoring those people isn’t all that great either.

    So now that Furiosa has smashed the partiarchy she can find some friends and smash colonialism, too – in a movie where she takes the role of Max and her Maori friend takes the lead. Hmm?

    Here’s another re: that movie: are you white?

    I’m not telling you to feel anything about Mad Max Fury Road. I’m telling you how I and other multicultural women of color feel about the movie and the women of color in it. This was meant to make the conversation about the movie more intersectional. Because this is an Australian film featuring multiracial women of color in the cast, it affects us very specifically.

    I also pointed out, quite clearly, how white supremacy is at work in the erasure of WOC and how ignoring/erasing their identities is a microaggression. Much like your comments on the thread and this very message to me.

    You have every right to not like the film, and it’s casting. You don’t have to agree with, or even like me. But don’t come into my space to play identity police because you can’t think of a better way to support your own argument.

    Whether that was your intention or not, it is the impact and I need you to really think before you use this tactic on other women of color, whether you recognize the validity of their identity or not.

    If you’re actually concerned about the representation and elevation of women of color’s voice you might want to stop this microaggressive tactic all together. This question and your dismissive/rude comments on the thread are the exact kind of trash multiracial women of color have to navigate every day of our lives. It would be nice if we could at least not have other WOC using it against us.

    I get it. It would be so much easier for you if I was white. Then you wouldn’t have to actually have to deal with what I said in my post. You could just dismiss it, but that’s the thing about intersectional feminism. You don’t get to define feminism by only your experience, opinions, and needs. It’s about understanding and supporting ALL WOC, even the ones you can’t understand or, apparently, respect.

    Also, check out the first link in that post, under the line ‘I see why you’re asking’.

  317. rq says

    Need that moderation song recorded, ASAP. I needs to go right here. Too much Fury Road there, I suppose.
    Okay.
    Some ways to help practically, and yes, this focus is on Ferguson this comment this time, because.
    If you can help currently homeless #Ferguson protester @jacereely out with a donation, he could really use it!

    http://www.gofundme.com/u595u8?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&utm_content=cta_button&utm_campaign=upd_n …

    Don’t forget that activist @CocoPazzo and family are facing homelessness as well, and desperately need our help! http://www.gofundme.com/pubtw4

    Finally, @ophelporhush [http://operationhelporhush.org/donate ] supports the needs of the ground directly, is always in need of donations. Please follow them & donate when possible!

  318. rq says

    NYPD abusing its power by arresting minorities for ‘manspreading’ and other low-level violations: group, repost?

    Hey neighbor! A ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign on your lawn is an act of solidarity

    St Louis has become a region awash in signs. In the impoverished, majority black north, block after block of houses post signs with a stark message: “We must stop killing each other”.

    In the region’s racially mixed, wealthier center, houses post signs with another message: “Black Lives Matter”.

    Together, the signs tell the story of a region struggling to deal with questions of race and violence in the aftermath of the Ferguson events and a spate of homicides.

    On the blighted city’s Page Boulevard sits Better Family Life, a nonprofit organization whose vice-president of community outreach, James Clark, spearheaded the “We must stop killing each other” campaign.

    “One day I walk into the gas station, and a young man says: ‘With all this crime and violence going on, man, we got to stop killing each other,’” Clark recalls. “Next day, walk into the office, a young man is standing at the front table: ‘Mr Clark, man, my cousin got killed last week. We got to stop killing each other.’ Walk into my office after about an hour, a grandmother calls: ‘Mr Clark, my son didn’t come home last night. We don’t know where he is. We got to stop all this killing.’ For about three days, that message came to me.” […]

    “What these signs have done is establish a narrative,” he says. “It is a narrative that is of course relevant to us in the African American community, but it is also a narrative that can go to police officers – you all must stop killing people. This is a message everyone can reflect on. I’ve got drug dealers and gang members and pastors, the whole spectrum of people, saying: ‘We are with you.’”

    Clark says the demand for the signs is so high his organization cannot produce them fast enough. He sees the grassroots, door-to-door campaign as a public outpouring of frustration by those who have been “systematically shut out”. He says he saw the rise in violence coming since 2005, but no one believed him. I ask what makes people believe him now.

    “The bodies keep dropping,” he answers. “What we have is a new mentality: ‘I will kill’. This is not like the 1990s, when crime was over drugs. Today it comes from disconnected individuals who have no hope, nothing they really value, because no one has valued them.”

    Clark plans to plaster the St Louis region with signs, expanding beyond the black neighborhoods of St Louis into the whiter suburbs.

    “Black Lives Matter is a good campaign,” he says. “It raises public awareness of the biased-ness that exists in America, the inherent racism that discounts black lives. But as an African American, I think that black lives have to matter first in the black community. We can promote that message on parallel tracks.” […]

    “Black Lives Matter” is a national movement, and Senturia is adamant that he and his partners are acting not as leaders but in a support role. The goal of the signs is to create conversation.

    “One of the principal questions people ask is ‘Don’t all lives matter?’” Senturia says. “The answer is that all lives do matter in theory. But in practice, it’s not equal. There is structural racism and it’s important to emphasize that not just white lives matter, black lives matter as well.”

    “Black Lives Matter” signs have been a source of controversy in St Louis. Since January, roughly 1,500 signs have been posted in the region, with coffee shops, churches and bookstores serving as distribution centers. Senturia hopes to ultimately post 5,000 signs, expanding into the wealthier suburbs, which have resisted the campaign. Many signs have been stolen or defaced, and both Senturia and Johnson tell of white people afraid to post them for fear of what their neighbors will think.

    “The fact that people have difficulty putting up the sign – what does that tell you?” Senturia asks. “We’re certainly not post-racial if you can’t put up a sign in the neighborhood without feeling afraid.”

    In an era of heated political conversation, St Louisans are staking their claims on the front yard. To drive through St Louis is to witness parallel communities coping with strife, struggling to find ways to articulate their anger and grief.

    Why Apple Reportedly Wants to Pay Drake $19 Million, musical interlude.

    The tech giant is trying to sign rapper Drake to a $19 million deal to perform as a guest DJ for iTunes Radio, according to the New York Post. Pharrell and David Guetta are also in talks to provide exclusive content to Apple, the Post reports.

    Apple recently picked up BBC Radio host Zane Lowe to work on iTunes Radio. The company is expected to unveil new features for the Internet radio service as well as a Spotify-like on-demand streaming service at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week.

    An Apple spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

    In August, we were trying to convince folks that police violence was a crisis. & now, news agencies are making police violence data sets. News agencies, but it’s a start.

    America cannot lock its poor in debtor’s prisons to fund its police departments

    Whenever the government locks someone in jail, it has a constitutional duty to provide adequate medical care, a responsibility that can’t be evaded simply by contracting it out to a for-profit company. Unfortunately, Mr Staten’s is a familiar story: the ACLU is currently litigating a case in a Mississippi prison that challenges, in part, the dangerously inadequate health care provided by Health Assurance, a private corporation also responsible for Mr Staten’s medical treatment — or lack thereof.

    Mr Staten’s experience is far from unusual. Every day, indigent Americans are ripped from their homes and their communities and forced into jails of varying degrees of dysfunction and decay. The US supreme court ruled three decades ago that it is unconstitutional to imprison people because they cannot afford to pay debts. The ruling, however, hasn’t ended the practice of jailing people for unpaid government fees and fines.

    In 2010, the ACLU found that courts across the nation regularly deny Americans proper consideration of their financial position and throw them into jail over fines they could never hope to pay. As a result, local jails nationwide have transformed into modern-day “debtors’ prisons” overcrowded with indigent people whose only punishable offense is being poor. The effects are devastating.
    Advertisement

    This growing phenomenon funnels poor Americans into the criminal justice system with sentences that disrupt their lives, too often trapping them in a damning cycle of poverty and incarceration that far outlasts their initial conviction. These practices have a disparate impact on communities of color in the United States. […]

    Local courts and municipalities – reliant on fines and fees as a source of revenue – are adopting increasingly aggressive collection practices. This was the case in DeKalb County, where county policymakers enlisted a for-profit company for the specific purpose of targeting those too poor to pay fines on sentencing day. And a report released in March by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that municipal courts in Ferguson, Missouri, prioritized revenue above fair administration of justice and imposed undue burdens on residents living in or near poverty, perpetuating and exacerbating racial and economic inequality in the community.

    Too many Americans are locked away over small debts. At best, they will leave with few resources and diminished job prospects, trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality. At worst, they will suffer and die due to the callous neglect of their jailers, like Mr Staten. Poverty should never be criminalized. Local courts and municipalities must find other sources of revenue that don’t make victims of their most vulnerable citizens.

    And in the WTF file, Today Is a Work Holiday in Alabama to Honor Jefferson Davis, mostly for the photo.

    If you needed to run yonder to Bessemer for that easement to cross Scuzz McWhorter’s field so’s you can dig up all the lead shot what gramma’s blasted out there from the kitchen porch over all these years, let it wait till Tuesday, son: Alabama done went down to the beach in honor of the Confederacy!

    Yes, it is another first Monday in June, which means it is Jefferson Davis Day, Alabama’s official commemoration of the Confederate States’ first and only president. A holiday still celebrated by two thirds of state residents. The only state holiday, in fact, to commemorate ol’ JD. Offices are closed, just like they would be on Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee Day in Alabama! Go home, get grilling, get wet, get stupid, and reflect on the things that matter in life.

    It’s a peculiar holiday, given that Jefferson Davis’ birthday is actually on June 3, and also given that Davis was born in Kentucky, ruled in Virginia, fled through the Carolinas and Georgia, retired in Tennessee, and settled in Mississippi, with only the briefest of layovers in Alabama. And also because Jefferson Davis was the head of a fucking racist tyrannical state whose fucking reason for fucking existing was its fucking insistence on the treatment of enslaved human beings as fucking chattel to enrich fucking people like Jefferson Davis.

    But, you know, it’s June. And it’s nice out! Lay in the recently repainted bed of the ’79 El Camino and soak up the states’ rights.

    Meanwhile, here is an op-ed from the chaplain of the Sons of Confederate Veterans explaining why “Jefferson Davis deserves the respect of Alabamians.” For, you see, Davis was a reluctant secessionist, who went rebel only after “he realized the Northern majority was going to forcibly impose its will on the South.” And he “had to lead a mostly agricultural people in the hasty formation of military forces against an enemy determined to invade and subjugate.” Mostly agricultural in the sense that Davis’ people profited off of agriculture produced by the minorities they subjugated.

    That’s Sons of Confederate Veterans chaplain Barry Cook, honoring secessionist president Jefferson Davis, on the 208th anniversary of his birthday, in the year of our lord Two Thousand and Fifteen. Roll Tide.

    Sounds like a good time, if you want to hang out with some obvious racist people. “It’s just a flag.”

  319. says

    Tim Wise launches #whiteliesmatter campaign:

    Like Chris Rock said not too long ago, white folks need to own their own history. We have to admit it, recognize it and accept it as fact, who we are and all we’ve done – yes, of course the good, as we always have, but we can no longer pretend the bad was never there. We certainly cannot pretend that such a hush-hush past, having never been previously admitted, recognized and accepted, would have remotely worked itself out of our systems enough to the point where we believe it is not affecting our current, modern, everyday lives.

    Enter Tim Wise. He’s been helping white folks reckon with their own privilege for a good 20 years. You can check out his website and learn more about him, here, if you’re not already familiar with his work. You can also see many videos on YouTube of Wise speaking, here.

    Lately, though, the anti-racism activist posted on his website the beginning of what he’s calling the #WhiteLiesMatter campaign. Wise introduces a series of status updates from his Facebook page, writing of the project:

    “The first installments in #WhiteLiesMatter, a hashtag series I intend to post regularly. The series will debunk, with links embedded, various right-wing racist claims about people of color.”

    He’s already launched his opening salvo, which can be seen here.

  320. says

    I had a general knowledge of Tim Wise as an anti-racist activist, but other than that, I didn’t know anything specific. Pity that, because he has a lot to say, and I’m glad he’s saying it. For instance, from his blog’s appreciation and accountability page:

    Statement of Appreciation and Accountability
    Appreciation
    As a white man, trying to be a strong ally to people of color in the struggle against racism — and to free myself from the system of white supremacy that I believe compromises the humanity of us all — I am especially grateful to those mentors and inspirational figures who have played such an important role in my life, and have made my journey thus far possible.
    These include activists and community organizers, educators (both formal and informal), writers, artists, and just average everyday folks. All of them have taught me, guided me, and struggled with me as I have sought to become a more effective advocate for justice, a better writer, a more thorough critic of white supremacy, and someone capable of acting in real solidarity with those who are the targets of systemic injustice every day. Most of those who have taught and inspired me have been folks of color, reaching back to my childhood. Others have been white antiracist allies who I have met along the way. They include persons I am fortunate enough to call my friends, and others whom I’ve never met, but whose writing and work throughout the years have served as a source of strength and insight for me and so many others.
    First and foremost, I wish to thank my dear friends at the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Introduced to the Institute while I was living in New Orleans, it was because of their analytical framework, their personal kindness, their genuine regard for whites struggling to undo white supremacy in ourselves and society, and their never-wavering commitment in the face of injustice, that I came to see the possibilities for real social change. Ron Chisom, Diana Dunn, Barbara Major, Marjorie Freeman and David Billings (and these are just a few of my Institute friends, but they were specifically the persons with whom I had the most contact back in the day), have made an indelible contribution to my life and to my work. As time marches on, and no matter what attention I receive for my contributions to the struggle, I hope that others will always understand that none of us stand on our own in this work. We all stand on the shoulders of others. And without the shoulders of the giants at the People’s Institute, I would hardly be able to stand at all. I only hope that I will do justice to their vision, and that I can honor their work by way of my own.
    I also wish to recognize the example of the brave men and women of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), whose work played such a prominent role in breaking the back of formal apartheid in the United States, and shows us the way forward as we seek to address its less-formal but all too real manifestations today. Growing up in Nashville, one of a few “Ground Zeros” for the birth of the student movement, I have long been inspired and reinvigorated by their efforts. Over the years, I have come to count several former SNCC activists as friends — both folks of color and white allies — and have drawn insights from their words, advice and example.
    Finally, I have to acknowledge the towering literary and analytical contributions of James Baldwin, to my own understanding of racism. Baldwin’s genius, his linguistic elegance, and his crystal clear analysis of how racism and white supremacy compromise the humanity of all persons, white and of color, have proved unmatched by any other writer or commentator before his birth or since his passing. Though a fierce critic of American society, often viewed as bitter by those with less vision, Baldwin was, in fact, fervently of the belief that we could do better, be better, and “achieve our country,” in deed rather than just word. Far from cynical, Baldwin believed in redemption, if not in a next life, certainly in this one. But only if we worked for it, only if we committed to becoming fully human, rather than trapped by our social conditioning and racial categories. I cannot read or re-read Baldwin enough, and I think his words rank among the most important that any aspiring antiracist, white or of color, could possibly digest as we engage in this struggle.
    Accountability
    Thanks to my connections with the People’s Institute, I have long been engaged in a dialogue with others (and with myself, internally), about the concept of antiracist accountability. What does it mean? What does it look like, generally, and for me specifically? How can we/I maximize the extent to which we are accountable to others, especially those who may be impacted, for good or bad, by our work? Though there are no definitive or “right” responses to these questions, they are important to ask, and important to answer, however imperfect or incomplete those answers may be.
    Accountability, in an antiracist context, means engaging in “the work” (whatever that work might be, from organizing to educating to providing some social service, to parenting, as just a few examples) in a way that is responsive to the needs and concerns of people of color, communities of color, and their interest in the eradication of white supremacy. It also means being responsive to the needs and concerns of other whites with whom we may be struggling or working. In all, accountability is about openness, and about “checking in” with others whose insights on your antiracist efforts may be more incisive than your own. It’s about taking constructive criticism seriously, integrating insights provided by others into your own work, and following the lead, direction, and advice of those who have the most to lose from antiracism work done badly: namely, people of color.
    Obviously, accountability can never be perfect. For one thing, there are many different individuals, organizations and communities of color, and they will not always agree as to the direction in which antiracist work should go, let alone how white antiracist allies should engage in the struggle. But by listening to as many different voices as possible on these matters, and by forging real relationship with individuals, organizations and communities of color, it becomes easier to know whose voices are themselves rooted in structures of accountability, and thus, especially important to heed. Accountability should never be an excuse for inaction or paralysis — so, in other words, it is not a matter of vetting every action one takes through a committee of some sort before taking a stand or engaging in antiracist efforts — but it does mean being prepared to acknowledge when you screw up, apologize for mistakes, and commit to doing better next time.
    For me, I have at least two separate lines of accountability to consider. First, as a writer, I feel it necessary to do a few specific things so as to ground my literary efforts in structures of responsiveness. I must write not only “my truth” (which is the first job, and frankly, compulsion, of any writer or artist), but do so in a way that:
    1) Reinforces the words and work of people of color;
    2) Gives credit where credit is due to those persons of color who have, in a given instance, provided key insights made visible in my work;
    3) Steers readers to the works of people of color and encourages them to continually go deeper in their own analysis of racism, and
    4) Is most likely to produce the kind of effect needed to build more allies, rather than provoke greater hostility to antiracist efforts.
    Furthermore, I feel it critical to always leave my writing open to change and re-direction when concerns are raised by persons of color or other white allies, as to the helpfulness, tone, focus, or content of my writing. In the past, for instance, I have made changes in several essays — and indeed, completely re-wrote my first book, White Like Me — to address concerns raised by other antiracist activists and educators about their content.
    As a public speaker and educator, I also strive to be accountable and to root my efforts in structures of responsiveness. First, I listen to the concerns raised by individuals, organizations, and communities of color as to the issues they feel are most pressing, and most in need of being addressed, and seek to make those concerns my own. Second, I then seek accountability to other white allies (and whites generally) by taking those concerns and developing an analysis that can be shared, which examines the flipside of oppression: namely white privilege and how it operates and implicates us in that system.
    Because people of color are understandably focused on combatting racism as a first-order survival issue, it is somewhat impractical to expect educators of color to focus substantially on the ways that white supremacy also injures whites, and surely not to give this the same amount of attention as is given to racism’s impact on people of color. In an attempt to be accountable to persons of color engaged in this struggle, I feel it is my role (and the role of other whites) to speak to this matter, so that people of color can concentrate their antiracist leadership and efforts on those matters that most directly impact them and their communities. In this, I am trying to follow the advice and direction offered to white activists by many persons of color down through the years, from Malcolm X (near the end of his life), to black and brown SNCC activists in the late 1960s, to activists and educators of color whom I meet every week around the country.
    Accountability as a public educator also means promoting the work of organizations led by people of color, and white ally efforts as well. For me, I try and connect whenever possible to grass-roots organizations in the communities to which I travel, and arrange for them to have a presence at my speeches, to promote their work and to speak to those who attend the event about their local efforts.
    As I strive to be increasingly accountable to others in this work, I welcome feedback, insights, advice, criticism and direction from others. I may not always agree with this feedback — and accountability does not require that I do so, nor relinquish my own judgment to the judgment of others — but I will always listen to it, and seek to grow from it.

    Thank you Mr. Wise.

  321. says

    Here he offers some answers to frequently asked question:

    1. How do you define racism?
    As with other “isms” (like capitalism, communism, etc.), racism is both an ideology and a system. As such, I define it in two ways.
    As an ideology, racism is the belief that population groups, defined as distinct “races,” generally possess traits, characteristics or abilities, which distinguish them as either superior or inferior to other groups in certain ways. In short, racism is the belief that a particular race is (or certain races are) superior or inferior to another race or races.
    As a system, racism is an institutional arrangement, maintained by policies, practices and procedures — both formal and informal — in which some persons typically have more or less opportunity than others, and in which such persons receive better or worse treatment than others, because of their respective racial identities. Additionally, institutional racism involves denying persons opportunities, rewards, or various benefits on the basis of race, to which those individuals are otherwise entitled. In short, racism is a system of inequality, based on race.
    2. How is racism different from white supremacy?
    White supremacy is the operationalized form of racism in the United States and throughout the Western world. Racism is like the generic product name, while white supremacy is the leading brand, with far and away the greatest market share. While other forms of racism could exist at various times and in various places, none have ever been as effective and widespread in their impact as white supremacy, nor is it likely that any such systems might develop in the foreseeable future.
    3. Do you think all whites are racist?
    It’s a simplistic question, with a complicated answer. I believe that all people (white or of color) raised in a society where racism has been (and still is) so prevalent, will have internalized elements of racist thinking: certain beliefs, stereotypes, assumptions, and judgments about others and themselves. So in countries where beliefs in European/white superiority and domination have been historically embedded, it is likely that everyone in such places will have ingested some of that conditioning. I think all whites — as the dominant group in the U.S. — have been conditioned to accept white predominance (or what some call hegemony) in the social, political and economic system, and to believe that white predominance is a preferable arrangement for the society in which they live, the neighborhoods in which they live, the places where they work, etc.
    However, this doesn’t mean that all whites, having been conditioned in that way, are committed to the maintenance of white supremacy. One can challenge one’s conditioning. One can be counter-conditioned and taught to believe in equality, and to commit oneself to its achievement. These things take work — and they can never completely eradicate all of the conditioning to which one has been subjected — but they are possible.
    In other words, we can be racist by conditioning, antiracist by choice. That racism is part of who we are does not mean that it’s all of who we are, or that it must be the controlling or dominant part of who we are. By the same token, just because we choose to be antiracist, does not mean that we no longer carry around some of the racism with which we were raised, or to which we were and are exposed.
    4. Do you think people of color can be racist against whites?
    At the ideological level, anyone can be racist because anyone can endorse the kinds of thinking that qualifies as racism, as defined above. At the systemic level, people of color can be racist in theory, but typically not in practice, and certainly not very effectively. Although a person of color in an authority position can discriminate against a white person, this kind of thing rarely happens because, a) such persons are still statistically rare relative to whites in authority, b) in virtually all cases, there are authorities above those people of color who are white, and who would not stand for such actions, and c) even in cases where a person of color sits atop a power structure (as with President Obama), he is not truly free to do anything to oppress or marginalize white people (even were he so inclined), given his own need to attract white support in order to win election or pass any of his policy agenda. Ultimately, there are no institutional structures in the U.S. in which people of color exercise final and controlling authority: not in the school systems, labor market, justice system, housing markets, financial markets, or media. As such, the ability of black and brown folks to oppress white people simply does not exist.
    Having said that, it is certainly true that in other countries, people of color could have power sufficient to discriminate against others, including whites. Although even anti-white bias in those places is somewhat limited by the reality of global economics and the desire for good relations with the West, it is possible for persons of color in those places to mistreat whites individually and, occasionally, collectively (for instance, the treatment of white farmers in Zimbabwe by the Mugabe government). But it is absurd to believe that anti-white racism, practiced by people of color, remotely equates as a social problem to white racism against people of color. While all racism is equally objectionable morally and ethically, they are not practically equivalent by a long shot.

  322. rq says

    Lawsuit: St. Louis Suburb’s Courts Violate Rights of Poor

    A federal lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses a St. Louis suburb of often violating the rights of the poor by jailing them because they can’t pay small amounts of bond money.

    The lawsuit filed Wednesday in St. Louis against 13,000-resident St. Ann alleges that people unable to come up with bail amounts ranging from $150 to $350 frequently have to spend at least three days and frequently a week in jail, constituting a “post-arrest, money-based detention scheme.”

    “The city’s policy has no place in modern American law,” according to the lawsuit pressed by St. Louis-based ArchCity Defenders and Washington-based Equal Justice Under Law on behalf of Kellen Powell, a 33-year-old homeless man arrested May 21 after a suspected traffic stop.

    The lawsuit claims that St. Ann does not release people on their own recognizance or with an unsecured bond. Powell, an indigent man whose part-time job pays him less than $300 a week, has been jailed since his arrest because he has been unable “to buy his freedom” by posting $300 cash bond, according to the lawsuit.

    A message seeking comment was left Thursday with St. Ann’s city administrator, Matt Conley.

    Municipal courts in portions of the St. Louis area have come under increasing scrutiny since a Justice Department investigation that followed last summer’s police shooting death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson concluded that the municipal court system in that largely black suburb was driven by profit often at the expense of minorities.

    Wednesday’s lawsuit alleges that St. Ann, where 70 percent of the residents are white, filed more than 28,000 municipal ordinance violations in 2013 and had more than 14,000 outstanding warrants as of last September or roughly 1.1 per resident.

    The city’s municipal court produces more than $3 million from court costs and fines “as a result of this high-volume policing,” the lawsuit claims.

    “Because of St. Ann’s unusual and illegal policies, it is difficult for the public to obtain accurate details concerning how many impoverished St. Ann arrestees are unable to buy their release each week,” the lawsuit alleges.

    U.S. Census figures show that St. Ann’s median household income from 2009 through 2013 was $35,622, well below Missouri’s $47,380 and the national rate of $53,046.

    Did Fla. Police Lie About Jermaine McBean Not Wearing Earbuds During Fatal Shooting?

    On July 13, 2013, 33-year-old Jermaine McBean had just purchased a BB gun from a Florida store and was headed home when police spotted him. Police say McBean ignored their orders to drop the weapon, so they fired shots, killing the information-technology specialist.

    A nurse on the scene that day says that police stopped her from administering aid to McBean. She also says that she told police she noticed something that may have explained why he didn’t drop the gun: earbuds.

    The nurse, who is not named in the NBC News report about the questions surrounding McBean’s death, took out her cellphone and took a photo of McBean’s body as it lay on the ground. The photo appears to show earbuds still in McBean’s ears.

    The issue: The officer involved in the shooting has testified that the earbuds weren’t in McBean’s ears at the time of the shooting, and records viewed by NBC indicate that the earbuds were found in McBean’s pockets, not in his ears.

    “I was highly upset,” McBean’s mother, Jennifer Young, told the news station when she learned of the photo. “They lied to me. What else have they lied about?”

    An internal investigation conducted by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office concluded that McBean was not wearing his earbuds at the time of the shooting, and McBean’s family was told that his earbuds were found in his pocket at the hospital.

    Broward County Deputy Peter Peraza, the officer who shot and killed McBean, stated during a videotaped interview that McBean “pulled the weapon up over his head and grabbed it and started to turn and point it at us. I felt like my life was threatened. I had that feeling like if I would not go home that day.”

    McBean’s family attorney says the photo proves that police lied. The family has filed a lawsuit alleging that McBean couldn’t have heard the officer’s commands because of the earbuds, and that McBean never held the BB gun in a threatening manner, a belief that is also held by Michael McCarthy, one of three people who called to report that McBean was carrying a gun in the neighborhood. According to McCarthy, McBean was carrying the air rifle across the backs of his shoulders and was resting his arms against it.

    I’m so behind with my tabs, I think half of what I’m psoting is a repost of something I’ve already posted. Apologies, if true.
    <

    Lawsuit Against Two Officers in Tamir Rice Shooting Delayed for 60 Days    . Delay, delay, delay, delay.

    A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit against the two Cleveland police officers involved in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice will be suspended for 60 days.

    Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver, Jr. ruled that civil procedings pertaining to the lawsuit brought by the Rice family against police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback will be put on hold until July 31, at which point the court can decide to maintain the delay or lift it.

    But Oliver also ruled that Loehmann and Garmback must file a response to the suit by June 22.

    Lawyers for Loehmann and Garmback requested in April that the lawsuit be stayed until the criminal investigation comes to a close in order to protect the officers’ Fifth Amendment rights.

    The defendants wish to “answer the complaint and testify at their civil deposition without fear that their answers may be used against them in a separate criminal proceeding, where the stakes are significantly higher and their liberty is directly at risk,” the motion said.

    Part of Tamir Rice lawsuit on hold for 60 days, judge rules. Same story, different source, with video.

    Feds overwhelmingly use sneak and peeks in drug cases, not to fight terrorism – well, they would, wouldn’t they.

    EFF highlights new warrant reporting from the federal government that confirms what we already know: Federal agencies are using powers granted to them to fight “terrorists” against suspected drug dealers.

    Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was adamant Section 213 was needed to protect against terrorism. But the latest government report detailing the numbers of “sneak and peek” warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism. Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.

    Throughout the Patriot Act debate the Department of Justice urged Congress to pass Section 213 because it needed the sneak and peak power to help investigate and prosecute terrorism crimes “without tipping off terrorists.” In 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller continued the same exact talking point, emphasizing sneak and peek warrants were “an invaluable tool in the war on terror and our efforts to combat serious criminal conduct.”

    The figures speak for themselves. Here’s data from 2011, 2012, and 2013. Take a look at the graph above—it tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the corrosive effect of the terror war on our domestic civil liberties.

    Black and brown communities take note: When the feds say they need more power to go after terrorists, they’re coming after you.

    @deray powerful painting showing black woman slaving to sew the American flag. #BlackLivesMatter

    Clint Smith: How to raise a black son in America, as seen before, this time via Afropunk.

  323. rq says

    It’s a pattern of behaviour. William Chapman: unarmed 18-year-old shot dead by officer who killed before

    An unarmed black 18-year-old accused of shoplifting was killed by a police officer in Virginia who had been barred from patrolling city streets for almost three years after fatally shooting another unarmed man.

    William Chapman was shot dead by Stephen Rankin, a white Portsmouth police officer, during a struggle in a Walmart parking lot. Rankin, 35, a US navy veteran trained in martial arts, was once disciplined for posting violent remarks and Nazi images online.
    Stephen Rankin: the military-trained officer who killed two unarmed men
    Rankin shot dead 18-year-old William Chapman at a Walmart last month, four years after he was barred from patrols for killing another citizen. But he is a good fit for a police force that goes to great lengths to attract military men
    Read more

    Chapman’s family likened his death to that of Michael Brown, another unarmed black 18-year-old who was suspected of a theft and shot dead following a struggle with a white officer. Brown’s death last year in Ferguson unleashed nationwide protests.

    But they noted with disappointment that Chapman’s killing in April barely registered among activists and the media. “I feel alone,” said Chapman’s mother, Sallie. “Because my son is gone and because nobody is trying to help me understand why.”

    The Virginia chief medical examiner’s office said in a statement only that the cause of Chapman’s death was “gunshot wounds of face and chest”. Chapman’s mother said his hands were also wounded in the encounter, a claim supported by photographs of his body reviewed by the Guardian. […]

    Police refused to say whether Chapman was actually found to have stolen anything. They will still not confirm it was Rankin who shot him. However, the head of Rankin’s professional association confirmed to the Guardian he was indeed the officer involved.

    Rankin fired twice after Chapman resisted an arrest at the edge of the superstore parking lot on the morning of 22 April and a struggle ensued, according to witnesses. The officer was responding to a complaint by store staff of a “suspected shoplifting”. […]

    Chapman’s death was publicly overshadowed by that of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, three days earlier. He is one of three unarmed black teenagers killed by law enforcement in the US so far this year, according to an ongoing count by the Guardian.

    Brandon Jones, also 18, was killed by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, in March after a struggle when he was caught robbing a grocery store, according to authorities. Earlier that month, Tony Robinson, 19, was shot dead by an officer looking into a disturbance in Madison, Wisconsin. Last month state prosecutors ruled the shooting was justified.
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    Chapman’s cousin, Earl Lewis, welcomed The Counted, the Guardian’s project to monitor all killings by police and law enforcement. He said increased transparency could reduce unnecessary or unjustified fatalities. “Better data would put a check on how some cities and their officers do business,” said Lewis.

    Construction workers who saw the confrontation between Chapman and Rankin told local television reporters that the 18-year-old appeared to break free from an attempt by the officer to handcuff him against a parked car.

    One, Leroy Woodman, told reporters at the scene Chapman was shot because he “took a couple steps towards the cop like he was ready to fight”. A colleague of Woodman’s, Paul Akey, said Chapman “came at” Rankin after the Taser was knocked from Rankin’s hand and the officer stepped back. Akey said he believed Rankin’s actions were justified.

    The Missing Statistics of Criminal Justice, some of which are slowly showing up here and there.

    After Ferguson, a noticeable gap in criminal-justice statistics emerged: the use of lethal force by the police. The federal government compiles a wealth of data on homicides, burglaries, and arson, but no official, reliable tabulation of civilian deaths by law enforcement exists. A partial database kept by the FBI is widely considered to be misleading and inaccurate. (The Washington Post has just released a more expansive total of nearly 400 police killings this year.) “It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police last week, last month, last year,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters in April.

    This raises an obvious question: If the FBI can’t tell how many people were killed by law enforcement last year, what other kinds of criminal-justice data are missing? Statistics are more than just numbers: They focus the attention of politicians, drive the allocation of resources, and define the public debate. Public officials—from city councilors to police commanders to district attorneys—are often evaluated based on how these numbers change during their terms in office. But existing statistical measures only capture part of the overall picture, and the problems that go unmeasured are often also unaddressed. What changes could the data that isn’t currently collected produce if it were gathered?

    In one sense, searching for these statistical gaps is like fishing blindfolded—how can someone know what they don’t know? But some absences are more obvious than others. Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, cited two major gaps. One is the racial demography of arrests and criminal records. An estimated 65 million Americans, or roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population, have a criminal record of some kind. But the racial makeup of those records isn’t fully known. “There are estimates, but with [65 million] people in the FBI criminal record database, we have no systematic knowledge of their demographics,” Western told me.

    There may be many missing statistics from the realm of policing, but even greater gaps lie elsewhere. Thanks to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, police departments might actually be one of the better quantified parts of the criminal-justice system. Prisons also provide a wealth of statistics, which researchers have used to help frame mass incarceration in its historical and demographic content. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics maintains an annual report on the size of the U.S. prison population. The report includes state-by-state demographic statistics like inmate ages, races, crimes committed, and other crucial data for researchers and policymakers.
    ADVERTISING

    But while current prison statistics give a good sense of the size and scale of mass incarceration, they provide little information on conditions inside the vast constellation of American prisons. Perhaps the most glaring gap is solitary confinement. No one knows exactly how many people are currently kept in isolation in American prisons. “There are estimates, but no official count nationwide,” Western said. […]
    risons and police departments may be the most visible parts of the criminal-justice system, but they are not necessarily the most powerful. As judges lost flexibility with the growth of mandatory-minimum sentences during the tough-on-crime era, prosecutors became the most pivotal actors within the criminal-justice process. This rise in influence was matched with a decline in transparency. “Up until the late 1980s and early 1990s, we used to collect more data—not a whole lot of data, but more data—on what prosecutors do,” Gottschalk explained. “[Now] the police are certainly much more accountable than prosecutors are, in terms of the visibility of what they do and the transparency of what they do.”
    ADVERTISEMENT

    One prosecutorial tool with little transparency is plea dealing. In 2013, more than 97 percent of all federal criminal charges that weren’t dismissed or dropped were resolved through plea deals. (State-by-state totals are incomplete or unavailable, but often estimated to be similarly high.) For prosecutors, the benefits are clear: Offenders are punished without expending manpower and resources in lengthy trials. But plea deals are also one of the least-scrutinized parts of the criminal-justice system. “In most cases, that’s a complete black box,” Gottschalk said. “It allows prosecutors to have this enormous power without much transparency to the public.”

    In the absence of reliable statistics, anecdotal evidence often fills the void. This is especially true when studying racial bias in the prosecutorial process. Prosecutors are not required by law to compile data on racial disparities. They also have little incentive to gather and publish it voluntarily, partly because of resource constraints and partly because of its potential negative implications.

    A small number of offices have sought answers nonetheless, often with troubling results. In 2011, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance invited the Vera Institute to examine his office’s internal records for evidence of racial disparities. The institute’s final report found that disparities plagued every step of the process. Among its findings: Black and Hispanic defendants were more likely to be offered plea deals on misdemeanors that included imprisonment than white and Asian defendants. Would similar reviews of prosecutors’ offices nationwide produce similar results?

    Without reliable official statistics, scholars often must gather and compile necessary data themselves. “A few years ago, I was struck at how many police killings of civilians we seemed to be having in Philadelphia,” Gottschalk said as an example. “They would be buried in the newspaper, and I was stunned by how difficult it was to compile that information and compare it to New York and do it on a per-capita basis. It wasn’t readily available.” As a result, criminal-justice researchers often spend more time gathering data than analyzing it.

    This data’s absence shapes the public debate over mass incarceration in the same way that silence between notes of music gives rhythm to a song. Imagine debating the economy without knowing the unemployment rate, or climate change without knowing the sea level, or healthcare reform without knowing the number of uninsured Americans. Legislators and policymakers heavily rely on statistics when crafting public policy. Criminal-justice statistics can also influence judicial rulings, including those by the Supreme Court, with implications for the entire legal system.

    Mic Check Racism

    Join our virtual poetry slam to discuss race-related experiences.

    An upcoming event!

    community. baltimore. (via @byDVNLLN)

    Prosecutors in 2 Md. counties to swap each other’s police-shooting cases. I can’t tell, is htis a good thing?

    The top prosecutors of two Maryland counties are set to announce Monday that they will review fatal shootings by police in each other’s jurisdictions, a swap designed to curb growing concerns that prosecutors are too close to officers in their own counties to handle such cases.

    The agreement between Montgomery and Howard counties, which also covers in-custody deaths, is believed to be the first of its kind in Maryland.

    “If the public is demanding greater independence and transparency, we’re obligated to give them that,” said Montgomery State’s Attorney John McCarthy.

    His approach is one example of how law enforcement agencies nationwide are reacting to public concern over a series of high-profile police shootings in places like Ferguson, Mo., Cleveland and North Charleston, S.C., and to the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a severe injury while in Baltimore police custody.

    [ A look at fatal police shootings so far this year]

    The discussions among authorities and lawmakers include two key questions: whether police agencies should handle investigations into officers from their own agencies and whether prosecutors who work alongside those officers in other cases should be the ones to review their investigations and make the ultimate decisions on charges. […]

    Under the current structures, it’s rare that officers are charged in connection with a fatal shooting. Over a 10-year period, that happened 54 times, according to an analysis published in April by The Washington Post and researchers at Bowling Green State University.

    Changing structures and procedures is hardly simple, particularly given the wide variety of sizes and capabilities among law enforcement agencies.

    If a large police department were to bring in another agency, for instance, would detectives and forensic teams get to the scene in the crucial, opening moments? Would people inclined to doubt police independence see much difference anyway?

    As for prosectors, they don’t universally support swaps like the one arranged by Montgomery and Howard counties. Some worry it would create less accountability, because prosecutors, many of whom are elected, might not be pressed on issues with cases in their own jurisdictions. […]

    Because local prosecutors and police work together every day, “from the outside, there is an assumption they are part of the same family,” said Robinson, a George Mason University criminology professor and former assistant attorney general in Washington.

    “Perception is reality, and we have to deal with the reality,” said Ramsey, the police commissioner in Philadelphia and D.C. police chief from 1998 to 2007.

    Many police agencies are looking to the state of Wisconsin. Last year, it enacted a law mandating that local police departments set up policies by which two investigators, including the lead detective, come in from an outside agency to probe fatal police shootings. Departments have started using the arrangements for nonfatal shootings as well, even though that is not required.

    “We think it’s working very well,” said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, a labor organization for officers that also is involved in policy work.

    For years in Georgia, smaller, rural sheriff’s departments have asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to handle their use-of-force fatalities. A big reason was simple need: The departments don’t have the capabilities.

    Increasingly, though, big local police agencies in and around Atlanta also are calling in the bureau, according to its director, Vernon Keenan. These agencies can do the work, but they want to assure people the probe is independent.

    “There is intense public scrutiny of these investigations,” Keenan said.

    And that is stretching his agency, which now is initiating one or two use-of-force investigations a week. He has 265 investigators across the state, who handle plenty of other cases as well involving civilians — some 300 homicide and death investigations annually. Keenan said he is seeking funding for at least 12 more investigators. […]

    In Maryland, state police investigators probe use-of-force fatalities in smaller counties. But with a limited number of homicide investigators, the agency isn’t set up to do such work for bigger jurisdictions.

    That has local police departments discussing regional task forces. In such an arrangement, one or two detectives from a collection of several jurisdictions would be assigned to a collective unit. If a fatal shooting happened in one of their jurisdictions, investigators from the unit — and not from the jurisdiction of the shooting — would handle or supervise the case.

    “It’s a matter under consideration, absolutely,” said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.

    But setting up such arrangements isn’t easy. There are labor and jurisdictional issues, to say nothing of the question of what agency would handle forensic and ballistics testing — which, in such cases, can be crucial.

    On the ground, some detectives worry that altering structures won’t change perceptions. If people believe officers protect each other in their own departments, the thinking goes, that perception would extend to all police.

    “When the investigative conclusion is the same, the dissenters will say that we’re protecting our brother officers. What then?” said an investigator who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t have permission to discuss policy issues. “The patch makes no difference; they only see the badge.”

    Ramsey, the co-chair of the president’s task force, acknowledges the challenges. He is trying to work through them for his own department in Philadelphia, having opened up discussions with state police in Pennsylvania.

    “It’s not like you can do this overnight,” he said.

    US Police Killed Student Who Was Walking Away, Didn’t Tell Family. A good education won’t protect you.

  324. says

    Watch: complete mayhem in Olympia as swarm of protesters clash with white supremacist group:

    A pro-police gathering of white supremacists in Olympia, Washington turned into a “complete mayhem” on Saturday night as protesters clashed with the group, The Olympian reports.

    “We don’t want violence in this city and some of the demonstrators that turned out on Saturday, both white supremacists and those who were against the white supremacists, seemed to have violence on their mind,” said Laura Wohl with the Olympia Police Department in a press conference.

    The brawl happened during a white supremacists’ gathering to support to the police in the wake of a police shooting that injured two black men.

    Five to ten white supremacists showed up and about 150 protesters gathered at Percival Landing in downtown Olympia about 9 p.m. to counter-protest the gathering, according MYNorthwest. The two groups encountered each other at Fourth Avenue and Adams Street and a fight broke out, said Wohl.

    Before Saturday’s demonstration, members of the white supremacist forum Stormfront had derided “Black Lives Matters” protesters as weak.

    “Their arguments are weak. They have no valid points. They are inarticulate, cowardly, and moronic. They are hypocritical and aimless. We are stronger than they are, even with only half their numbers they were too afraid to act on all their disgusting threats of violence and murder,” a white supremacist organizer wrote. “Stand and be counted, the enemy is broken and useless, our time to retake our homeland is nigh.”

    However, according to a witness who called The Olympian on Sunday, the white supremacists fled afterwards and some protesters chased them down, damaging several white supremacists’ trucks with metal chairs outside a restaurant.

    It was “complete mayhem,” he said.

    An activist who participated in the counter-protest said “all hell broke loose” after they confronted the white supremacists.

    An “older” man moved between the leader of the white supremacists and the counter-protesters in an attempt to stop an outbreak of fighting, only to be punched in the mouth, the activist said in an article posted at olydocuments.

    “The skinhead with the American flag hit a girl that was charging him with the flagstaff. Another girl in black, who was masked up, struck a guy with a golf club she had attached a black flag to. People were exchanging blows everywhere. A brick flew over from the Nazi’s direction. Rocks and bottles were flying both ways and glass could be heard shattering as the bottles impacted,” the activist wrote.

    “About that instant, the Nazis broke and ran, with most the crowd from the protest in hot pursuit.”

    An anonymous source told The Olympian that the white supremacist group was called “volksfront” and they gathered to show support for the Olympia Police Department in the aftermath of the shooting.

    According to witnesses, both protesters and white supremacists carried baseball bats.

    The police controlled traffic during the protest but did not engage the protesters, according to witnesses.

    After the white supremacists eventually left the area, the protesters continued to march around downtown until about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

    The police didn’t make any arrest during the protest, Wohl said.

  325. rq says

    Here’s a look at the St Louis Metropolitan PD taser policy, as related to the tasing of unarmed, non-violent protestors. First, a look at the tasing itself:
    The arrest by @SLMPD of 8 protesters & the tasering of 2 on the sidewalk at Washington/11th on Friday night. Part 1.
    The arrest by @SLMPD of 8 protesters & the tasering of 2 on the sidewalk at Washington/11th on Friday night. Part 2. (youtube video at link)
    The arrest by @SLMPD of 8 protesters & the tasering of 2 on the sidewalk at Washington/11th on Friday night. Part 3. (youtube video at link)

    And then the policy:
    Looks like @SLMPD directly violated their taser policy. Number 8 says tasers should not be aimed at breasts. (Policy attached in tiny print.)
    Also #4 says @SLMPD should yell taser before deploying it. Neither officer ever gives a verbal warning any of the 3x.
    Also #1 seems important given @SLMPD officer ran on the sidewalk with his taser brandished at people just walking.
    mtc

  326. rq says

    Essentially, @SLMPD & @ChiefSLMPD’s argument rests w/ #3 policy item. This is the exact language they’ve been using.

    .@ChiefSLMPD is now saying protesters were “pulling at the officers” during the 1st arrests. Video contradicts that. http://fox2now.com/2015/06/01/questions-raised-over-tazing-of-protesters-in-downtown-st-louis/ …

    A few more interesting things:
    Here’s an interesting comment from a former University City and Hanley Hills police officer, Julia Bowen. Doesn’t much sound like your friendly neighbourhood cop.

    Super interesting. Post-Dispatch appears to have taken down Byers’ story about @SLMPD tasing protesters on Fri night.

    Other news, All Nevada Highway Patrol troopers to wear body cameras, just the first healine in that list. I suppose a good step in some direction that may or may not be backwards by definition.

  327. rq says

    St. Louis Police Turn Stun Guns On Non-Violent Protesters Near Busch Stadium

    On Friday night, police and protesters clashed outside Busch Stadium. A Black Lives Matter demonstration involving a few dozen activists led to eight arrests, two of which included the use of stun guns by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s bike patrol unit, according to police.

    Among those hit was a newly elected school board director from a St. Louis suburb, who said she was stunned more than once.

    During the hours-long protest on the night of a Cardinals game, the activists had walked into traffic on more than one occasion. Police said they were impeding the flow of traffic and were told to move to the sidewalk several times before arrests were made.

    But cellphone video footage shows that stun guns were used on demonstrators who were on the sidewalk at the time.

    St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Sunday that demonstrators were “endangering lives.”

    “The public has a tremendous amount of tolerance, but at some point when people’s lives are put at risk, and that night protesters and the motoring public were put at risk, I think they expect their police department to do something,” Dotson said during a televised interview with the local Fox station.

    Kristine Hendrix, director of the University City, Missouri, school board, posted on Facebook that she was peacefully protesting when she and other activists were “ambushed by the St. Louis PD.”

    A cellphone video shows Hendrix walking along the sidewalk before police used force. The video captures an audible clicking sound followed by Hendrix screaming in distress. An officer then tells Hendrix to put her hands behind her back, to which she responds, “I can’t. It hurts.” […]

    Under the St. Louis police department’s use-of-force policy, a stun gun can be used if an officer reasonably believes he or she will become engaged in a violent encounter. The department said it is conducting an internal investigation into Friday’s incident to “ensure all department policies and procedures were adhered to during the arrests as well as examine the events leading up to the arrests.”

    Bryan Sutter, a 29-year-old freelance photographer, said he was arrested and released after three hours without charges.

    “It was a cowboy action. [St. Louis police] have a history to hang back, and whenever everyone goes home, they make five or six arrests,” Sutter told The Huffington Post.

    According to Sutter, the demonstration was calm. ”It felt like it wasn’t a big enough disturbance to warrant the police’s excessive involvement,” he said.

    More broadly, he fears that police reform will slow down now that much of the national media have moved on to other stories.

    “If this was in March, CNN would’ve been right there. Once the national spotlight [moves] on, it stops the growth and change. This is still an ongoing process. There’s still lots of attention and changes that need to happen,” Sutter said.

    Law enforcement’s use of Tasers and other stun guns has drawn criticism from police critics far beyond St. Louis. In 2012, Amnesty International reported that some 500 Americans died from Tasers from 2001 to early 2012. That same year, an Indiana University Department of Medicine professor published an analysis of stun gun use in which he concluded that the devices can trigger cardiac arrest.

    Yeah, that’s HuffPo on the same story as above.

    15 Black TED Talks You Should Be Watching Right Now

    I’ve gathered up 15 black TED Talks that you should definitely add to your list of videos to watch.
    1. Bryan Stevenson
    2. Yoruba Richen
    3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    4. Michelle Obama
    5. Thandie Newton
    6. Clint Smith
    7. Malcolm London
    8. Leymah Gbowee
    9. Nadine Burke Harris
    10. LZ Granderson
    11. Mellody Hobson
    12. Jamila Lyiscott
    13. Reggie Watts
    14. Richard Turere
    15. Sarah Lewis

    All videos available at the link, a nice mix of men and women (can’t speak to any other diversity, myself – oh, except they’re all black, where’s the white people at? :P).

    Protest in New York:
    .@elsajustelsa talking about why #PeoplesMonday is talking about #LGBTQ victims of cop violence! #BlackLivesMatter
    #PeoplesMonday ending with some Assata as usual! #BlackLivesMatter #GrandCentral #NYC
    #PeoplesMonday in the #GrandCentral cafe giving the facts on #MyaHall! #BlackLivesMatter #TransLivesMatter #NYC
    #PeoplesMonday marching thru #GrandCentral #NYC chanting shut it down! #BlackLivesMatter

  328. rq says

    Some thoughts on activism, protesting, people and organizations:
    “You must be in an org to accomplish…” Eh. Halt. People power is what grabbed these “orgs” attention in August.
    So much so, these orgs wouldn’t stop showing up to take over and lay claim to what the power of people resisting the status quo, started.
    But no, instead of talking true facts, these same “orgs or nothing else” folk just talk all around what it is that they want.
    What good is the org if it’s so separated from what the actual PEOPLE are doing? But you want to monitor/approve everything first.
    There are many roads to liberation, and we all don’t have to take the same one.
    As she is someone who started out as one of those people in the streets and is now a member of an organization, I value and appreciate Johnetta Elzie’s perspective on this. And as a side note, DeRay, from whom I get probably the majority (if not the vast majority) of my information, is not a member of any organization. Just him and his vest.

    And here’s a stunner, possible good news, the future will tell: 23 Wellston officers turn in badges as department disbands

    The Wellston Police Department is no more after being disbanded, a move that caught many in the community by surprise.

    Twenty-three Wellston police officers found out Monday was their last day on the force. Locks were changed and officers were asked to hand over their guns and badges.

    Police services in the community will now be handled by Vinita Park, part of what’s being called the “North County Policing Cooperative.” An official announcement is expected at noon Tuesday by Wellston Mayor Nate Griffin.

    Wellston Police Chief G.T. Walker will still have a job in this new cooperative. He attempted to reassure residents about the quality of service at a meeting Monday evening. Meanwhile, Vinita Park Police Chief Tim Swope said his officers began patrolling Wellston that night.

    Wellston’s police department has been struggling for some time. There have been conflicts in recent between the police department and the city council here, thanks in part to run-ins with the son of a city council member.

    A report last month said Wellston couldn’t even afford to provide officers with guns. In July 2014, news broke that the City of Wellston owed nearly $11,000 to a local gas station for filling up police cruisers.

    In addition to Vinita Park, Vinita Terrace will also be part of the new policing cooperative – but that might not be the end of it.

    Swope said plans are being discussed for his officers to take over policing in another community as well.

    And what about the now former officers of the Wellston Police Department? Chief Swope said those officers will be able to apply with Vinita Park.

    So maybe Vinita Park will have a bloated force, but who knows? With one force for a slightly larger population, things might work a bit better… who knows?

  329. rq says

    Right. Stephen Rankin: the military-trained officer who killed two unarmed men

    Before Officer Stephen Rankin fatally shot 18-year-old William Chapman, when an autopsy found the first unarmed man he killed was shot 11 times, residents of this city in southern Virginia voiced their dismay on the website of a local newspaper.

    “Talk to the men and women in our armed forces who face people with weapons every day,” wrote one. “You don’t use deadly force against unarmed citizens – ever.”

    One commenter, however, stood out for his combative endorsement of Rankin’s actions during the April 2011 encounter with Kirill Denyakin, a 26-year-old Kazakhstani cook.

    “What’s the difference if it was one round or 11 rounds or 111 rounds?” he wrote, using the screen name ‘yourealythinkthat’. “When I was in Iraq, that would have been a good shoot,” he said later. “In fact, nobody would have really given it a second thought.”

    Speaking under oath six months and 246 supportive comments later, Rankin, a US navy veteran, admitted that ‘yourealythinkthat’ was him. […]

    Rankin’s use of a pseudonym online was understandable. He was chided by police chiefs when he publicly referred on Facebook to his firearms case as “Rankin’s box of vengeance” and said it “would be better if i was dirtying them instead of cleaning them!”

    For a while, his Facebook avatar was a screen print of a photograph depicting a Serb left hanging from a lamp post by invading Nazi forces in 1943.

    Despite being cleared in the courts, Rankin was barred by chiefs from returning to patrols for three years. One day short of the four-year anniversary of Denyakin’s shooting, he would shoot dead Chapman, an unarmed black teenager suspected of shoplifting, following a struggle in the parking lot of a Walmart superstore. He has now been returned to administrative leave. […]

    Chiefs go to great lengths to catch the eye of active young men looking for their next career after demobilising from the military. A recruitment video used by the department features a team of officers in military-style uniforms staging a Swat raid on the house of a robbery suspect. A sniper in bush camouflage lies in wait ready to take out escapees.

    Rankin arrived in Virginia after his own stint in the navy, where he had previously been stationed in Everett, Washington, and worked as a master-at-arms responsible for security. He left in 2007 as a petty-officer second class.

    It was in the military that Rankin received his law enforcement training, during an intensive six-week course at the US naval base in Kings Bay, Georgia.

    Rankin told attorneys during questioning in 2012 that he was deployed to Ash Shuaybah, Kuwait, where the US base Camp Spearhead served as a staging post for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. After five years of service, he joined the Portsmouth police department in August 2007. […]

    Rankin’s resume states that in 2005 he received a grey belt in the program, which trains US marines, and other naval officers working alongside them, in hand-to-hand combat. To earn the grey belt, officers must be proficient in a range of fighting techniques intended to “stun the aggressor” and “stop an aggressor’s attack”.

    Among these techniques are chokeholds designed to render an aggressor unconscious, hip throws to fell them, along with chin jabs, karate chops, elbow strikes, knee strikes, axe stomps and a series of different kicks.

    Through the professional association that represents him and 4,000 other police officers in Virginia, attorneys for Rankin did not respond to a request for comment.

    His time in Iraq makes me think he may have some unresolved PTSD type issues himself, but honestly? No excuse, and without treatment, he shouldn’t have gone into policing, not with that attitude.
    Also, I’ll have a look at that recruiting video, end of this comment, as a thought with which to leave you until tomorrow.

    In the meantime, South African students head for the United States on the Community College Initiative Program!

    The Community College Initiative (CCI) Program aims to foster mutual understanding between the citizens of the United States and the citizens of participating CCI countries, including South Africa. The CCI Program provides participants with a non-degree, academic-year program at a U.S. community college designed to build participants’ technical skills in applied fields, enhance their leadership capabilities, and strengthen their English language proficiency. The program also provides opportunities for professional internships, service learning, and community engagement. The CCI Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State.

    After completing the program, participants will return to their homes with new skills and expertise to help them contribute to the economic growth and development of South Africa. Participants will not earn a degree, but may earn an academic certificate in their field of study and gain first-hand practical experience through internships.

    We congratulate them on their selection and wish them an exciting and productive academic year.

    Let’s hope none of them gets shot by police.

    Washington County Sheriff’s Office buys $68K in riot gear. But but but why?

    The sheriff’s office was among numerous law enforcement agencies that sent officers to Baltimore during the riots following the death in April of Freddie Gray after suffering an injury while in police custody.

    The $68,000 purchase includes riot shields, gas masks, helmets and tear gas canister launchers

    The purchase was made as an emergency procurement under county law.

    Hagerstown, the county seat of Washington County, is about 70 miles from Baltimore.

    At least it’s only a few thousand and no vehicles and guns. Eh. Right?

    Residents react to statistics of police stopping 75 percent more blacks than whites.

    New statistics released Monday by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster showed that African-American drivers were 75 percent more likely than caucasian drivers to be stopped by police while driving on Missouri roads.

    “No, it’s not surprising,” said Shontelle Worthy. “There are certain cities you don’t go in, like maybe Maryland Heights or St. Ann, St. John, Breckenridge, out that way.”

    The statistics show a steep increase from those in 2001, which show African-American drivers were stopped 31 percent more than white drivers within the state.

    None of the St. Louis area residents News 4 spoke with were surprised by the statistics. Some said they had first-hand experience of being pulled over allegedly on their skin color alone.

    “I’ve had that experience of being completely innocent but pulled over by an officer unjustifiably, so I can relate to it,” said Dramon Foster, a defense attorney. “I was basically riding my bike while in college, I was a Wash U student, and I was pulled over by a police officer.”

    The St. Louis County municipality with the worst record is Ladue, where African-Americans are more than 16 times more likely to be pulled over. The statistics are less drastic in St. Louis City, where black drivers are slightly more than twice as likely to be pulled over.

    “I would like to see St. Louis County pick up part of the money for the municipalities, put it under St. Louis County and let’s make a difference,” said President Esther Haywood of the St. Louis County NAACP.

    In Koster’s report, he said that while the increase in racial disparity in traffic stops is striking, the statistics do not prove law enforcement officers are making stops based on the race or ethnicity of the driver.

    Gotta love that last paragraph. Doesn’t have to be racist by intention to have racist effects, people. Intent ain’t magic.

    Traffic enforcement report: Black drivers in Missouri still stopped at higher rate, the Post-Dispatch on the same.

    Last year, the rate at which African-Americans were stopped on Missouri roads relative to their share of the population was the highest it has been since the state began collecting data in 2000.

    According to the annual report released Monday by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster’s office, black drivers were 75 percent more likely than white drivers to be stopped. That gap is up from 2013 and well above the 31 percent recorded in 2000.

    In a statement, the office notes that the data do not provide a single explanation for the disparity.

    “While statistical disproportion does not prove that law enforcement officers are making vehicle stops based on the perceived race or ethnicity of the driver,” Koster’s office wrote, “this compilation and analysis of data provides law enforcement, legislators, and the public a starting point as they consider improvements to process and changes to policy to address these issues.”

    Police agencies are required to submit annual traffic stop statistics. For each, Koster’s office calculates a “disparity index” comparing the race of drivers stopped to the race of driving-age residents of that jurisdiction. A 1.0 would mean they were in sync.

    But interpreting the data is not that simple. The racial makeup of drivers may not match the community, given that some jurisdictions have busy highways or attract shoppers or workers from elsewhere. The census population data used are from 2010. And an officer may not know a driver’s race until after the stop.

    A footnote in the St. Louis County police report says that its officers were aware of the driver’s race before the stop only 12 percent of the time.

    But statewide, the disparity for blacks has gradually risen. They accounted for about 10.9 percent of the driving-age population last year but about 18.1 percent of the stops.

    “These findings continue a disturbing trend for African-American drivers in Missouri,” the report says. “The disparity index for African-American drivers has increased steadily over the last fifteen years, with only slight, temporary drops” on three occasions.

    And I promised a recruitment video, and by all the non-existent gods, you will get a recruitment video. Remember, this is for the police, not the army… and I seem to have lost the video, so no, you will not get a recruitment video, but here’s some pictures from it: Scenes from a recruitment vid for the police dept in VA, whose officer killed two unarmed men.

    Good night!

  330. rq says

    Leaked Video of a North Carolina Police Shooting Shows the Side of Policing We Rarely See

    Disturbing footage has leaked of a police-involved shooting from Fayetteville, North Carolina, raising questions about police self-reporting and use of lethal force in that department.

    On the night of January 24, 2013, Officer Aaron Hunt shot and killed 22-year-old Nijza Lamar Hagans during a traffic stop, but the Fayetteville police department has refused to publicly release the footage from the officer’s dashboard camera, with the city’s attorney citing “ethical implications which can easily be avoided.”

    Officer Hunt was cleared of any wrongdoing by Cumberland County district attorney Billy West shortly after the shooting. But the video — provided to Mic via the Intercept, which received it exclusively from an anonymous source — raises serious concerns about police-involved violence and the lack of transparency in how such incidents are filed and reported by officers.

    The footage appears to show Hagans quickly exiting a Ford Explorer while Hunt is talking with him.

    Hunt then draws his gun and shoots at Hagans several times at point-blank range. At this point, Hagans appears to drop something. The incident report states he had a .380 caliber pistol in his pocket, which he allegedly tried to draw on Officer Hunt and was later recovered underneath his dead body, according to the Intercept’s review.

    What happens next is especially troubling: As Hagans runs away, Hunt fires two more rounds into his back, at which point Hagans collapses and appears not to move anymore. Within minutes, at least 10 more police officers have gathered at the scene, none of whom attempt to give Hagans medical attention.

    The rest of the video features recorded audio of Hunt verbally recounting the incident to a police official.

    Hunt’s and Fayetteville’s history: A lawsuit filed by Hagans’ family states Hunt has a history of using excessive force against the citizens of Fayetteville. It cites multiple complaints filed claiming he used not only his hands but “at least one of his police-issued weapons” to assault people, according to the Intercept.

    More broadly, the Department of Justice is investigating the Fayetteville police department — at Fayetteville Police Chief Harold Medlock’s request — concerning its use of force policies, practices and training.

    A recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also found that Fayetteville police disproportionately targeted black residents for traffic stops and searches between 2002 and 2013, with black drivers being stopped at a rate 81% higher than whites. This disparity became such a heated topic in 2012 that City Manager Dale Iman resigned over it. According to the Intercept, Chief Medlock has achieved “mixed results” in his attempts to rectify the problem, with much of the disparity still persisting.

    Fayetteville is 40.8% white and 39.9% black.

    See, I know the video is supposed to show something rare and exceptional and all, but… as horrid as it is? It’s not a side of policing we ‘rarely see’ anymore. False advertising, website!
    I’m just sad to know there’s another name. And note the history of a pattern of abusing authority on the part of the police officer.

    How Do You Define a Gang Member?

    In California, gang enhancements became law in the late 1980s, at a time when chaos and violence in some of the state’s cities had reached alarming levels. The center of the crisis was Los Angeles, where there were more than 800 homicides in 1987. There were multiple reasons behind this explosion of violence — the crack epidemic, the broad decline of the inner-city economy, waves of new immigration — but much of the killing was gang-related: foot soldiers in asinine turf battles shooting one another for revenge and sport. By some estimates, there were as many as 45,000 Latino and 25,000 black gang members in Los Angeles County in 1988. That year, a gang shooting near Westwood Village, an affluent, mostly white neighborhood, left a 27-year-old graphic designer dead from a stray bullet. The violence had spilled out of the ethnic enclaves where gangs thrived, and the public demanded action.

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    The State Legislature responded with the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Protection Act (STEP Act), Statute 186.22 of the penal code, which, for the first time, legally defined “gang” in the state of California: a formal or informal group of three or more, sharing a common identifying name, symbol or sign, and whose primary activity is crime. The law augments a prison sentence, adding anywhere from two years to life, depending on the severity of the underlying conviction. The Los Angeles County district attorney at the time, Ira Reiner, whose office helped draft the law, said it would help “to rid the streets of hoodlums that are terrorizing and killing our citizens.” Similar laws are now in place in 31 states across the country.

    In Modesto, the vast majority of documented gang members are Latino, and most of them affiliate, however loosely, with either Sureños, from Southern California, or Norteños, from the northern part of the state. The line dividing the two groups is imaginary and constantly in flux. Each group has its own symbols (the number 13 for Sureños, 14 for Norteños, both often represented as Roman numerals) and colors (blue for Sureños, red for Norteños) and even their own strain of gangster rap (indistinguishable to the untrained ear, save the different metaphorical targets in the graphically violent lyrics). At the Sebourn trial, Brennan showed the jury and his witness, Robert Gumm, a Modesto Police Department detective, image after image of Sebourn’s extended network of friends, photos of young men and women throwing up signs for the number 13, contorting their fingers into crooked forms of the letters CLS, for Celeste Locos Sureños, Sebourn’s clique from the neighborhood near Celeste Street, on the east side of Modesto. Most of the pictures had been taken from the defendants’ cellphones, as well as from their Facebook pages. The jury saw photos of tattoos, of young men drinking 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, scowling at the camera. It was a gangbanger’s photo album, or at least that was what this curated selection of images appeared to be. And though Sebourn himself was in only a couple, Brennan argued that he was known to these young people, as they were known to him. It was guilt by association. And it was very convincing. That rainy morning in Modesto, I had two contradictory thoughts at once: This doesn’t seem fair; and These knuckleheads sure look like gang members.

    In Stanislaus County, as in many counties in California and across the United States, law-enforcement officers keep a database of individuals that they have identified as gang members. From their point of view, these lists are vital and necessary, but activists argue that they can be discriminatory. Researchers have found that white gang membership tends to be underestimated and undercounted, while the opposite is true for black and Latino youth. In 1997, California created a statewide database, called CalGang, and by 2012, according to documents obtained by the Youth Justice Coalition, there were more than 200,000 individuals named in it (roughly the same number as the population of Modesto), including some as young as 10. Statewide, 66 percent were Latino, and one in 10 of all African-Americans in Los Angeles County between the ages of 20 and 24 were on the list.

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    When the STEP Act became law, there were dissenting voices, some of them unsurprising, like the American Civil Liberties Union. But there were others you might not expect: Among law-enforcement authorities, for example, there were concerns that the STEP Act could be applied too broadly. Wes McBride, a retired sergeant of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the executive director of the California Gang Investigators Association, told me that although he has come to see the law as valuable, he was initially skeptical. “We thought the original writing of that bill was bad,” he said. “It made being a gang member a crime, and that flies in the face of the Constitution, in my mind. What’s to stop the Boy Scouts from being considered a gang?” Shortly after the STEP Act went into effect, The Los Angeles Times quoted an anonymous law-enforcement official expressing concern: “I realize that we have to do something, but when you have carte blanche, it’s difficult not to abuse it.”

    A quarter of a century later, this point is still being raised. Manohar Raju, a lawyer who manages the felony unit at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told me he has seen prosecutors’ use of gang enhancements go up in recent years. Young men and women are bundled into the broad category of “gang member” all the time, based on photos like the ones shown at Sebourn’s trial; based on their wearing this color or that one; based, essentially, on a misunderstanding of how difficult these neighborhoods really are for youth. “Posing in a picture, acting cool or acting tough can be a navigation strategy,” Raju said. “That may not mean they want problems; in fact, it may mean the opposite.”

    According to Raju, weak cases can seem stronger when prosecutors introduce gang enhancements. Instead of concrete evidence related to the criminal charge, gang allegations permit prosecutors to introduce potentially inflammatory information that might otherwise be legally irrelevant. “Now we’re looking at: what did some other person do six months earlier or six years earlier,” Raju said. “Your client may not have anything to do with them, but they both have some connection to some name or symbol.” In other cases, the very threat of the gang enhancement can often be enough to persuade a defendant to accept a plea bargain. Given the lengthy sentences that can result, a trial might not be worth the risk.

    Roughly 7 percent of California’s prison population, around 115,000 people, is serving extra time because of gang enhancements; given that the state has been ordered by the Supreme Court to reduce its prison overcrowding, this is hardly an insignificant figure. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, nearly half of those convicted with gang enhancements are serving an additional 10 years or more. Black and Latino inmates account for more than 90 percent of inmates with gang enhancements; fewer than 3 percent are white.

    But long before an accused gang member arrives in prison, the drama plays out in the streets, in daily interactions between young men and police officers, and then later, in courtrooms like the one in which Jesse Sebourn and his co-defendants were standing trial. At the heart of it all is a question: Are people to be held responsible for their actions or for whom they are perceived to be? […]

    One afternoon last December, De La Cruz and I were driving down San Joaquin Avenue in Stockton, where he lives, chatting about his work, when he spotted a teenager turning onto the avenue, just a block ahead of us. He walked with slumped shoulders and looked vaguely Latino.

    “So what about him?” De La Cruz asked. “Is he a gang member?”

    I narrowed my gaze. The young man wore a baseball cap, baggy beige jeans and a matching oversize beige jacket. He was carrying a bag of chips in one hand and a plastic soda bottle in the other. There was, quite obviously, no way to tell.

    “Let’s go ask him,” De La Cruz said, and drove up alongside the young man. He pulled his car over, rolled down the window and called out in his booming voice, “Hey, homie, come here!” It was a command.

    De La Cruz left the engine running and got out. I did, too. “Check it out,” De La Cruz said, nodding at me. “My friend right here is writing for The New York Times. He wants to know if you’re in a gang.”

    To my surprise, the young man seemed not put off or even offended, as I would have expected, but amused by the whole line of questioning. He had a dot tattooed by his right eye (something a police officer would certainly have noted as a potential gang symbol) and a tattoo in cursive lettering just below his neck. The strap of his white undershirt ran over it, making it difficult to read. He wore a blue plastic crucifix hanging to the middle of his stomach. If we had been the police, and this interaction had been a field interview, these details could have been noted as signifiers of gang affiliation.

    The young man told us he wasn’t in a gang, though he said he had been documented by the local police. This means that somewhere in the files of the Stockton Police Department, where a list of active gang members is kept, his name appears. But this alone doesn’t necessarily answer the question. Maybe if we followed him home and met his friends and his family, we would have a definitive answer. Maybe if we checked his Facebook page or his cellphone, we would know. He said he wore baggy clothes because he liked the style. “This is how people in my neighborhood dress,” he said. I might have said the exact same thing at his age, but I grew up in entirely different circumstances, and no one ever would have thought to ask me.

    We switched to Spanish and chatted casually for a few minutes about police harassment, about work (he didn’t have a job). Then we shook hands. De La Cruz nodded at me, and we got back in the car. We hadn’t driven very far before he admitted the kid might have been lying. Maybe he was in a gang, maybe he wasn’t. You couldn’t tell from such a brief interaction, any more than you could tell from a block away.

    “But,” De La Cruz said, “the police do that all the time.”

    More at the link, incl. on how the defense then, in addition to the charges as such, must work to counter the gang enhancement, which, actually, seems a huge invasion of privacy. But then trials often are. Still.

    2013 Median household net worth: Whites $141,900 Hispanics $13,700 Blacks $11,000, source at the link.

    New Fine Schedule for FergusonPD. Lady did not want to take it down & make copies. Stared at her till she did. Crazy.

    Spokane Police have arrested former Pasco Police Officer Richard Aguirre for the 1986 murder of Ruby Doss. @KREM2

    And it appears that the @Guardian has updated its infographics to accurately represent race/police violence. There was some worry that they weren’t taking demographic proportions into account.

  331. rq says

    So that was good morning.
    I haven’t checked twitter updates yet, so here’s a few thoughts from Shaun King on the Tamir Rice case, where there seems to be anticipation in terms of some new announcement re: progress and the case as such.
    So un- or substantiated, something to think about:
    I am told, again, that the investigation into the murder of Tamir Rice is over. It’s been over. Cleveland is officially stalling the release;
    I am told that the two high ranking members of the Cleveland & Cuyahoga County government are stalling the release of the Tamir decision.
    I spoke to a member of the Cleveland Prosecutors Office who told me he’s never seen officers less willing to talk than the @CLEpolice
    I was told by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s office that @ArmondBudish has repeatedly slowed down the investigation of Tamir’s murder.
    The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s office told me that newly elected officials who started in January are “scared shitless” of Tamir’s case.
    But if you ignore it, it will go away?

  332. rq says

    AH, here:
    The @Guardian race analysis of police violence is misleading in that its infographics do not address demographic proportions.
    The @Guardian’s reporting on police violence has been so solid which makes their misleading infographics re: race so odd and confusing.
    But as you can see above, they fixed that.

    OMG. The @afropunk lineup is LEGENDARY. Line-up for the Afropunk Fest… no dates on that poster, though. :(

    1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police

    America’s law enforcement officers have shot and killed upwards of 385 people so far this year, according to a new Washington Post investigation. That’s a rate of about 1 every 9 hours, or 2.5 shootings per day. That’s a lot compared to other countries — cops in Germany killed only 8 people in 2013-2014, for instance. British police didn’t kill anyone last year.

    Through June 1, there have been 5,099 gun deaths in the U.S., according to up-to-date numbers maintained by the Gun Violence Archive. Based on the 385 figure, that means that American police are responsible for about 1 in every 13 non-suicide gun deaths in the country, or 8 percent.

    Many of these killings are undoubtedly justifiable acts of self-defense. The Post database shows that 317 of the police shooting victims were carrying guns or other weapons at the time of their death. On the other hand, that leaves 62 police shootings where the victim didn’t have any weapon at all, and another six where the presence of a victim’s weapon is still unknown.

    It’s also important to note that police shootings are just a subset of all police-involved deaths, which can include deaths by taser or vehicle, or the deaths of suspects in police custody.

    A Guardian database of those deaths puts the total police-involved killing number at 464 for the year so far. If that rate holds, it would add up to over 1,100 police-involved killings for the calendar year. That’s more than the number of people who die in the U.S. annually from spider bites, snake bites, lightning, dog bites, floods, storms, boating accidents and airplane accidents — combined.

    Important point, that – this data on police shootings leaves deaths like those of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray outside of the statistics. Keep that in mind.

    Unarmed black teen. William Chapman, killed by officer who just came off suspension for killing

    On April 22, the Portsmouth, Virginia, Police Department claimed that 18-year-old William Chapman was suspected of shoplifting from a local Walmart. Completely unarmed, he was shot in the face and killed by an officer with a record so heinous that it is criminal he was ever allowed on the force in the first place.

    In a powerful report written by Jon Swaine of The Guardian, it’s made abundantly clear that Chapman’s mother has not only been stonewalled for answers, the local Walmart actually called the police on her when she came to the store days later to ask exactly what they are claiming her son stole. They wouldn’t give her any answers either.

    The officer who killed Chapman is Stephen Rankin, who had been suspended from street patrol for nearly three years after he killed another unarmed man.

    Chiefs only allowed Rankin to return to front line policing in March last year, almost three years after he killed an unarmed 26-year-old Kazakhstani immigrant in February 2011. Rankin was later found to have insulted the man and his family in other online postings.

    A sergeant in the department at the time told the Guardian that senior commanders were formally warned by one of Rankin’s supervisors weeks before his first fatal shooting that he was “dangerous” and likely to cause someone harm.

    Asked twice during a telephone interview why Rankin had been allowed to continue policing the public, Portsmouth police chief Edward Hargis repeated: “That’s a personnel matter and I can’t comment.” He added: “I’m not going to comment on what people may say, allegation-wise.”

    In addition to this suspension and warnings from his superiors that he was likely to cause harm, Rankin had also been suspended for posting Nazi-inspired images and messages online. How can anyone with such a record be allowed to be in public service?

    And here’s a bill, with no date on it, but maybe someone knows what 114th Congress 1st Session means, on To require States to report to the Attorney General certain information regarding shooting incidents involving law enforcement officers, and for
    other purposes.     Presented by a Mrs Boxer on behalf of herself and a Mr Booker.

  333. rq says

    #STL Public Safety Costs: @SLMPD – $149M @STLFireDept – $59M Corrections/MSI – $16.3M Justice Center – $23M
    Pension Costs this Year: Police Dept – $27M Fire Dept (FRS) – $0 Fire Dept (FRP) – $6.7M City Employees – $13.5M

    @AntonioFrench asking hard questions to the @SLMPD on where the extra 700 thousands is needed, can’t get a clear answer from #SLMPD

    The gap between how often white and black drivers get stopped by police in Missouri got even larger last year,

    One key point stood out: In Ferguson, and across the state of Missouri, black drivers were more likely to be stopped by police than white drivers. Traffic stops in Ferguson that ended with arrests also overwhelmingly involved black drivers. These stops played a big role in the Justice Department’s scathing report on Ferguson’s police department and court system, as they were criticized for being one of the ways African Americans experienced a “disparate impact” of the city’s law enforcement activities.

    “Everybody in this city has been a victim of DWB [driving while black],” as Anthony Ross, a resident, said amid the first week of protests.

    The state’s attorney general issues a report each year that gives a name to the gulf between how often white drivers and African-American drivers are stopped: the “disparity index.” This measurement shows how often, say, black people are stopped relative to their share of the population that is old enough to drive. A figure of “1” shows that it is perfectly in proportion, while anything higher says the group is stopped more often than what is expected.

    Things have only gotten worse for Missouri’s black drivers, according to the newest report, which was released Monday. In 2014, black drivers were 75 percent more likely than white drivers to get stopped in the state, a number that has only gone up over the years.

    “These findings continue a disturbing trend for African-American drivers in Missouri,” Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in an analysis accompanying the report’s release

    The disparity rate for black drivers last year was 1.66, significantly higher than the 1.27 figure found in 2000, the year Missouri began collecting this data. White drivers were actually under-represented, with a disparity figure of .95, while Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and other drivers also logged figures lower than 1. […]

    Black drivers and Hispanic drivers were also more likely than white drivers to be searched while stopped, according to the report, even though contraband was found on more white drivers (26.9 percent of those searched) than black (21.4 percent) or Hispanic (19.5) drivers.

    A little under 5 percent of the vehicle stops in Missouri ended with an arrest last year. About 4.1 percent of stops involving white drivers ended with an arrest, while 7.9 percent of stops involving black drivers and 8.2 percent of those involving Hispanic drivers ended this way.

    Man Watched By Joint Terrorism Task Force Shot, Killed By Officers

    A man under surveillance by the joint terrorism task force was shot and killed by law enforcement officers in Roslindale Tuesday morning.

    Boston Police commissioner Bill Evans told reporters Boston police and the FBI were watching the man around 7 a.m. near the CVS in the Stony Brook Plaza on Washington Street when they confronted him to speak with him.

    At that point, Evans said, the man, later identified as Usaama Rahim, pulled out a “military-style knife.”

    The commissioner said officers gave Rahim several commands to put the knife down and when he came closer to them, both Boston Police and an FBI agent fired their weapons. A witness told WBZ-TV at least three shots were heard.

    Rahim was shot and wounded. He was rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he died.

    He was said to be in his 20’s and, according to investigators, had been under the surveillance by the joint terrorism task force for the last several weeks.

    Evans would not say why Rahim was being watched.

    Accounts differ: Shot three times in the back sounds very different from the @bostonpolice story. Brother of police shooting victim:
    Hopefully some of this will be cleared up later this morning.

  334. rq says

    Star student killed by California police ‘was going to change the world’: sister

    Feras Morad had no criminal record, did not carry a weapon, and, until last Wednesday, never had any encounter with police, his sister told the Guardian on Monday.

    “He was so smart and beautiful. He had so much potential. I know he was going to change the world,” his sister Ghada, 16, said.

    On the evening of 27 May Morad took hallucinogenic mushrooms – his first time experimenting with drugs, according to Ghada – and freaked out.

    He leaped through a second-floor window and was wandering the street dazed and bleeding when he was confronted by a police officer summoned to the scene.

    According to a Long Beach police department statement, Morad ignored commands to stop so that medical treatment could be rendered.

    “The suspect advanced more rapidly toward the officer who perceived the suspect was now a threat and going to assault him,” says the statement issued a day later. “During the next few minutes, the officer utilized verbal commands, an electronic control device, an impact weapon, and physical force to gain compliance but was unsuccessful. Ultimately, the suspect again advanced toward the officer, telling the officer he was going to attack him. At that time, an officer involved shooting occurred.”

    Fire department personnel at the scene attempted “life-saving measures” before ferrying Feras to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the statement said.

    Friends and relatives have responded angrily, accusing police of using unjustified lethal force against a young man they said was confused, unarmed and harmless.

    Let’s celebrate some grads: Continue reading to meet the P-TECH Class of 2015.

    Twenty-three years ago this May, I graduated from Morehouse College as part of the largest class in the college’s history through 1992. Features in national media outlets told the stories of several young leaders from the Class of 1992, including why they had chosen Morehouse over such schools as Cornell and Stanford, the commitment to service that Morehouse had instilled in them, and their plans for making the most of themselves and doing their best for their communities. On Commencement Day this year, Morehouse’s President acknowledged my work with P-TECH, and what we and our partners are doing to help level the playing field for a new generation of young leaders.

    Today, our school celebrates its first graduating class – six extraordinary young people who, through talent and tenacity, are finishing the six-year P-TECH program in just four years, and beating the odds. After accepting the P-TECH challenge of rigorous academics, extended school days, summer sessions, workplace learning, mentoring and internships, each of these graduates has earned either a high-paying job with IBM, or acceptance to a four-year college or university. Four of the six are the first in their families to graduate college. Each of them personifies what it means to redefine oneself based on one’s
    highest expectations.

    P-TECH is redefining possibilities for 17 and 18-year olds so that by their mid-20s their lives have different trajectories than those of their peers from similar socio-economic backgrounds and previous generations. The success of these six students shows that achievement gaps can be closed when young people have access to equitable opportunities and resources. We look forward to more of the types of public-private partnerships that are reinventing high schools as engines for success.

    All six are young people of colour, four of whom are black. There’s only one young woman in the bunch. Four are first-time college graduates in their families. Way to go!

    Police behaving abhorrently: New York Police Officer Charged With Using Dead Man’s Credit Card

    A New York City police officer was arrested on Tuesday and charged with stealing a dead man’s credit card and using it to buy a diamond ring. She pleaded not guilty on Tuesday afternoon.

    Officer Ymmacula Pierre, 30, was on duty on July 14, 2014, when she responded to 911 call saying that a 65-year-old man with health problems had not shown up to work, prosecutors said. She went to the man’s apartment on East 14th Street near Union Square in Manhattan for a wellness check, where she discovered the man dead.

    In keeping with police protocol, prosecutors said, Officer Pierre then collected some of the dead man’s property, including a Citibank MasterCard.

    Two days later, prosecutors said, the MasterCard number was used to buy a diamond ring from the website of Zales. The ring cost $3,282.58.

    Prosecutors said investigators traced the IP address of the computer used for that purchase to the apartment of Officer Pierre’s boyfriend — the same address she listed as her emergency contact on Police Department forms.

    The order was processed and the ring was shipped from a warehouse, prosecutors said, but a niece of the dead man was notified of possible credit card fraud and FedEx was able to cancel the delivery.

    “No grieving relative should have to worry about alleged theft and misconduct by a uniformed officer in the aftermath of a loved one’s passing,” the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement.

    A lawyer for Officer Pierre, who has been with the New York Police Department for almost three years, did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

    Prosecutors also said a new Samsung Galaxy phone that belonged to the dead man, which Officer Pierre used to call his niece after she found him, disappeared a short time later.

    Slay seeks to raise minimum wage in St. Louis to $15 an hour – but again, by which year? Previous success pegged $15/hr for 2020, which seems… low by the time the year arrives.

    Mayor Francis Slay is pushing to raise the minimum wage in the city, joining cities across the nation in a quest to boost the income of low-wage workers.

    Specifics of Slay’s proposal are still under consideration, but a draft bill would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by Jan. 1, 2020. A formal bill is expected to be filed at the city’s Board of Aldermen by next week. Alderman Shane Cohn is sponsoring the measure.

    “Mayor Slay is committed to raising the issue with the Board of Aldermen this summer,” said Mary Ellen Ponder, Slay’s chief of staff. “He believes, and he thinks most residents agree, that a higher minimum wage would be a good thing.”

    But the board may have a deadline looming.

    The Missouri Legislature passed a bill in this year’s session to bar cities from raising the minimum wage higher than the state level, or taking other actions that would require businesses to provide employee benefits that “exceed the requirements of federal or state laws, rules or regulations.”

    If Gov. Jay Nixon signs the bill, it would take effect by Aug. 28, city officials said.

    Before that date, St. Louis City Counselor Winston Calvert said, the city is “confident that the city has the authority to adopt its own minimum wage and that the state law does not prevent the city from doing so.”

    Raising minimum wage has been a popular national trend. A 2014 Pew Research poll found 73 percent of the public supported raising the federal wage to at least $10.10 an hour. But it has drawn ire from business groups.

    The St. Louis bill is expected to exempt small businesses who employ 15 people or less, or businesses that do less than $500,000 in gross sales.

    The proposal would slowly raise the wage, setting a base rate of $10 upon passage. It would then increase the rate annually by $1.25 every year until reaching $15 in 2020. Starting in 2021, the $15 an hour rate would be raised or dropped based on the national rate of inflation.

    The proposed hike will be controversial — especially among groups that long have complained about the city’s 1 percent earnings tax.

    Honestly, the Missouri Legislature sounds like an asshole.

    What if the Media Talked about White People the Way They Talk About Black People?, repeat information, different source.

    few days ago social activist Deray McKesson (twitter user @deray) appeared on CNN to talk about the double standard on race in the reporting of crimes. He spoke intelligently in the face of Brian Stelter, who interrupted him several times. I felt he was eager to dismantle Deray’s points before his guest could even make them. While that may be debatable to some, we can’t deny the passion and truth McKesson exhibits in defending our people.

    The differences in the way race is reported on was also demonstrated in this satirical video in which Chris Hayes, an MSNBC journalist, talks about White people in the same way that media tends talks about Black people.

    The video mirrors exactly what Deray was saying about the ridiculous nature of how the media talks about Black people by criminalizing us and blaming the victim. I hope that these two outlets discussing the problem will encourage a shift in the right direction.

  335. rq says

    Tomorrow at 9am @chicanapoet1 has court for the false charges of “assaulting” Dotson.
    The night of the 19th, Dotson charged at her and got mace on his shirt and charged HER with assault. Tomorrow we support @chicanapoet1
    Because that happened, too.

    25 Numbers That Show Police Killings Are A Bigger Problem Than We Ever Knew

    Two comprehensive reports published since Saturday provide new information about police killings in the United States, filling a void left by the lack of a national standard for reporting the use of deadly force.

    The Washington Post on Saturday published an analysis of 2015 fatal police shootings through May 29, citing “interviews, police reports, local news accounts and other sources.” The Post’s data included basic information about victims’ race, age and gender, as well as whether the person was armed or had other circumstances that led to being shot by police.

    The Guardian on Monday published the results of its investigation into all 2015 police killings through the end of May. The project, called The Counted, included deaths in which police officers killed citizens by means other than gunshots, including Taser stun guns and vehicle crashes. The news organization also counted deaths of people following altercations in custody. That would include Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore in April. The Guardian sourced its data to public records, local news reports and original reporting.

    The two reports contain minor statistical discrepancies, but provide a much-needed factual basis for the debate over police use of deadly force, misconduct, transparency and reform.

    The use of lethal force by law enforcement rose to the national discourse following the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August. Many people pointed out that it was nearly impossible to gauge the size and scope of the issue because there is no national mechanism to keep track of police killings. Federal statistics intended to monitor police killings only include “justifiable homicides.” And that number, incomplete as it may be, relies on the uniform crime reporting program of data that police departments voluntarily provide to the FBI.

    Independent groups have mounted efforts to record a more complete picture of police killings, and it appears that both news organization reports have built upon these attempts.

    And I bet it will be the minor statistical discrepancies that will be used to discredit both.

    What 2 Big New Reports on Police Killings Tell Us, Mother Jones on the same.

    There’s a lot to digest, so we’ve pulled out some key takeaways:

    – Police officers kill suspects at about twice the rate calculated by the FBI. In the first five months of 2015, the Post documented a total of 385 people who were fatally shot by police officers, or 2.5 per day—a rate more than twice that tallied by the federal government over the past decade. The Guardian, which counted 467 deaths by police so far in 2015—including not just deaths from gunfire but those involving Tasers, vehicle, or other causes—arrived at a similar rate.
    – The majority of those killed are armed. Armed suspects primarily had guns, the Post reported, but were also armed with “potentially lethal objects” such as knives, machetes, and in one instance, a nail gun.
    – But a significant chunk of suspects were unarmed when they were killed. The Post found that nearly 13 percent of victims in its dataset were unarmed, while 22 percent of those counted by the Guardian were unarmed.
    – Officers involved are rarely charged. This is consistent with prior research on prosecutions in cases of officer misconduct and use of deadly force. In the Post’s 385 cases, only three officers have faced charges: Michael Slager (for the death of Walter Scott in South Carolina), Robert Bates (for killing Eric Harris in Oklahoma), and Lisa Mearkle (who killed David Kassick in Pennsylvania).
    – There are significant racial disparities among the dead, particularly among unarmed suspects. While the majority of suspects in the cases the Post looked at were white, blacks and Hispanics made up two-thirds of those who were unarmed. The Guardian’s reporting showed that about one-third of black suspects killed were unarmed, compared with one-fourth of hispanic suspects, and about one-sixth of white suspects. Racial disparities in police killings have also been documented in databases maintained by the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    – About a quarter of all suspects killed were reportedly mentally ill. According to both the Post and the Guardian.
    – Most of those killed are men. Five percent of suspects tracked by the Post were female, consistent with the Guardian’s breakdown. While most of the high-profile officer-involved shootings since Ferguson have involved men, several ongoing campaigns are bringing more attention to the deaths of women.
    – The majority of suspects were between 25 and 44 years old. That’s based on the Post’s analysis. The three youngest victims identified by the Guardian were 16. The oldest was 87.
    – At least 27 people were killed by a Taser. That finding’s from the Guardian. Tasers are considered a less-lethal weapon by law enforcement officials, but their use has been recently questioned by the United Nations Committee Against Torture.
    – The deaths involved a small group of the nation’s estimated 18,000 law enforcement agencies. Three hundred and six, to be exact. The Post found that 19 state and local departments were involved in three or more fatal shootings each, including the police departments of Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and Bakersfield, California.
    – Police officers are responsible for 1 in every 13 gun deaths. That figure, the equivalent of about 8 percent, comes from the Post’s Christopher Ingraham. That’s a lot more than suggested by other data on gun violence in America.

    It’s also worth noting what these investigations don’t readily show. It’s unclear, for instance, in how many cases police officers were known to have a history of misconduct or a questionable record. How many cases were captured on video? Are there notable racial disparities among mentally ill suspects? To what extent do the Post’s and the Guardian’s probes reveal incidents that weren’t previously publicized?

    That’s a lot of takeaways, and basically the essential information.

    City of #Ferguson appears to be paying Darren Wilson’s lawyer fees in the civil suit brought by Dorian Johnson, because that’s a fucking thing, too.

    Baltimore’s deadly May – this one’s almost almost… something. Not funny, but…

    We will grant that a single month can be a statistical blip and that there is only so much the mayor and police department can do to stop individuals bent on killing one another. But we don’t think it is at all unreasonable to start asking questions about leadership in a city that, over the last month, was less safe by some measures than it has been at any point in recorded history.

    Much attention has been paid to whether the police are failing to do their jobs in the best way possible, either because they are afraid they will be prosecuted if they make a mistake or because residents in some inner city neighborhoods are actively obstructing their work. Either or both could be a factor — arrests were down sharply last month — but blaming them for the record pace of killings presumes that bad actors are roaming the streets at all times seeking to do harm only to be dissuaded by the presence of the police. We rather doubt that.

    A much more compelling theory that has been gaining currency recently is that last month’s riots disrupted the economics of Baltimore’s drug trade. Pharmacy owners say looters hauled away huge quantities of narcotics during the raids, drugs that have substantial street value. Del. Dan K. Morhaim wrote about the issue on The Sun’s op-ed page recently and noted similar thefts and a similar rise in violence in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “Sadly, every city and region has well-established lines of distribution of illegal drugs and narcotics,” Dr. Morhaim, an emergency room physician, wrote. “When those distribution lines are disrupted — in our case by the Baltimore riots — drug distribution chaos ensues.”

    Economics tells us that a flood of drugs into the market would wreak havoc with prices and that existing players would seek to protect their businesses from new competition. But whether enough drugs were stolen to substantially affect Baltimore’s drug trade is impossible to know; pharmacy owners say they have yet to be interviewed and surveillance video from their stores is yet to be reviewed by the authorities. Both Baltimore Police and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency are investigating, but no comprehensive tally of what was stolen has yet been made.

    Compounding matters, Operation Ceasefire, one of the city’s most potentially effective tools to learn what’s going on in the streets and to intervene before disputes turn violent, has been hamstrung by disagreements with City Hall. Ceasefire’s executive director LeVar Michael, resigned a month before the riots out of protest for what he saw as a failure by the Rawlings-Blake administration to follow through on its promises of funding and resources for the program. Essentially, he argued that Ceasefire is supposed to offer carrots and sticks to get potentially violent criminals to change their ways, but Baltimore was offering only sticks. Others, including the intellectual father of Ceasefire, criminologist David M. Kennedy, whose organization has received all of the $415,000 Baltimore budgeted for the program, insists resources aren’t the issue. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health gun policy expert Daniel Webster, who has studied Ceasefire here and elsewhere, sides with Mr. Michael.

  336. rq says

    Police commissioner defends patrol strategy amid violence

    Baltimore police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts on Tuesday defended his patrol strategy amid record violence while also saying all prisoner transport drivers have been retrained to prevent injuries in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death.

    The commissioner spoke to City Council members during a Public Safety Committee hearing, at which he acknowledged dramatic increases to the city’s homicide and nonfatal shooting counts. He said commanders are addressing holes in coverage stemming in part from a new deployment schedule.

    […]

    The new contract allows police to send more officers out during high-crime periods and reduce deployments when less violence typically occurred. Overtime would be reduced, police and union officials said. Police would be more visible in high-crime areas, Batts had said.

    But violence continues to lay siege to the city. Two people were killed and three people were wounded in shootings Tuesday. The homicides followed a record 43 people killed in May — the most in more than 40 years. The number of Baltimore homicides this year — 119 — is more than double last year’s figure to date.

    “Right now we’re putting all officers on the streets,” Batts said. “Not just in cars but in posts.”

    Is that what they call ‘hotspot policing’? Because it’s not working in STL, either.

    Apparently Cleveland has finished the “investigation” re: the killing of #TamirRice but is stalling release to not interrupt NBA Finals.
    @deray imagine if a big athlete like lebron ot steph curry decided to sit out the finals until the investigstion dropped.
    I can believe that, you know. The stalling because of some basketball.

    Here’s a good news: In Baltimore schools, free meals for all

    Beginning this week, every student in the city, regardless of income level, is being offered free breakfast and lunch under a federal program that allows school districts to eliminate a decades-old meal-subsidy structure for students in high-poverty schools.

    Baltimore is among a handful of districts in Maryland taking advantage of the opportunity that was opened to schools nationwide last year. Maryland schools are able to adopt the program under state legislation passed this year in the General Assembly. […]

    Eighty-four percent of Baltimore students qualified for free and reduced-priced meals this year based on family income under the National School Lunch Program, established in 1946. About 13,000 paid $3 for lunch this year; the district dropped its reduced-priced meals in 2013 and paid the subsidy for those students to eat for free.

    Haynes pointed out that not only does the option, called “community eligibility,” eliminate a stigma that students can feel if they qualify for free lunch, but it also eliminates barriers for students, such as those who are homeless and can’t get paperwork in, who never have the chance to qualify.

    “We have some students who, if they don’t get it at school, they don’t get it at all,” Haynes said.

    The city joins Somerset and Washington counties, which are participating in the program, along with one school in Howard County.

    At Beechfield, the announcement was welcome news.

    It is welcome news.

    ACLU Calls Baltimore Jail “A Crumbling Victorian Dungeon”

    Despite nearly half a century of litigation, the Baltimore city jail remains a “crumbling, filthy, and vermin-infested infrastructure” with conditions that may have resulted in the deaths of at least seven detainees over the past two and a half years, civil rights advocates argue in a motion filed today in federal court in Maryland.

    Several civil rights organizations say the jail’s conditions violate a prior legal settlement with the federal government forcing the state to improve conditions at the jail, and they are asking to reopen a long-running lawsuit over poor medical treatment and unsafe conditions at the facility.

    Calling the Baltimore City Detention Center a “violent” and “dank and dangerous place,” the 100-page motion lists a number of ways the state failed to comply with the agreement, ranging from not providing status reports on compliance efforts to failure to provide insulin and HIV antiretroviral medications for inmates who need them. The motion argues that “the promises of government officials are still unfulfilled, and only court intervention will put an end to the endless cycle of new promises followed by failure to honor those promises.” Tuesday was the court’s final deadline for keeping the case open.

    “In 20 years of prison litigation, it is easily one of the worst places I’ve ever seen,” David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told BuzzFeed News this morning. “It is a crumbling Victorian dungeon.”

    Today, Baltimore’s only jail — which is run by the state — holds around 2,500 people, about 80% of them black. “This jail, like most jails, houses people who are pretrial detainees and are presumed to be innocent,” Fathi said. “In those cases, if they had money to post bail, they wouldn’t be in jail at all.”

    Tuesday’s motion is just the latest chapter in a long-running legal battle over conditions in Baltimore’s jails that began with a federal lawsuit in 1971 to challenge the detainees’ conditions of confinement. Now known as Duvall et al. v. O’Malley et al, the original 1971 case was consolidated with a 1976 lawsuit over overcrowding at the jail. In 1993, the matter was resolved by a consent decree, a way of resolving the case in which parties resolve a dispute in a publicly filed agreement over which the court maintains jurisdiction. That decree was put on hold in 1999 after Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which allowed states to end litigation if the original constitutional violations identified by the lawsuits had been corrected.

    The ACLU grew concerned again with conditions at the detention center in 2002, when it asked for and received a temporary restraining order regarding excessive heat at the city’s Women’s Detention Center. A Department of Justice report that year also pointed out health and safety violations at the jail. In 2003, the detainees’ lawyers moved to reopen the consent decree. […]

    A Baltimore public defender later wrote that “the holding cells are approximately 10 by 10 (some slightly larger), with one open sink and toilet. The women were instructed that the water was “bad” and that they shouldn’t drink it. There are no beds — just a concrete cube. No blankets or pillows. The cells were designed to hold people for a few hours, not a few days. In the one cell which housed 15 women, there wasn’t even enough room for them all to lie down at the same time.”

    However, Fathi said today’s motion is unrelated to those recent developments.

    “We’ve been concerned for many months about the state’s persistent noncompliance and certainly well before recent events in Baltimore,” he said.

    Housing Discrimination in America Was Perfected in Chicago, which is… not really something to be proud of.

    In the astonishingly vanishing chance you missed it, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned for life from the NBA by commissioner (and University of Chicago Law alumnus) Adam Silver. I would not mention this save for the remarkable fact that Sterling, and his racist lament unearthed by TMZ, drew attention to… the legacy of 20th century housing discrimination and its roots in Chicago. One of the things that never fails to surprise me about the city is how many roads lead back here.

    Why’d that happen? Sterling, a Los Angeles real-estate mogul, has settled two housing-discrimination lawsuits, one in 2005 for an undisclosed sum (but including more than $5 million in plaintiff’s fees) and one in 2009 with the DOJ for $2.73 million. ESPN’s Bomani Jones, who laid into Sterling and the first lawsuit in 2006, expressed frustration that it took a leak of Sterling’s personal views to lead to his ouster. Jones was a close friend of Leonore Draper, the West Pullman activist who was murdered last weekend—after leading a fundraiser to benefit an anti-violence organization founded after the murder of Hadiya Pendelton. In particular, Jones is upset about the disparity between Sterling’s words and actions, and the action taken in response, and he’s hardly alone.

    The next person to take up the torch was the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, to whom I’m eternally grateful for developing a deep interest in the history of race, housing, and poverty in Chicago, and especially through the lens of the immense historical and sociological work done in the city. So many of those roads lead back here not just because the city is intensely segregated and because many of the tools of segregation arose here, but because so much data exists about the city. The Chicago School of sociology was dominant throughout the 20th century, so we understand the city as well as any in America, perhaps better. […]

    I would add one thing to this that’s a powerful explainer, and is not unimportant to the discussion about Sterling. The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, and very broadly speaking, segregation has measurably declined, but Nancy Denton makes the case that it became much more effective in 1988—among other things, raising penalties and giving the DOJ more powers than it had previously. It’s possible that Sterling would not have been hit, or hit as badly, under the previous, compromised iteration of the Fair Housing Act.

    Nonetheless, post-1968, segregation and housing discrimination did improve. At the same time, though, pre-1968 segregation casts a very long shadow for a reason that doesn’t come up in Coates’s post: how it represents a massive destruction of wealth.

    Beryl Satter’s Family Properties is an extraordinary account of midcentury housing discrimination in Chicago that is a first-hand look at how this happened. The narrow market created by discrimination—implicit and explicit, legal and vigilante—made some of the city’s worst housing paradoxically overpriced. “In Chicago, my father estimated that 85 percent of the properties purchased by blacks were sold on contract,” Satter writes. “He calculated that by selling buildings to housing-starved African Americans on such exploitative terms, speculators were robbing Chicago’s black population of one million dollars a day. These sales stripped black migrants of their savings during the very years when whites of similar class background were getting an immense economic boost through FHA-backed mortgages that enabled them to purchase new homes for little money down.” […]

    For those who amassed immense wealth in the post-war housing market, like Sterling, that money could buy much more. Bill Simmons, a Clippers season-ticket holder with many well-placed sources in the NBA, writes: “David Stern looked the other way for decades, waiting for a smoking gun that never came. He knew Sterling, who started out as an attorney and eventually made his billions in real estate, loved courtrooms more than he loved anything else. Fearing the very real possibility of Sterling becoming the NBA’s Al Davis, Stern never messed with him — not even in 2003, 2006 and 2009, when Sterling kept settling those housing discrimination lawsuits and being tied to offensive quotes.”

    Coates calls the form of racism exemplified by housing discrimination “elegant racism”; I like Carl Nightingale’s formulation, camouflaged segregation. (Not long ago I talked to Nightingale about why Chicago is inescapable on the issue of housing discrimination and segregation.) Often it lies in patterns of data, codes of law, and bonds of history, sometimes not even requiring an active touch to advance it, but simply continuing under its own force. Donald Sterling’s camouflage was never very good, but the blinds still had to briefly slip for him to be revealed.

  337. rq says

    Why We’re #WearingOrange on June 2nd – oops, sorry, missed the date. :(

    Gun violence is a national issue that impacts tens of thousands of Americans each year. Each day 88 people lose their lives to firearms in the United States, and countless other lives are permanently and irrevocably altered. The causes of this epidemic of violence are complex, but there are organizations working around the clock to bring it to an end.

    Amnesty International USA is excited to be partnering with Everytown in their Wear Orange campaign in honor of all those affected by gun violence. This campaign is an opportunity to raise awareness of this issue and mobilize people throughout the United States to make a commitment to ending gun violence.

    Amnesty International has called attention to gun violence as a human rights issue and works to eradicate it.

    More info at the link.

    Tom Hanks’ Wannabee Rapper Son Gets Reckless With the N-Word on Instagram. I have to say, he’s got a good Freeze Peach argument there! Could use a bit more peach, but generally not bad.

    Hip-hop is a genre and a culture uniquely equipped to deal with complex matters of race and politics. The latest bit of tumult from the world of Instagram is decidedly less complicated. Earlier today (June 1), Gawker pointed out that Tom Hanks’ son, who raps under the name Chet Haze, has recently been written the N-word online. In the most recent post, the younger Hanks chides his “so called friends” who are “scared to death of failure,” punctuating the sentiment with, “Fuck yall hating ass n—az I’ll never stop chasing my dream.” (For good measure, he added, “#OneLifeOneGodOneLove.”) The day before that post came one teasing a new song, where the rapper wrote, “Check out the song me and my n—a @chillthatdude just dropped on my Soundcloud.” The song in question, which features a rapper named Chill–who is, in fact, Black–seems to include Hanks saying “n—a,” as well.

    Shortly after the videos started to gain traction online, Hanks posted an Instagram video where he attempts to explain that “hip-hop isn’t about race” and that the majority of us simply aren’t equipped to understand his word choice. He goes on to say “can’t no one tell” him he can’t say “n—a” with impunity. Watch the video below.

    Hey, he’s got black friends. Totes okay.

    LAPD officer in assault trial ‘immune from any empathy,’ jurors told – I would say a great many of them are. Is this a key argument because she’s a woman?

    “This is a police officer that is so cynical about the people she polices, she dehumanizes them,” Presby said during closing statements in Officer Mary O’Callaghan’s assault trial.

    After playing a squad-car video that captured O’Callaghan striking at Thomas’ throat with an outstretched hand and threatening her, the prosecutor asked jurors to convict O’Callaghan of assault under the color of authority, saying the officer had crossed a line into criminal behavior.

    But O’Callaghan’s attorney, Robert Rico, said that while the footage shows an “ugly” scene — a term that, he said, describes most police work — his client’s use of force wasn’t excessive. He told jurors that Thomas was flailing wildly and refusing to follow orders, describing his client’s actions as “necessary.”

    He placed blame, at least in part, on the supervisor at the scene, Sgt. James Muniz. Rico said Muniz should have taken better command of the situation and noted that he was demoted after the incident. An LAPD spokeswoman said the department doesn’t discuss disciplinary matters, but said Muniz is currently listed as an officer.

    Rico played an audio recording for jurors, which he said showed his client didn’t want to hurt Thomas, a 35-year-old mother.

    “If you want to kill me, just kill me,” Thomas said in the recording.

    “I don’t want to kill you,” O’Callaghan responded. “I just want to transport you.”

    “Why?” Thomas asked.

    “To get you some help,” the officer said.

    But the prosecutor said the squad-car video — which he played several times during the trial — told a fuller version of the story.

    The footage shows O’Callaghan strike at Thomas’ throat and jam her boot into the other woman’s crotch, a targeted move “to cause pain,” Presby said.

    A minute or two later, Thomas loses consciousness. O’Callaghan peeks inside the patrol car, takes a drag from her cigarette and says: “I don’t think she’s breathing.”

    Presby shook his head and turned to the jurors. “Where is the line if not here?” he asked, his voice swelling to a hoarse shout. “The line was crossed in this case.”

    Thomas was pronounced dead at a hospital following her July 22, 2012, arrest, which came after officers arrived at her home to investigate claims that she had abandoned her two children after they were dropped off at a police station.

    During the trial, an officer who arrived at Thomas’ home several minutes before O’Callaghan testified that officers didn’t call for an ambulance for more than 30 minutes after Thomas first asked for one, saying they believed she was feigning medical distress.

    I guess are police officers are also trained doctors and can automatically discern when someone is feigning medical distress, as they’re so sure people are doing it so often. That and their ability to spot gang members from 50 ft of distance makes me think that the blue uniform gives them some sort of superpowers. So why are they so afraid of people not acting with total and utter submissiveness?

    And just fuck this shit right here: Inkster residents face tax hike in beating settlement. Wanna bet they’re going to spin that like Dent is just trying to get some kind of revenge on the entire community or something? Instead of blaming it on the actions of an asshole cop?

    The city of Inkster is seeking a one-time tax hike this summer from residents to help pay for a million-dollar settlement with a motorist filmed being beaten by a police officer during a traffic stop.

    The July 1 tax bill levies 6.45 mills, city treasurer Mark Stuhldreher said Monday. For a resident who has property with a $40,000 market value, that means roughly $130 more, he said.

    Mayor Hilliard Hampton said the city needed to generate enough for the nearly $1.4 million settlement with Floyd Dent, who sued the city over the videotaped beating.

    Inkster’s liability insurance policy allows only for payouts above $2 million, Stuhldreher said.

    Although the city has a surplus and is out of debt, a consent agreement it has operated under for several years restricts tapping the general fund to finalize such settlements, Hampton said. “Our options are limited.”

    The higher tax is due by Aug. 31, Stuhldreher said. Citing the city’s average delinquency rate, he expected 70 percent to be paid through February before delinquent taxes are turned over to the county, with the rest by late June 2016.

    The tax hike is the latest fallout from the January beating incident.

    Last week, a judge ordered the former police officer captured on video striking Dent to stand trial on charges of misconduct in office and assault with intent to do great bodily harm. Judge Sabrina Johnson also allowed the prosecution’s request for an additional charge of assault by strangulation: a 10-year felony.

    Dent was the lone witness called during former Officer William Melendez’s preliminary examination.

    Melendez, who faces arraignment in Wayne County Circuit Court next week, was fired from the Inkster Police Department in April. Two other officers were suspended up to 30 days for their roles in the incident.

    Vicki Yost, the city’s police chief at the time of the beating, resigned days after Melendez was charged. Joe Thomas was named Inkster’s interim police chief last month.

    ‘Shot from behind’: man’s death reveals hidden horror of Latino police killings

    Perez-Lopez was one of the 67 Latino people identified by the Guardian as killed by police so far this year. Like 58% of them, he carried no firearm; 25% were completely unarmed. Yet his death and those of all the other Latino 67 have failed to spark the kind of outrage seen after the deaths of Garner and Brown. Those who witnessed the event – also undocumented migrants – have been “driven underground”, lawyers tell the Guardian.

    Indeed, in five cases of Latino deaths identified by the Guardian’s investigative accounting of law enforcement-related deaths in the US this year, media reporting failed to even document the individual’s name.

    The manner of Perez-Lopez’s death varies according to which account you hear. The San Francisco police, long in the spotlight for unarmed killings and now for a barrage of racist text messages, have said Perez-Lopez was attempting to steal a bike and chased his victim down the street carrying a knife. When officers arrived, he lunged at them with a knife above his head, forcing them to shoot.

    But eyewitness testimony, some published for the first time by the Guardian, alongside forensic evidence produced by local attorneys working for Perez-Lopez’s impoverished family in Guatemala, have begun to tell a damningly different story: of a hard-working young man shot and killed while running away from the police.[…]

    It was around 9.45pm on 26 February, Maria told the Guardian, and Perez-Lopez was standing on the road “talking” with another man, later named as Abraham Perez, who was not from the Mission and who alleged Perez-Lopez had stolen his bike. By this point, according to police, a passerby who had left a nearby coffee shop had already made an emergency call. Two plain-clothed officers, identified as Eric Reboli and Craig Tiffe, arrived shortly after. Maria turned away.

    Officers Tiffe and Reboli were themselves named in a 2009 civil lawsuit alleging police brutality. The claimant, a Latino man named David Magana, argued that four officers from the SFPD beat him “with their hands, fists, nightsticks” and “kicked him with their boots all over his body” after mistakenly identifying him as a suspect, according to legal documents obtained by the Guardian. The case was later dismissed.

    By the the time she looked back again, only a few seconds later, the officers had their guns drawn. She could not see Perez-Lopez at this point, indicating there was some distance between police and the 20-year-old. Maria looked away: “I got scared, and that’s when it started. The shots.”

    According to the police account delivered by San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr at a town hall meeting three days after the shooting, Perez-Lopez was said to have lunged toward the officers with the knife overhead, having turned with a swiping motion before he was shot. Suhr was jeered by furious residents at the meeting as he read from a prepared speech.

    But Perez-Lopez’s two roommates – both undocumented migrants – are reported to have witnessed the entire event. Both were uncontactable, but a short audio interview with one, conducted by a local advocacy group, described police jumping on Perez-Lopez from behind.

    “He didn’t realize they were police. When they tried to grab him, he got away. They told him to drop the weapon. He dropped the weapon on the sidewalk. After that, they shot at him.”

    Two people present at the time of the audio recording have verified its authenticity to the Guardian. The eyewitness is now in counselling, multiple neighbours and community advocates said. […]

    A Guardian investigation has found that of the 67 Latino/Hispanic people killed by US police so far this year, a remarkable 25% have been unarmed, compared with 15% of white people.

    “We’re not surprised by these numbers, and there is real recognition that the Latino experience with police has been underreported,” said Eric Rodriguez, vice-president of advocacy for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights group in the US.

    “People tend to think that anything that to do with immigrants is related to immigration reform. They stop thinking about us otherwise. We have many immigrants living in our community that are living civically and being harassed by police all the time.”

    Note history of violence for both of the officers in this case.

    Unarmed people are much more likely to be killed by police when they’re not white – now that the stats are out, I guess this can be accepted as fact, finally.

    Since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, protests have continued across the country over racial disparities in how police use force — and new statistics from the Guardian suggest there really are enormous disparities.

    This chart, based on the Guardian’s analysis of police killings between January and May 2015, shows the racial demographics of the general population, all victims of police killings, and unarmed victims who died at the hands of law enforcement: […]

    What could explain this? Some researchers have suggested that subconscious racial biases are behind the disparities. Studies show, for example, that officers are quicker to shoot black suspects in video game simulations. Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor who conducted the research, said it’s possible the bias could lead to more skewed outcomes in the field. “In the very situation in which [officers] most need their training,” he said, “we have some reason to believe that their training will be most likely to fail them.”

    So police officers are more likely to see minority people as bigger threats because of their race, and they’re more likely to shoot and kill minority suspects as a result. That’s exactly what worries so many critics of law enforcement.

  338. rq says

    [EXCLUSIVE]
    Samaria Rice on Loving and Losing Her Son, Tamir

    In an interview with EBONY on May 29, 2015, Samaria described young Tamir as a “bright, loving child” who excelled in many areas. He was involved in the Boys & Girls Club and he played basketball, football, and soccer. “Basketball may have been his favorite, but he was good at all of them,” Samaria recalls. Her voice brightens when she speaks of how active he was and how talented he was at various sports. What did Tamir want to be when he grew up? “We were still working on it,” she said with sadness in her voice. “It could have gone any way, but I don’t know what he could have been.”

    She moved her family to the community eight months before he was killed because she believed it was more diverse and safer, a better place to raise her family. Her eldest daughter, Tasheona Rice, now 19, was pregnant at that time with Talaya Rice, now 10 months. Samaria’s eldest son, Kavon Rice, now 16, and youngest daughter Tajai Rice, now 15, all shared a home with Tamir. They are a close-knit family and Samaria remarks that she has been raising her children alone as a single mother; none of their fathers have contributed much to their upbringing. This has not deterred her, however, and she has made the most of her family’s situation like so many mothers in her predicament do.

    It is still extremely difficult for Samaria to talk about the day Tamir was shot and killed. According to the official complaint filed with Office of Professional Standards and Civilian Review Board in February of this year, Tajai was inside of the recreational center when she heard shots and was told that police had shot her brother. Video footage of the shooting corroborates Tajai’s story and shows her being tackled to the ground and handcuffed by Cleveland police as Tamir lay dying a few feet away under a gazebo. Samaria, who was threatened with arrest when she arrived on the scene, maintains to this day, “I still don’t know what happened to my son. I still don’t have any answers.” She has received no detailed, direct information from anyone involved in the shooting about what took place. The question remains: How did her son go out to play with his sister and friends and end up fatally shot in a playground? […]

    We began to talk more about the importance of counseling, especially within Black communities and families. “You have to find the right match. I’d been searching and searching and I have someone and we have a nice relationship. But I’ve talked to many counselors and therapists and I don’t see nothing wrong with it. I suggest everybody get a counselor. We need an outlet, we need a different opinion and advice from people that are not a pastor or even a mom or dad or auntie or uncle. We just need other options. All you have to do is try it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to continue.”

    Samaria says that she has also had family support and some community support. “People give me hugs. They tell me they are praying for me. A couple of the churches have blessed me. I’m very grateful. I didn’t ask for this, but I’m grateful. It can be very overwhelming sometimes, but I’m here. I’m in the fight,” she expressed. There have been online fundraisers and drives to help the Rice family try to transition into the next phase of their life after it was reported that they became homeless earlier this year. Samaria opted to move out of the home that was painfully close to where her youngest child’s life was taken. She and her children were living in a homeless shelter for a few months, something that she didn’t exactly want the public knowing at the time. Now, she and her family live in a smaller, newly furnished home, and have received and outpouring of support from all over the country and world.

    What emerged from our conversation is that Samaria is finding a way to use her experience with this horrific tragedy as a way to connect with other mothers and encourage them, as so many have encouraged her. Losing her son to police violence has informed and empowered her in many ways to help others. “I had been invited years ago to be an advocate for single moms, but at that time I wasn’t ready. This experience and the tragedy like this, I can actually give a lot of moms guidance and encouragement. Everybody has a history and I can share what works for me.”

    Samaria spoke of starting a foundation and scholarship to support other mothers in similar situations, which seems to give her a new purpose and determined focus. “Tamir is getting me up every morning because I’m still waiting on answers. I still don’t know what happened. I don’t want anyone to have to suffer like this. I want to be a part of making change. Whatever we have to do, I’m willing to do. I believe that we are in a war. We are in a war. They are out here killing us and whatever I can do to bring awareness to that, why not?”

    She is not going to give up her fight for justice any time soon. “Justice is somebody taking responsibility for my son, along with a conviction. I am aware of the police bill of rights and the police union. I’m working on a plan to dismantle all of it. It’s going to be hard, but we have to start somewhere.”

    At least 464 people in the U.S. have been killed by police this year. Too many mothers and fathers have lived through the incredible horror of losing their children like Samaria did, and few have been on the receiving end of anything that resembles justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back, but Samaria courageously continues to speak out, push through the tougher days, and advocate for radical changes to policing in this country. She is motivated to keep fighting “so no other child and family will have to endure the pain and suffering that I have had to go through.”

    My heart, out to her.

    May 2015. Police Violence Report. Infographic attached.

    For 2 months, the @CLEpolice were in charge of Tamir’s case. Then they passed it on to the @CuyahogaSheriff for 5 months.
    I am told that instead of announcing anything of substance, the @CLEpolice & @CuyahogaSheriff are now just passing the investigation on.
    In my conversations w/ the Cleveland Prosecutors Office, they said they will likely now lead their own investigation. Total ridiculousness.
    The Tamir announcement today won’t be that any charges are being filed against the officers, but that a brand new investigation will begin.
    The law enforcement version of ‘hot potato’? Good lord, they’re so scared of everything about that case, it seems… And then they’re being assholes about it.
    This is really, really going to bite them in the ass sometime soon.

  339. says

    More broadly, the Department of Justice is investigating the Fayetteville police department — at Fayetteville Police Chief Harold Medlock’s request — concerning its use of force policies, practices and training.

    Just how many investigations into USAmerican police departments is the DoJ running?!

  341. says

    Beginning this week, every student in the city, regardless of income level, is being offered free breakfast and lunch under a federal program that allows school districts to eliminate a decades-old meal-subsidy structure for students in high-poverty schools.

    This is good news indeed. Someone ought to inform school officials in Aurora, CO about this. They fired the lunch room manager for giving out food to children who had no lunch money.

    She cops to breaking the law, but believes the law should be changed (I agree with her).

    In the district, students who fail to qualify for the free lunch or reduced lunch program receive one slice of cheese on a hamburger bun, and a small milk.
    Curry says that meal is not sufficient. Many times she paid for lunches out of her own pocket.

    “I’ll own that I broke the law. The law needs to change,” she said.

    ****

    Round 2 of debunking racist apologetics by Tim Wise.
    His debunking posts are done via tweets, so to read them, you’ll want to click the link. He opens this post with the following:

    Well that didn’t take long.
    Shortly after I began posting #WhiteLiesMatter entries on Twitter, naturally the white nationalist trolls at American Renaissance decided to chime in, claiming that I had misrepresented one of the data points, and creating their own hashtag #WiseLiesMatter.
    Very pithy. Too bad their “correction” was total bullshit.
    They insisted that I was misrepresenting the data on black homicide rates. I had noted that since 1950, black male homicide was down by 37%, and had later gone in and tweeted below that (and then corrected it on Facebook), that actually for men the number was a one-third reduction, and 37% for blacks overall. Not only did AmRen miss that correction tweet, they said I was fudging by saying black homicide rates were down, because those numbers only refer to the homicide death rate for blacks, per capita (i.e., their rate of victimization), rather than their rate of offending. In other words, the white nationalists are implying that blacks are murdering more people now than ever, per capita, even if they themselves are less likely to die from murder than before. And of course, the implication they want people to draw is what? That they’re killing whitey! Run for the hills!
    But actually, black homicide offending is also way down. From 1976-2005, which is the latest data I was able to find on this, the black homicide offending rate fell 43 percent. So that’s even bigger than the victimization decline. Even though that data ends ten years ago, homicide rates for all races have continued to fall since that time, so the rate today would be even lower, and thus, the decline in black homicide offending would be even bigger than the 43 percent figure.

    Here’s part 3 of Debunking Racial Apologetics.

    Part 4.

    Part 5.

    Can’t remember if it’s 5 or 6 links that sends comments into moderation (long as I’ve been posting here, you think I’d know).

  342. says

    I mean, really. It boggles my mind that anyone thought a cheese sandwich and a carton of milk would be sufficient for any child. I don’t care that they can’t pay. In fact, they shouldn’t have to pay. I think children should be able to go to school and get a balanced, nutrional meal (two even-breakfast and lunch), and NOT have to pay for it. Nor should their parents have to stress about paying for it. The last thing kids (and their parents) need to worry about is a hungry stomach, which as we all know, impedes the ability of children to learn.
    God, conservative politicians are heartless assholes.

    ****

    Part 6 of Debunking Racial Apologetics.

    ****
    In what may be the most shake my head inducing story of the day (I really shouldn’t say that, as the day is young), a black Mississippi family is facing jail time for cheering a graduating high school senior.

    Superintendent Jay Foster asked audience members to hold their cheers and applause until all the graduates’ names were called, but one family said they were unable to contain their excitement, reported WREG-TV.

    Ursula Miller said she called out the first name of her niece, Lanarcia Walker, as she crossed the stage to receive her diploma from Senatobia High School.

    The teen’s father, Henry Walker, shouted, “You did it, baby,” and waved a towel, drawing laughs from the crowd.

    That’s when school officials asked the girl’s parents and two other relatives to leave the ceremony.

    About a week later, they were served with court papers after the superintendent filed disturbing the peace charges against them.

    “It’s crazy,” Henry Walker said. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs or a $500 fine for expressing my love – it’s ridiculous man. It’s ridiculous.”

    But the superintendent defended his decision, saying he was determined to maintain order during graduation ceremonies.

    The Walkers and their relatives are due in court Monday, and they said they may not be able to afford the fines — which could put them at risk of jail time.

    “I can understand they can escort me out of the graduation, but to say they going to put me in jail for it,” Miller said. “What else are they allowed to do?”

    I’m sure if a white family did that, they’d face the same harsh penalty, right?

  343. says

    Oh fuck me, another suspect in police custody mysteriously dies after a ride in a police van:

    tchell Brad Martinez of Vero Beach, Florida, seemed to be a healthy 35 year old when he got into a police van Friday. But by the time his eight-minute ride in Indian County sheriff’s deputies’ custody was over, he was comatose. On Tuesday, Martinez died and the public is asking how and why.

    “9 a.m. he goes to court. At noon he’s in the ICU. Nobody knows what happened,” Martinez’ close friend Ryan Monto told local station WPTV.

    Though there were other inmates in the van, Martinez was alone in a holding area in the van behind the driver. Surveillance video aired by WPTV shows him getting into the vehicle on his own, then being carried out unconscious.

    Since Martinez’ hospitalization, the Facebook page “Justice for Brad Martinez” has been launched and now has 1,527 “likes.” A May 31 post has a photo of Martinez in a hospital bed and shows what appear to be abrasions circling his neck while he lies comatose. There also appears to be blood around his mouth.

    “We can’t get any answers and figured we’d reach out for some help,” the post reads.

    Sheriff Deryl Loar denied the abrasions happened when Martinez was in custody, according to the Palm Beach Post. The Post also reported the sheriff said seven other inmates in the van carrying Martinez “saw or heard nothing unusual,” and that Martinez received immediate medical attention when he was found unconscious. The sheriff has maintained that deputies acted appropriately and so far there are no indications of trouble inside the van, according to police interviews with witnesses.

    An autopsy is scheduled for Thursday to determine the cause of death.

    Martinez was taken into custody after a judge determined he had violated terms of his probation in relation to a 2013 aggravated assault case, the Post reported.

    Photos of Martinez show a man with a friendly smile. Friends and family said he did not have drug use issues with substances like cocaine or meth. Toxicology results are pending.

  344. rq says

    Tony @342
    I could maybe maybe maybe see them being asked to leave for disrupting the ceremony (if they didn’t calm down and such), but court papers?
    Fuck that bullshit. Seriously, just fuck it.
    (Also, it’s six links. ;) Believe me, I know. MAW-DER-RAY-SHUN!)

  345. rq says

    I’m going to leave a recommendation that everyone on this thread also go read Black Skeptics right here on FtB. This computer browser for some reason only let me get to page 9 of posts, but here’s a selection of posts most related to this thread (and I can assure you, all the others in between? definitely worth the read and the thought – most notably the posts with #CollegeNotPrison in the title, because also relevant to here):
    #DeathByCop – endorsement and information of an L.A. die-in;
    Thugs R’ Us – on the mayor of Baltimore not addressing the problems of institutional racism and going for the easy out;
    Busting the School-to-Prison Pipeline – poster for past event;
    Dissing DuVernay and the Lessons of Selma – self-explanatory;
    Framing Black Queer Resistance: An Interview with Black Lives Matter L.A. Activist Povi-Tamu Bryant – awesome interview;
    “No Rights Which the White Man is Bound to Respect” – on the failure of the St Louis grand jury to indict Darren Wilson…
    [/part 1]

  346. rq says

    [part 2]
    Black Skeptics/POCBF Statement on Ferguson & Our Hate Mail – self-explanatory title :/;
    In Solidarity w/Ferguson sick of your colorblind bullshit – same;
    Black Children Slaughtered: Mistrial in the Murder of Jordan Davis – the young man shot sitting in a car for listening to music too loud for the white man passing;
    Airbrushing Race out of “Income Inequality” – racism in real estate and more;
    The Souls of Black Boys – Martin, Mandela, and changing consciousness;
    In Cold Blood: The Murder of Renisha McBride – the dangers of asking for help while black…
    [/part 2]

  347. rq says

    [part 3]
    Disposable Children: Whiteness, Heterosexism & the Murder of Lawrence King – about as bad as the title sounds.
    [/part 3]
    So with that, I confess that I have been remiss and negligent in at least looking into this resource, esp. considering this thread and the discussion here. I apologize for that, and will make it a more regularly-read blog.

    Boston police say man fatally shot was part of counterterrorism probe

    A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said Usaama Rahim had been making threats against law enforcement. The official was not authorized to release details of the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    Police Commissioner William Evans said members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force approached Rahim in the city’s Roslindale neighbourhood Tuesday morning to question him about “terrorist-related information” they had received when he went at officers with a large military-style knife.

    Evans said officers repeatedly ordered Rahim to drop the knife but he continued to move toward them with it. He said task force members fired their guns, hitting Rahim once in the torso and once in the abdomen. Rahim, 26, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
    […]

    He said authorities knew Rahim “had some extremism as far as his views,” but he would not confirm media reports that Rahim had been radicalized by online propaganda by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.

    Evans said the officers didn’t have their guns drawn when they approached Rahim. He said the video shows Rahim “coming at officers” while they were backing away.

    That description differs from one given by Rahim’s brother Ibrahim Rahim, who said in a Facebook posting that his youngest brother was killed while waiting at a bus stop to go to his job.

    “He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times,” he wrote. “He was on his cellphone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness.”

    Ibrahim Rahim, a former assistant imam at a Boston mosque, could not immediately be reached for more comment Tuesday. In an email, he said he was travelling to Boston to bury his brother.

    The Suffolk district attorney’s office and the FBI said they will investigate Rahim’s shooting, a routine procedure for shootings involving police.

    The Council of American-Islamic Relations will monitor the investigation, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.

    And a closer look at Canada’s indigenous peoples, 8th Fire: Indigenous in the City

    In the opening episode of the four-part series 8TH Fire, host Wab Kinew, from the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation in Northern Ontario, and now a Winnipeg-based TV journalist, invites us to come “meet the neighbours”. It’s about time, since many Canadians say they have never met an Aboriginal person.

    This vibrant kaleidoscopic hour, introduces a diverse cast of Indigenous characters living in the cities. They are united in a shared bond as Canada’s First Peoples and in their determination to reassert their culture within a wider population of non-Indigenous Canadians.

    “Winnipeg’s Most” are three rising-star rappers, trying to move past their own struggles by using their music to charm kids away from gangster life. In Montreal, Nakuset was adopted in the 1970s by Jewish parents and now, against their wishes, embraces her Aboriginal ancestry. She raises her own kids in their Aboriginal culture and runs a native women’s shelter. In Vancouver we meet siblings Herb Dixon and Leslie Varley. Leslie holds a senior position in BC health, but her much-loved brother has spent years trying to get out of the drug-plagued Downtown East Side. Together their story offers a powerful and moving look at the ties that bind.

    Jordin Tootoo, the first Inuk to play in the NHL, escapes the pressure of urban life with trips back to shoot the puck around in Rankin Inlet. In the art markets of Paris, Montreal and Toronto, the work of Cree artist Kent Monkman sells for six figures. His work is fun and subversive, challenging our most widely accepted notions of the colonial relationship.

    Litigation lawyer Renée Pelletier works in a law office in the big towers of Toronto, but embraces her Maliseet culture. Successful graphic novelist Steve Keewatin Sanderson loves debunking the notion that as an Aboriginal artist he would only draws buffaloes. In Winnipeg, Ron Linklater teaches Aboriginal ways to aspiring community workers, many of whom are immigrants who have incorporated stereotypical ideas about Canada’s First Peoples.

    Dr. Evan Adams, famous for his acting role in the movie Smoke Signals, plays a real-life role as BC’s first Aboriginal Physician Advisor. Kahnawake Mohawk Taiaiake Alfred, an ex-marine, now provocative professor at the University of Victoria, forces us to question our ideas about the place of Aboriginal people in Canada.

    As Edith Cloutier, an Algonquin who runs the Native Friendship Centre in Val d’Or, Quebec, says: “Nobody’s going anywhere. Everybody’s here to stay. Now, how do we work it out together?”

    Going to have to wait and try to find it online, because CBC and Latvia don’t mix well, when it comes to watching things on the internet. :(

  348. says

    Oh no.
    No no no no no.
    Police investigating police shooting of Tamir Rice find ‘no fault with police’

    A police agency investigating the police shooting of unarmed 12-year-old Tamir Rice has concluded the killing was justified, local station NewsNet5 reported today, citing an unnamed source.

    The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio, which conducted the investigation, failed to find evidence that a crime was committed, the source told NewsNet5.

    Tamir was playing at a park near his home with a toy airsoft gun on November 22 when a 911 caller reported a “guy with a pistol” that was most likely fake, the Los Angeles Times reported. The information suggesting his gun was a toy was not relayed to responding officers, who shot and killed him.

    The case will now be handed over to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, who will then present evidence to a grand jury, which will then decide whether or not to indict the officers involved.

    “The County Sheriff’s Office performed the investigation at the request of the City of Cleveland,” read an official statement. “The Sheriff’s Office received the file on February 13, and has performed an extensive, thorough and unbiased investigation. It is now up to the Prosecutor to determine how next to proceed.”

    How can the police not be at fault for shooting a 12-year-old boy literally seconds after exiting their vehicle?! No time to ask him to drop the weapon. No time to assess the situation. No attempt made to try non-lethal force. On top of the fact that they were not made aware that Tamir’s “gun” was most likely not a real weapon…

    I can feel despair setting in.

  349. says

    Cory Booker announces bill requiring police to report all shootings to the DoJ:

    Yesterday the country observed the first annual Gun Violence Awareness Day, which New Jersey Senator Cory Booker honored by announcing new legislation. Senator Booker’s bill would require states to report all police involved shootings to the Department of Justice – even non-lethal shootings. Each state would be required to submit details of the incident including age, gender, race and whether the person was armed. It would also require police to report any death at the hands of police that resulted from other means, like choke holds and Tasers. Senator Booker said he is introducing the legislation because there is currently no comprehensive data base that tracks citizens killed by police.

    “The first step in fixing a problem is understanding the extent of the problem you have,” said Senator Cory Booker in his announcement. “Our legislation is vital to ensuring we have the data required to make good decisions and implement reform measures that are balanced, objective, and protect the lives of police officers and the public.”

    California Senator Barbara Boxer agreed to co-sponsor the legislation with Senator Booker.

    “Too many members of the public and police officers are being killed, and we don’t have reliable statistics to track these tragic incidents,” Senator Boxer said in a statement. “This bill will ensure that we know the full extent of the problem so we can save lives on all sides.”

    The new bill comes at a time when several news agencies are attempting to compile statistics about police shootings in the U.S. These including the Washington Post, which is creating of a database of every fatal shooting by police officers this year, and The Guardian, which has launched project called The Counted, which notes every person killed by a police officer whether by shooting, Taser or other death in custody.

    In announcing the bill, Senator Boxer and Booker noted that according to the Washington Post data, at least 385 people have been shot and killed by police so far in 2015. That puts the country on pace to have more than double the number of fatal police shootings than the average number recorded by the Department Of Justice in the last few years.

    So far there has been no Republican co-sponsor interested in knowing how many citizens are killed by police, and the NRA, which holds their leashes, opposes keeping any statistics concerning gun deaths.

  350. rq says

    Tony
    Well, I think that’s kind of worse than passing it on to other investigators, as the rumour was mongering. :( Shit.
    I don’t even know how they could come to that conclusion. Plus not administering first aid, at all.
    Justified, my ass.

    Anyway.
    A word of caution on the subject:

    Seeing reports that investigation ruled Tamir Rice shooting “justified.” Per my sources with direct knowledge, that is inaccurate.
    The investigation made no recommendation/conclusion about the officers’ actions in that shooting. Just dealt with facts of the incident.
    So someone may have jumped the gun on this one, as other sources say they’re passing the case onto the Grand Jury. But couldn’t come to any proper conclusions themselves.
    Really, it’s been said on twitter and I think it could be true – I think all investigators are absolutely terrified of this case.

    More in a bit.

  351. rq says

    The Role The Police Played In Sparking The Baltimore Violence

    The mainstream media is getting the story wrong with regards to the Baltimore Uprising taking place. Journalists are lazily positing a direct connection between the Freddie Gray protests and the riot that broke out after Freddie Gray’s funeral.

    But that’s not the full story.

    Most of the media are ignoring the fact that the Baltimore Police Department escalated the situation by releasing a press release during Freddie Gray’s funeral that claimed that Baltimore’s most notorious gangs—the Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerrilla Family—were forming a dark alliance to “take out” police.

    Gang members went on television to dispute this press release, saying they “did not make that truce to harm cops.” Still, the Baltimore Police Department decided to do what George W. Bush did when he attacked Iraq: engage in a preemptive attack. The rumors of a lawless purge among local black high schoolers were also swirling. The youth in that area leave school to take public transportation buses to go home, as Baltimore City Public Schools doesn’t have a fleet of buses like most school districts to take children back and forth to school.

    Therefore, two misleading narratives collided to produce a potent recipe for violence. The police assumed that black youth in local gangs were targeting them and that some sort of violent purge was imminent, so they began painting a picture of imminent threat. Convinced that they were under attack and having sufficiently defined the enemy (i.e. black youth) to the press, the police decided to strike first.

    Therefore, police deployed cops in riot gear to Mondawmin Mall to cut off the buses that the children from local schools use to take home before the children got out of school. From there, things descended into violence as frustrated children, trapped on city streets by armored police and cut off from their mode of transportation home, began hurling rocks and bricks at the police.

    The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, turning West Baltimore into the scene of a revolt. The community, already reeling from grief following the funeral of Freddie Gray, decided they had nothing to lose. As the group of children were pushed south (see map), they were joined by the residents of Freddie Gray’s community, Sandtown-Winchester—already demonized and terrorized by police on a daily basis—in the revolt.

    Therefore, the same elements of apartheid policing that have been brought up around the death of Freddie Gray—racial profiling, making a preemptive strike, using disproportionate force, occupation—are there in the roots of the Baltimore uprising. I say apartheid policing because as I’ve written before on this site, when city leaders bring white cops from suburbs into disinvested black communities in urban areas, many cops are bringing longstanding racial biases with them from living and growing up in disproportionately white suburbs.

    Researcher Phillip Goff and his colleagues have shown that white authority figures usually overestimate the ages of black children, viewing them as older than they are and imputing to them less presumed innocence. Their research also shows that white cops also view young black men as animals, specifically gorillas. This dehumanizing view proliferates policing, harking back to specific crude racial stereotypes that posit the innate criminality of black people.

    This is the danger of allowing segregation to continue unchecked. This is the danger of America’s ongoing betrayal of the 1968 Fair Housing Act as Nikole Hannah-Jones has written. The irrational fear of an unholy gang alliance and a “black purge” helped the Baltimore Police Department to incite a riot, when they made their preemptive strike just two hours after Freddie Gray was laid to rest.

    Let’s spread this knowledge far and wide.

    Recipients Of Donations From Prince’s Concert Announced

    The recipients of the proceeds from Prince’s “Rally 4 Peace” concert last month have been announced in a press release sent by the entertainer’s publicist.

    The Baltimore Sun reports the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics and the city’s YouthWorks and OneBaltimore programs will receive the money. The amount of money to be donated was not disclosed.

    On May 10, Prince performed a wide range of hits and his new song, “Baltimore,” a protest anthem for the death of Freddie Gray, who died April 19, a week after he suffered a spinal injury during his arrest and transport without a seatbelt by Baltimore police.

    On May 7, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced the OneBaltimore initiative as an effort to address the city’s deeply rooted problems.

    Comment on the Boxer-Booker measures, Seems like a very watered-down attempt at data collection. Much more detailed info on officer(s) needed. #PRIDEAct

    Baltimore to pay $56,000 to settle lawsuit over police chase

    “It is alleged that prior to the collision, Baltimore police officers were in an unmarked police vehicle in pursuit of Jeffries for approximately six blocks, and that the police vehicle pushed Jeffries’ vehicle from the rear through the red light, causing Jeffries’ vehicle to strike Williams’ vehicle,” according to documents presented to the city spending panel. Rollins’ family filed a lawsuit against the city seeking more than $6 million. That suit will be dropped under the settlement.

    The crash occurred two weeks before Rollins was to celebrate her daughter’s first birthday.

    Police said at the time that Jeffries had been driving erratically in the 1700 block of Hilton St. and fled from an officer who tried to pull him over. Rollins and her mother were driving home from the store about 11:30 p.m. after a late-night run for food and diapers, relatives said. Jadore was in a child safety seat.

    As Rollins crossed Poplar Grove Street at West North Avenue, authorities said, Jeffries’ vehicle drove through a red light, smashing into the passenger side of her car and pushing it into the westbound lanes of North Avenue, where it was struck by an oncoming vehicle.

    Relatives said Rollins’ car folded up “like a piece of aluminum foil.” Police said Rollins died from internal bleeding.

    Rollins was a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and a stay-at-home mother who was “a beautiful, fun-loving person,” relatives said.

    Police Department policy says officers are not to chase suspects except under “exigent circumstances.”

    Lenny Kravitz, Lauryn Hill and Danny Brown Headline 2015 AFROPUNK Festival. Wheee!!

    New York City, your summer was already great but the lineup for this year’s AFROPUNK Festival just made it that much better. Taking over Brooklyn’s Commodore Barry Park, Lenny Kravitz, Danny Brown and Lauryn Hill are hitting the stage on August 22 and 23.

    In addition to the three headliners, Grace Jones and Kelis will co-headline the AFROPUNK Fest while the likes of Goldlink, Raury, Thundercats and Kaytranada will all share their musical talents.

    Kicking off the AFROPUNK Festival weekend is the Fancy Dress Ball, which will be held on August 21 and is a evening filled with live music, art and philanthropy located at the park.

    The event will be held to raise money for the AFROPUNK Global Initiative serving to promote diversity in media and arts and volunteer service.

    To grab tickets to all of the events of the weekend visit afropunkfest.com.

    A portrait of Babe Ruth in 1915: LEFT-HANDER RUTH PUZZLES YANKEES

    His name is Babe Ruth. He is built like a bale of cotton and pitches lefthanded for the Boston Red Sox. All left-handers are peculiar, and Babe is no exception, because he can also bat. Between his pitching and batting at the Polo Grounds yesterday the Yankees were as comfortable as a lamplighter in a gunpowder factory.

    More at the link.

  352. rq says

    Man raises eyebrows carrying rifle through Atlanta Airport. But he was white, so nothing happened.
    …
    Yeah.

    The US government could count those killed by police, but it’s chosen not to. That almost sounds like an accusation, hm?

    For centuries, black communities in America have faced physical abuse and unjustified deadly force at the hands of law enforcement. Modern policing even originated in slave patrols and night watches that captured people who tried to escape slavery. According to the most recent FBI data, local police kill black people at nearly the same rate as people lynched in the Jim Crow-era – at least two times a week. The Guardian’s latest count for the first five months of 2015 puts that number at around once per day.

    But the verifiable impact on black lives of racially discriminatory policing remains largely unknown. Despite federal law authorizing the US attorney general to collect nationwide data on police use of force, there remains no federal database on how often police kill civilians, let alone abuse their authority.

    According to Guardian’s The Counted, police killed 464 people in the first 5 months of 2015, including 135 black people. Their data shows that, in 2015 so far, the black people killed by the police are twice as likely to be unarmed as the white people. According to a recent Washington Post analysis, at this rate, police will fatally shoot nearly 1,000 people by the end of year. The federal government has no way to confirm or disprove this data, though they’ve long had the authority to compile it themselves.

    In 1994, the US Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which authorized the attorney general to collect and publish nationwide data on police use of force. In 2000, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which required states to report any individual who dies in police custody, but lacked proper enforcement and expired in 2006. In December 2014, a new version of the latter act passed again, requiring the attorney general to eliminate federal funding for police departments that fail to comply.

    And just last week, as part of President Obama’s executive order to limit the types of militarized weapons the federal government can transfer to local police, he expanded police data collection of police uses of force, pedestrian and vehicle stops, officer involved shootings and more. But the executive action fails to address the scale of today’s policing crisis or make the data collection mandatory: of 18,000 police departments in the US, only 21 are participating in the new initiative.

    We cannot afford to wait another 20 years for comprehensive, public data on how often local, state and federal police use force. Why? Because transparency is key for accountability. For every Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Mya Hall, Yuvette Henderson, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana-Stanley Jones or Tanisha Anderson, there are thousands of others. Without a database, police will continue to target, abuse, kill and unjustly push black and brown people into the criminal justice system with zero oversight.

    A national database will allow federal officials to identify patterns of misconduct, hold individual officers and departments accountable when necessary, address the policies that incentivize police brutality and implement reforms that allow law enforcement officers to do their jobs while respecting the lives and dignity of all in their communities.

    As we have seen over the past two decades, unless police are required to report stops, arrests, tickets and violence, they won’t. Compliance with data collection and other federal reforms must be tied to funding and Attorney General Lynch has the power and responsibility to make it happen. Powerful police unions, insufficient federal law and piecemeal reforms stand in the way. But with enough widespread public pressure, we can all hold our national leaders accountable for providing the information we – and they – need to keep our communities safe and transform policing.

    The daily courage of black people and their allies who continue to resist the rising tide of police killings means that our national leaders are paying more attention to discriminatory and violent policing than they have in decades. The opportunity for change is great, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

    40 Reasons Why Our Jails Are Full of Black and Poor People. 40 reasons too many.

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports 2.2 million people are in our nation’s jails and prisons and another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the U.S., totaling 6.8 million people, one of every 35 adults. We are far and away the world leader in putting our own people in jail. Most of the people inside are poor and Black. Here are 40 reasons why.

    One. It is not just about crime. Our jails and prisons have grown from holding about 500,000 people in 1980 to 2.2 million today. The fact is that crime rates have risen and fallen/a> independently of our growing incarceration rates.

    Two. Police discriminate. The first step in putting people in jail starts with interactions between police and people. From the very beginning, Black and poor people are targeted by the police. Police departments have engaged in campaigns of stopping and frisking people who are walking, mostly poor people and people of color, without cause for decades. Recently New York City lost a federal civil rights challenge to their police stop and frisk practices by the Center for Constitutional Rights during which police stopped over 500,000 people annually without any indication that the people stopped had been involved in any crime at all. About 80 percent of those stops were of Black and Latinos who compromise 25 and 28 percent of N.Y.C.’s total population. Chicago police do the same thing stopping even more people also in a racially discriminatory way with 72 percent of the stops of Black people even though the city is 32 percent Black.

    Three. Police traffic stops also racially target people in cars. Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers and Hispanic drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. Connecticut, in an April 2015 report, on 620,000 traffic stops which revealed widespread racial profiling, particularly during daylight hours when the race of driver was more visible.

    Four. Once stopped, Black and Hispanic motorists are more likely to be given tickets than white drivers stopped for the same offenses.

    Five. Once stopped, Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to be searched. DOJ reports Black drivers at traffic stops were searched by police three times more often and Hispanic drivers two times more often than white drivers. A large research study in Kansas City found when police decided to pull over cars for investigatory stops, where officers look into the car’s interior, ask probing questions and even search the car, the race of the driver was a clear indicator of who was going to be stopped: 28 percent of young Black males twenty five or younger were stopped in a year’s time, versus white men who had 12 percent chance and white women only a seven percent chance. In fact, not until Black men reach 50 years old do their rate of police stops for this kind of treatment dip below those of white men twenty five and under.

    Six. Traffic tickets are big business. And even if most people do not go directly to jail for traffic tickets, poor people are hit the worst by these ticket systems. As we saw with Ferguson where some of the towns in St. Louis receive 40 percent or more of their city revenues from traffic tickets, tickets are money makers for towns.

    Seven. The consequences of traffic tickets are much more severe among poor people. People with means will just pay the fines. But for poor and working people fines are a real hardship. For example, over four million people in California do not have valid driver’s licenses because they have unpaid fines and fees for traffic tickets. And we know unpaid tickets can lead to jail.

    Eight. In schools, African American kids are much more likely to be referred to the police than other kids. African American students are 16 percent of those enrolled in schools but 27 percent of those referred to the police. Kids with disabilities are discriminated against at about the same rate because they are 14 percent of those enrolled in school and 26 of those referred to the police.

    32 more at the link. A very good comprehensive list of institutionalized and systemic racism in USAmerica.

    I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me – this article was mentioned in the Lounge, and here it is again. With some commentary. First an excerpt:

    In early 2009, I was an adjunct, teaching a freshman-level writing course at a community college. Discussing infographics and data visualization, we watched a flash animation describing how Wall Street’s recklessness had destroyed the economy.

    The video stopped, and I asked whether the students thought it was effective. An older student raised his hand.

    “What about Fannie and Freddie?” he asked. “Government kept giving homes to black people, to help out black people, white people didn’t get anything, and then they couldn’t pay for them. What about that?”

    I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn’t it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let’s talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don’t think it was, how could it have been?

    The rest of the discussion went on as usual.

    The next week, I got called into my director’s office. I was shown an email, sender name redacted, alleging that I “possessed communistical [sic] sympathies and refused to tell more than one side of the story.” The story in question wasn’t described, but I suspect it had do to with whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people. […]

    I am frightened sometimes by the thought that a student would complain again like he did in 2009. Only this time it would be a student accusing me not of saying something too ideologically extreme — be it communism or racism or whatever — but of not being sensitive enough toward his feelings, of some simple act of indelicacy that’s considered tantamount to physical assault. As Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis writes, “Emotional discomfort is [now] regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.” Hurting a student’s feelings, even in the course of instruction that is absolutely appropriate and respectful, can now get a teacher into serious trouble. […]

    In 2015, such a complaint would not be delivered in such a fashion. Instead of focusing on the rightness or wrongness (or even acceptability) of the materials we reviewed in class, the complaint would center solely on how my teaching affected the student’s emotional state. As I cannot speak to the emotions of my students, I could not mount a defense about the acceptability of my instruction. And if I responded in any way other than apologizing and changing the materials we reviewed in class, professional consequences would likely follow.

    I wrote about this fear on my blog, and while the response was mostly positive, some liberals called me paranoid, or expressed doubt about why any teacher would nix the particular texts I listed. I guarantee you that these people do not work in higher education, or if they do they are at least two decades removed from the job search. The academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there’s a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place. And as writer and academic Freddie DeBoer writes, they don’t even have to be formally fired — they can just not get rehired. In this type of environment, boat-rocking isn’t just dangerous, it’s suicidal, and so teachers limit their lessons to things they know won’t upset anybody. […]

    This phenomenon has been widely discussed as of late, mostly as a means of deriding political, economic, or cultural forces writers don’t much care for. Commentators on the left and right have recently criticized the sensitivity and paranoia of today’s college students. They worry about the stifling of free speech, the implementation of unenforceable conduct codes, and a general hostility against opinions and viewpoints that could cause students so much as a hint of discomfort.

    I agree with some of these analyses more than others, but they all tend to be too simplistic. The current student-teacher dynamic has been shaped by a large confluence of factors, and perhaps the most important of these is the manner in which cultural studies and social justice writers have comported themselves in popular media. I have a great deal of respect for both of these fields, but their manifestations online, their desire to democratize complex fields of study by making them as digestible as a TGIF sitcom, has led to adoption of a totalizing, simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice. The simplicity and absolutism of this conception has combined with the precarity of academic jobs to create higher ed’s current climate of fear, a heavily policed discourse of semantic sensitivity in which safety and comfort have become the ends and the means of the college experience.

    This new understanding of social justice politics resembles what University of Pennsylvania political science professor Adolph Reed Jr. calls a politics of personal testimony, in which the feelings of individuals are the primary or even exclusive means through which social issues are understood and discussed. Reed derides this sort of political approach as essentially being a non-politics, a discourse that “is focused much more on taxonomy than politics [which] emphasizes the names by which we should call some strains of inequality [ … ] over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them.” Under such a conception, people become more concerned with signaling goodness, usually through semantics and empty gestures, than with actually working to effect change. […]

    Feminists and anti-racists recognize that identity does matter. This is indisputable. If we subscribe to the belief that ideas can be judged within a vacuum, uninfluenced by the social weight of their proponents, we perpetuate a system in which arbitrary markers like race and gender influence the perceived correctness of ideas. We can’t overcome prejudice by pretending it doesn’t exist. Focusing on identity allows us to interrogate the process through which white males have their opinions taken at face value, while women, people of color, and non-normatively gendered people struggle to have their voices heard.

    But we also destroy ourselves when identity becomes our sole focus. Consider that tweet I linked to earlier, from critic and artist Zahira Kelly, in which she implies that the whole of scientific inquiry is somehow invalid because it has been conducted mostly by white males.

    Eh, okay. Reads a lot like ‘political correctness just sucks, don’t it’ to me.
    A couple of comments from others:
    So yes, the article sounds like White supremacy snd socialized paranoia (not MH) when dominant group think power might be slipping away.
    White fear over perceived loss of DOMINANCE over students or media is NOT even close to real fear from poverty & abuse BW #onhere deal with. (This person had a few more comments on this, I just pulled these two.
    Another next comment.

  353. rq says

    So let me get this straight: You’re a professor, you have a platform at Vox, but The Greatest Threat is WOC expressing themselves on twitter. Heh.

    8 Transgender Women of Color Who Are Doing More Than Just Being Visible

    Caitlyn Jenner broke the Internet yesterday when she introduced herself to the world, becoming the first out transgender woman to grace the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.

    Undoubtedly, Jenner will give some transgender people hope that they can live as their authentic selves—a necessary and affirming message. However, her story—one in which someone can announce that she is trans and less than two months later achieve a feminized aesthetic that reflects who she is on the inside—stands in stark contrast with the realities of trans women of color, who live at the lethal nexus of racism, sexism, cissexism and transphobia.

    In a nation where the average life expectancy of a black transgender woman is 35 and eight trans women, overwhelmingly black and Latina, have been killed this year, it is almost unfathomable and nearly impossible to bypass systems of housing, medical and employment discrimination, school push-out, criminalization, and physical and sexual violence, let alone single-handedly finance gender transition.

    Living one’s truth is always admirable, but Jenner represents the most privileged and least vulnerable class of transgender people: those who have amassed enough resources and social and economic capital to never have to interact with the cycle of poverty (pdf) that colors the lives of far too many trans people who are poor and low-income, people of color, disabled, young, undocumented or otherwise facing injustice at every turn (pdf).

    For these folks, visibility is not enough. They need to be socially and politically prioritized to ensure that they are able to live with dignity and without fear or harm. Here are eight women who are shifting their visibility into power and resources for trans people of color and doing far more groundbreaking work than simply being visible.

    1. Monica Roberts

    As the founder and managing editor of TransGriot, a blog dedicated to reclaiming and documenting black trans history, Roberts—an award-winning writer, activist, lecturer, speaker, native Houstonian and out trans woman for more than 20 years—has curated some of the most groundbreaking (and heartbreaking) moments in black, trans and black trans history.

    2. Janet Mock

    The best-selling author of Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, and host of the MSNBC show So Popular! has consistently complicated one-dimensional narratives of transgender people in popular culture and elevated the needs and experiences of trans people of color through her advocacy and activism.

    3. Laverne Cox

    When award-winning actress Laverne Cox became the first trans person to be featured on the cover of Time magazine in June 2014 in a story dubbed “The Transgender Tipping Point,” the irony that it was also the most lethal month for transgender women in the United States was not lost on Cox. To that end, she invited the mother of Islan Nettles and other trans women of color to march with her during NYC Pride, where she served as a grand marshal.

    4. Precious Davis

    Chicago-based activist and advocate Precious Davis found her passion when she began working at the Center on Halsted a decade ago. “My work [at the center] pulled continuously from my heart and soul with passion each day to create programs, community outreach and events that had a tangible effect on LGBT youth because I believe in young people,” Davis said to the Windy City Times. She is currently assistant director of diversity-recruitment initiatives at her alma mater, Columbia College Chicago, and continues to use her public platform to highlight the challenges that LGBT youths face.

    5. Tona Brown

    World-renowned violinist Tona Brown made history when she became the first trans person of color to perform at Carnegie Hall. In an interview with Out magazine, she said that she wanted her concert, “From Stonewall to Carnegie Hall,” to elevate the roles that transgender men and women played in the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

    6. Angelica Ross

    As the founder of TransTech Social Enterprises, Angelica Ross has dedicated her life to empowering, educating and employing transgender people. Through training academies and apprenticeship programs that don’t require formal education, TransTech is teaching transgender people how to use technology and innovation to save their lives.

    7. Fallon Fox

    Fallon Fox—the only out transgender mixed martial arts fighter and the subject of the forthcoming documentary Game Face—has been going strong in the ring since 2012. She has used her influence outside the ring to bring attention to issues affecting trans youths, like ending conversion therapy, as she did in this Time article.

    8. CeCe McDonald

    Little could have prepared CeCe McDonald for that fateful night in June 2011 when she and her friends were verbally and physically attacked by a man who hurled racist and transphobic epithets at her for simply walking down the street. Her defense of herself and her friends—which earned her a lacerated cheek and cost the man his life—catapulted her to national fame. Since her release from prison after serving 41 months, McDonald has advocated for massive reform—including abolition—of the prison system.

    Arrest warrants issued for proud black families who cheered at this graduation in Mississippi, DailyKos link. Despicable.

    Sigh. This really did happen.

    Have you ever been to a graduation ceremony where you were asked to hold your applause to the very end?

    Well, arrest warrants were issued for several proud black families in Senatobia, Mississippi, who couldn’t hold their applause until the end.

    No, they weren’t violent.

    No, they didn’t have a confrontation with police.

    They just cheered. See the video for yourself here.

    Two weeks later, the superintendent of schools, Jay Foster, in conjunction with the local police, filed charges against the families. […]

    At a time where the nation is talking about problems in the United States with mass incarceration and the over-criminalization of society, rarely has such a clear example of African Americans being overcharged for everyday behaviors as this.

    It’s preposterous.

    Please call and email Superintendent Jay Foster and let him know how you feel:

    Contact info at the link, and seriously, they waited two weeks to press charges? Absolute bullshit.

    We will be at #Ferguson DMV protesting everyday from 9am until. demanding the mayor to resign @FergusonScoop @Nomoremurderz @ShetheStreet RT

    Michael Brelo fought his brother to the point where they had to be arrested, that’s the kind of police officers America hires. Say what, you ask?
    Cleveland Police officer Michael Brelo faces assault charge in Bay Village – so he’ll face more repercussions for fighting his brother drunk than for unloading a stack of bullets into two unarmed black people.
    Gotcha.

    Just days after his acquittal in a trial involving a police chase that left two people fatally shot, Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo faces an assault charge in an incident involving his brother.

    A warrant for his arrest was filed Wednesday in Rocky River Municipal Court, court records said.

    Brelo punched his brother, Mark Brelo in the head, face and body on May 27, according to the criminal complaint.

    He was charged with assault following interviews with him and his brother, court records said. Michael Brelo turned himself in at the Bay Village Police station about 1 p.m. Wednesday.

    Mark Brelo also faces charges of disorderly conduct and misdemeanor assault.

    A citation attached to Mark Brelo’s arrest report says that he was drunk and showed “obvious signs of (a) recent physical altercation.” He was only wearing one shoe and was knocking on the doors of several Bay Village homes before he woke a resident.

    The citation was issued at 4:28 a.m.

    Members of the Bay Village police department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

    A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge acquitted Michael Brelo of manslaughter May 23 in a trial involving a 2012 police chase and shooting that left Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams dead.

    Michael Brelo and a dozen other officers fired 137 shots at the 1979 Chevy Malibu that Russell was driving after cornering the car in an East Cleveland parking lot.

    He remains on unpaid administrative leave pending an internal review of the incident.

    Attempts to reach the Brelo brothers Wednesday morning were unsuccessful.

    Cleveland police spokesman Sgt. Ali Pillow issued a brief statement.

    “The Division of Police is aware of [Michael Brelo’s] current charge and will monitor the pending case,” he said.

    Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Steve Loomis did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the recent arrest.

    Former police union attorney Patrick D’Angelo, who represented Michael Brelo during the four-week trial, said Wednesday that he did not want to comment on the new charges.

    “I don’t represent him or his brother, nor do I know the facts,” he said. “I believe it may all relate to some unresolved, emotional conflict issues over a period of time between two brothers.

    It’s not a pattern of behaviour or a history of violence, it is an unresolved, emotional conflict over a period of time. Totally internal family matter. Yes. Right. FUCK YOU.

  354. rq says

    Pat Buchanan rails at ‘cultural cleansing’ of white Christian men from US history – can I laugh? It seems about the only thing to be done here.

    In a syndicated op-ed this week, conservative columnist Pat Buchanan argues that white, male, Christian historical figures are being “cleansed” from America’s national consciousness.

    Unhappy that Saint Louis University (SLU) is relocating a statue of a Catholic missionary evangelizing to Native Americans, Buchanan published an op-ed on Monday decrying the statue’s move from a prominent outdoor location to a less conspicuous one inside. Buchanan further warns readers of a nationwide “cultural cleansing of Christian males.”
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    As evidence of what Christian men have to put up with these days, Buchanan quotes an SLU student’s description of the controversial statue. It “depicts a history of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and of Christian and white supremacy,” says Ryan McKinley, now in his senior year at the Catholic college. Buchanan disagrees with McKinley’s assessment.

    “If the founder of Christianity is the Son of God,” Buchanan reasons, “then Christianity is a superior religion.” Students and staff at SLU who support the statue’s removal, Buchanan says, “seem to be ashamed of, uncomfortable with, or unable to defend, is the truth for which Saint Louis University was supposed to stand. But simply because they are cowardly, or politically correct, why should that statue be going into the SLU art museum? Why should not they themselves depart for another institution where their sensitivities will not be assaulted by artistic expressions of religious truths?” […]

    Buchanan proceeds to complain about an initiative by “feminists to remove the visage of Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace it with that of a woman.” The former presidential candidate acknowledges Jackson played a role in enacting a federal policy of genocide against Native Americans.

    “Yet, Jackson,” Buchanan challenges, “slashed across the head by a British soldier in the last days of the Revolution for refusing to polish his boots, was also arguably the greatest soldier-statesman in American history.” Buchanan further celebrates Jackson for his role in nearly “[doubling] the size of the United States.”

    “When we look at who is currently on America’s currency,” Buchanan wonders, “George Washington on the $1 bill, Abe Lincoln on the $5, Hamilton on the $10, Jackson on the $20, Ulysses S. Grant on the $50, Ben Franklin on the $100 — do any of these women really compete in terms of historic achievement with what those great men accomplished? Aren’t we carrying this affirmative action business a bit too far?”

    “These women” that Buchanan is referencing specifically in this case include Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. Parks’ civil disobedience against segregation helped spur the abolishment of Jim Crow laws. Tubman saved countless lives by creating the “underground railroad,” a network of safe houses that hosted black slaves during lengthy escape journeys from the American south to regions where slavery was not legal.

    George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, and Benjamin Franklin, meanwhile, enslaved black people while they were alive.

    Police or Predators?

    There is a serious issue in America. Policing has become bias and targeted toward a certain group of people. If you live in suburbia you rarely see the police. Which is strange considering the drug use is pretty equal across the board. I mean, if you think drug use isn’t a white problem boy have I got news for you.

    About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug. 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites. African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense. African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)

    Methamphetamine is a stimulant commonly abused in many parts of the United States. Most methamphetamine users are white men 18 to 25 years of age. It is also prevalent among pacific islanders and mixed races . All drugs are more prevalent among whites compared to blacks. Yet as I pointed out more blacks are locked up for drug offenses then whites. Does this make any sense?

    How come there is never a constant police presence in suburbia? There is crime in suburbia all the time. Time news did a great article on this topic:: [link]

    So what reasons would the police have for not tackling the vast meth, heroin and cocaine issue in suburbia? Why aren’t these arrests higher? Are police protecting dug dealers? Are they racist? Are they told to target impoverished areas so people are caught in and endless loop and guarantees them a job? Most likely. Poor people are targeted by police. I used to believe it was just minorities but it’s the poor and minorities.

    So why would the poor make a good target. Well if you can add scenarios like math. A government paid, government appointed attorney is a sure guarantee to your conviction. Which is your official guarantee as a detained us citizen. Which puts you in the restitution probation money loop and believe me the price is high. Innocent until proven guilty, yet jailed if you can’t afford bail before your guilt is proven. This is the system of slavery we are all in. You either go to work pay your dues, sit in a cell, be a criminal, which leads to a cell or end up homeless living off what you can because screw the man. Anything but doing what you are told and how you are told to do it can get you placed in a cell in this country.
    […]

    Policing has nothing to do with population density or drug traffic. If it did there would be way more white people locked up for Meth,heroin and Cocaine use. Suburbia dwarfs the cities in area and sometimes population.

    Drug abuse isn’t a crime, it’s a disease, a very treatable one. Natural treatment in some countries is working at an amazing pace. Here in America they give you methadone which is not a viable treatment it is just trading one drug for another but this one is taxed by our government. For example Heroin addicts are treated with methadone. […]

    Something needs to be done about the hypocrisy, racist behavior and targeting of the poor in this country by police. Not to mention the asinine government spending and media manipulation.

    The justice dept. has it’s hands full with corruption cases in high places and police departments across the country. The 6 billion dollars spent on mars could have helped a whole lot with all the above problems mentioned in this article by hiring people to take care of these issues. Apparently a dead read planet is more important then you America, so sorry.

    Source: Evidence in Sheriff’s Tamir Rice shooting investigation does not support criminal charges. While that headline does not say ‘justified’, it does say ‘does not support criminal charges’, which is just as bullshit.

    The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s investigation of the shooting of a 12-year-old boy at a Cleveland rec center does not support that a crime was committed, a source familiar with the case told newsnet5.com.

    The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office has turned its investigation into the shooting of Tamir Rice over to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

    The source told newsnet5.com that the “investigation and evidence shows the lack of evidence to support that a crime was committed in the shooting of Tamir Rice.”

    The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office said that they do not decide whether a crime was committed or whether a shooting was justified in cases like these; rather, they present evidence and facts to the Prosecutor and the Prosecutor decides whether to present charges to a grand jury.

    Cuyahoga County officials released the following statement Wednesday afternoon:

    Today, Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney transmitted the findings of the investigation into the death of Tamir Rice to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor. The County Sheriff’s Office performed the investigation at the request of the City of Cleveland. The Sheriff’s Office received the file on February 13, and has performed an extensive, thorough and unbiased investigation. It is now up to the Prosecutor to determine how next to proceed.

    “As I stated in my briefing on May 12, 2015,” Sheriff Pinkney said, “my department has been diligently working on the investigation. We have concluded our work and I have turned it over to the Prosecutor who will take it through the next steps.”

    Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann fatally shot Tamir Rice last November at the Cudell Recreation Center. Tamir had an airsoft gun, which shoots non-lethal plastic pellets. Cleveland Police Office Frank Garmback drove the patrol car involved in the incident.

    Fuck your diligence.

    Marilyn J Mosby Esq. has done it again. – see attached info. She has launched a program to help non-violent offenders re-enter the job market. Kudos.

    Active-Duty NYPD Cop Says Let The Whole City Burn

    I decided to click on the user, as I often will, to see if they are trying to add useful information to the discussion or just spew hatred.

    I quickly found what one would expect from someone with a username beginning with “RottenCity” – a lot of venomous tweets about NYC, including routinely saying “let the whole city burn.”

    He clearly has a racist world view, tweeting exclusively about crimes by minorities, blaming it on “fuck ups of minority youth,” and flatly rejecting that any systematic factors play a role: [tweets]

    What’s more, he seems to believe that there is no possibility of redemption for people who have committed crimes, tweeting over, and over, and over again, that people should “rot in jail and burn in hell.”

    He also says he has “no sympathy” for murder victims if they have ever committed a crime themselves, even after they have served their time, and he condones non-law-enforcement vigilante violence against them, even if that means hanging a black man to death from a tree: [tweets]
    […]

    Perhaps most disturbing is his oft repeated sentiment that the whole city can burn to the ground for all he cares, sometimes accompanied by his request for de Blasio not to attend his funeral, other times targeted at activists for social justice: [tweets]

    This city is, of course, made up of the public who he swore an oath to protect, so he probably should care if it burns to the ground.

    He also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, which first and foremost protects the right to peaceably gather and redress the government for grievances, which he doesn’t seem too fond of, and condones responding to with violence.

    Of course, I can’t do anything to reprimand this officer, or to prove conclusively that he is an active-duty NYPD cop, but I have a hunch that a lot of other NYPD officers know who he is and what his opinions are.

    I strongly hope that those officers are actively working to reform his opinions on the public and policing, or actively working to have him removed from the force, for all of our safety.

    You go, NYPD. Best of the best.

    My sources say sheriff’s investigation of #TamirRice made no rulings/conclusions on charges/justification. Reports to contrary are “untrue.”
    They didn’t make any rulings and they didn’t draw any conclusions because they conducted a piss-poor investigation angled sideways enough to justify those officers acting the way they did. The absence of clear conclusions in such an obvious case is a conclusion in and of itself, if you ask me. Like that whole silence bit.

  355. rq says

    Tamir Rice investigation turned over to prosecutors, so let’s hope they do a better job.

    Sheriff’s officials have completed their investigation into the killing of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland boy who was shot by police while holding a fake gun, investigators said in a statement Wednesday.

    Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney said his office completed its nearly five-month investigation and turned over its findings to County Prosecutor Tim McGinty.

    “My department has been diligently working on the investigation,” Pinkney said in a brief statement. “We have concluded our work and I have turned it over to the prosecutor who will take it through the next steps.”

    Prosecutors will in turn present the case to a grand jury, which will decide whether the two officers involved in the shooting should face criminal charges in Rice’s death. […]

    Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Assn., said the two officers at the center of the investigation did not provide any statements to sheriff’s investigators. Loehmann, who shot Tamir as he stepped out of his patrol vehicle, and his partner, Frank Garmback, did provide an initial statement after the shooting, Loomis said.

    Eight other police officers and dispatchers were interviewed as part of the inquiry, according to Loomis, who said his union “cooperated fully with their investigation.”

    The union faced criticism last month during the manslaughter trial of Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo, after several officers exercised their 5th Amendment rights and refused to testify. Brelo, who shot and killed two people at point-blank range after a wild police chase that sparked a federal investigation, was acquitted last month.

    And related to that (as well as a slew of other cases), Exploring what it means when police refuse to provide medical attention to their victims

    Actions show intent and emotion.

    When I kiss my kids at night and tell them I love them before they go to bed, it’s because how I feel about them emotionally has to be demonstrated to be understood.

    When I push on the brakes of the car as I near a red light, it’s because I want the car to stop. It’s the law for it to stop at a red light, but it’s also the safe thing to do.

    Because I intend to smell good and like to feel clean, I take a hot shower and use soap.

    Our actions and our intentions are not on separate journeys. They are deeply connected.

    So it is with police officers and victims of their violence. Without body cameras, prosecutors and grand juries, which heavily favor the testimony/narrative of officers above all others, almost exclusively choose to believe that the intent of the officers who inflict violence is pure.

    A Washington Post study of every known fatal shooting by an officer found that less than 1 percent of officers who kill ever serve a day in jail.

    In Broward County, Florida, since 1980, 168 people have been killed by police. Not a single officer has been charged.

    In New York City, since 2000, 179 people have been killed by police, and not one single officer has served a day in jail.

    It’s nearly impossible to prove exactly why an officer who killed someone truly did it. Even if the person, like Rekia Boyd, was unarmed and in a crowd of completely unarmed people, and an officer is in a car dozens of feet away, if he says he feared for his life, the law allows him to blow her head off. After all, what’s more frightening to an armed officer in his car than some young unarmed black people walking through Chicago?

    In essence, officers are legally allowed to act on the worst emotions, regardless of fact, and the law protects them, as we’ll explore below. […]

    This story can be repeated thousands of times with new names and locations across the United States. However, one thing the police are doing across the country could show their true intent more than anything else.

    After police officers shoot or critically injure someone, claiming they did it out of fear, they are refusing to provide first aid to surviving victims.

    Before we describe these cases, ask yourself this question: What is the appropriate ethical human response to shooting or injuring someone who you soon find didn’t actually pose the threat to you that you expected?

    Let’s make it more personal. If you shot or seriously injured someone you cared about on accident or based on false information, what would the appropriate ethical response be to such a thing?

    Let’s flip it another way. If someone you loved was shot or seriously injured by a stranger, based on false information, how would you hope that person would respond in the immediate aftermath?

    Or we can try it one more way: What would you think about if you learned that someone mistakenly shot or injured your most precious loved one and acted like it mattered not in the immediate aftermath?

    This, in fact, is what police are doing from coast to coast across the United States. Below are stories, devastating stories, of men and women who were critically injured by police—and then ignored while they fought to survive. […]

    Sadly, this list is by no means exhaustive.

    It did not include Sgt. James Brown of Texas, who begged for medical attention and mercy from law enforcement until he never spoke another word.

    It did not include Natasha McKenna, who was tasered and tortured until she was completely brain dead.

    This report did not include a full explanation of how Pasadena police shot unarmed Kendrec McDade at point blank range and handcuffed him, refusing him essential first aid after falsely claiming he shot at them.

    It did not include Mike Brown, who was critically injured before he was fatally wounded by more gunshots from Officer Darren Wilson.

    Ultimately, the law is not even clear, and actually varies from state to state, on whether or not police are even required to provide first aid to those they injure. In other words, while police are allowed to shoot or critically injure you, they are under no obligation in most states to provide you any aid afterwards.

    This position paper from the California Law Review explores the various legal protections given to police who simply opt not to provide aid to those who are in distress.

    The Florida attorney general in 1989 also wrote a position piece on the same topic here.

    Ultimately though, it is my belief that officers in these cases may very well have wanted their victims to die for explicit legal protection.

    What if Freddie Gray had lived?

    What if Akai Gurley had lived?

    What if Natasha McKenna had lived?

    Have you ever seen the videos of police frantically attempting to rescue someone they critically injured like you or I would do if someone we cared about was hurt? I haven’t. Maybe they exist, but in far too many cases, police, after doing so much harm, appear to stand back like cold-hearted killers.

    Please read the list of names and incidents in between. It’s not easy reading, but it reflects a pattern of behaviour on behalf of police, who show a very distinct lack of empathy to the human beings they have harmed, either deliberately or not. And that is atrocious.

    Baltimore prosecutor handling riot cases says he intends to subpoena @GuardianUS in relation to video we filmed following Freddie Gray death.

    Justice Department Settles with School District to Desegregate Elementary School Classrooms in Ruston, Louisiana. In 2015.

    The Justice Department has announced that the United States District Court of the Western District of Louisiana yesterday approved a court-ordered agreement with the Lincoln Parish School Board to desegregate classrooms at four elementary schools serving students in grades K-5 in Ruston, Louisiana. The department and the board jointly filed the consent order, after an investigation by the United States found significant racial isolation in the elementary school classrooms (called homerooms) within the Ruston attendance zone.

    Under the consent order, the board will implement the following changes at the four elementary schools in Ruston:

    assign students to homerooms so that the percentage of black and white students in each homeroom reflects the percentage of black and white students in each grade level at each school;
    refrain from grouping students into homerooms based on students’ perceived abilities and ensure that students of all academic levels are assigned to each homeroom;
    ensure that no homeroom class has more than forty percent special education inclusion students; and
    if the board chooses to continue operating the Advanced Learning Academy (“ALA”) program, it will transform the ALA program into a school-wide, racially diverse enrichment program designed to develop the gifts and talents of all students.

    The consent order is part of a longstanding desegregation case monitored and enforced by the United States. In reviewing the board’s compliance with previous orders on student assignment, the department concluded that the board was engaged in a variety of practices that contributed to the racial isolation in the elementary school homerooms. These practices include the board’s use of ability grouping and the manner in which the board implemented its special education inclusion and ALA programs.

    “We commend the Lincoln Parish School Board’s commitment to resolve this case by addressing the racial isolation in its elementary school homerooms in Ruston,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta of the Civil Rights Division. “This consent order reinforces the Civil Rights Division’s steadfast commitment to ensuring that all students have access to equal educational opportunities, regardless of race or color.”

    “This order is a significant step for the Lincoln Parish School Board toward achieving the goals of desegregation and equal access to education for all students,” said U.S. Attorney Stephanie A. Finley of the Western District of Louisiana. “We look forward to continuing to work with the Board to ensure that these changes are successfully implemented.”

    Upon full implementation of the consent order, the board may seek court approval to dismiss the desegregation case in the area of student assignment in December 2016.

    Promoting school desegregation and enforcing Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a top priority of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

    Colorblind: On Witcher 3, Rust, and gaming’s race problem – with another racism-in-gaming article to come.

    Everyone used to start as a bald white man, then the developers decided to alter avatars’ race and face.

    Here’s the catch: You don’t get to choose.

    As lead developer and studio owner Garry Newman wrote: “Everyone now has a pseudo unique skin tone and face. Just like in real life, you are who you are – you can’t change your skin colour or your face. It’s actually tied to your SteamID [how the game recognises you].”

    Thus player choice of skin color was removed. It should be noted that you don’t see your character, as it’s first person. Other players, of course, can. Newman continues:

    “There’s a lot of skin colors in the world, and it’s really easy to appear racially insensitive when doing this. This is compounded by the fact that everyone is really used to seeing [the player avatar] as a white guy, so when you see him as a black guy it feels like he’s just ‘blacked up.’ So we’re spending a lot of time trying to lessen that effect.”

    Many white gamers expressed concern, as Megan Condis documents, disliking being forced to think about race and having to play someone who didn’t match their own race. “The problem is lack of freedom of choice,” one claimed.

    Writing on Steam, another user said: “I was going to buy RUST today! But I am a white guy and dont [sic] want to take the chance [!] of playing a black character.” Another said this was “forced politics.”

    Ignorance about race dynamics in games — and media in general — is coming to light here. As a person of colour, I am almost always forced to play a white person in games. This is quite standard, given straight white men are predominantly the main character in games… and, well, every creative medium.

    You see the problem. When white gamers are forced to play people not of their race, it’s “forced politics;” when I’m forced into the same scenario, it’s business as usual. When you complain, you’re making a fuss and being political. The argument is a bit scary when you break it down: The only way games can avoid politics in this situation is to pretend that people of color don’t exist.

    We should raise concerns about race, but it needs to be consistent. Race shouldn’t only be an issue for gamers when some white gamers express concerns. […]

    Let’s look at a few uncomfortable facts. Almost every Witcher 3 review I came across was written by a white man — excellent writers and all of whom I respect. But games media itself is, like the tech world, a very white-male dominated area. This is why we got a hundred articles confronting the Witcher 3 devs about less pretty grass physics, but not a single article asking them about no people of color.

    As a person obsessed with graphics, and still sore about Watch Dogs, downgrade questions concern me, too. But I’d hope more folk would be asking questions about entire races not existing in a game world and why. But the lack of persons of colour, and the lack of questions about our absence, comes from ignorance rather than animosity.

    It probably just wasn’t even considered. That is itself the major issue. It’s not just that people of color weren’t in the game, it’s that so few people in the gaming press noticed.

    Just as major media and consumers have been vocal about gender representation — with Call of Duty and now FIFA including playable female characters in upcoming games — we should want such discussion about race as well. Diversity of voices should be key and we should actively want and demand voices of color alongside white men. […]

    As Anjali Patel highlights: “Whitewashing takes over the limited space people of color have to exist in the entertainment industry as complex, multifaceted individuals, and then shuts them out completely.

    “Whereas: “Racebending… counters that, in a way. It demands a space for people of color to exist in franchises where they are severely underrepresented.”

    Thus, wanting more people of color in stories that focus on mythology for a predominantly white culture doesn’t work the other way. Wanting white people in spaces dedicated to people of color ignores that stories of white people already dominate this and other creative industries.

    It’s “What about me?” when everything is already about you.

    Further, the defense of excluding people of color from a fantasy game is nonsensical. We are talking about being comfortable with the inclusion of wraiths and magic, but not the mere existence of people of color. Accuracy and realism flew out the window with the harpies.

    “Historically accurate” is another common defense for many awful actions in fiction; but also doesn’t make sense when you’re not talking about actual events or even the Planet Earth. We see this ridiculous excuse used to defend Game of Thrones’ most recent high profile use of sexual assault, even though it took place in a world where magic is exists and during a scene that originally focused on another character.

    The Witcher world itself features Zerrikania, whose inhabitants seem very much inspired from the Middle East. In the first Witcher, a prominent Zerrikanian character is named Azar Javed, an Arabic name. Like mine! Culture and names are welcome, but skin color, it seems, is not. […]

    Indeed, it shows again that humans are white humans and everyone else is non-human and oppressed. I’m not against racism being depicted; the game actually shows racism and bigotry as bad. But even Elves have the opportunity to exist. People of color don’t.

    Again: This is literal dehumanising of people of color. We are relegated to non-human species, their treatment is supposed to mimic real-world racist policies. This sci-fi/fantasy trope of dealing with racism by showing inter-species treatment could work — if all the humans weren’t all white.

    If anything, making us short, bearded white Scottish men, or very white, pointy-eared thin people reinforces how dismissed we are — by not even being considered human. […]

    Tolerance, not toxicity, is what we should aim for. That such hostility exists at all is the problem and it perpetuates the silencing of our concerns — leading to marginalised people leaving white-male-dominated industries altogether.

    Games have progressed dramatically — not in terms of graphics, but demographics. With more people from more areas of life being represented, we perhaps are going in the right direction. But when we still have major games made that feature no people of colour, when gamers still refuse games because of characters’ race or gender, it means we aren’t there yet.

    We can be. It’s not about changing bigots’ minds — it’s about all of us wanting to improve. And we can start by listening, and ignoring those who claim that simply existing as someone who is non-male and non-white is somehow political.

  356. rq says

    Batts in Baltimore apparently gave ap ress conference. On the unrest and the robbed pharmacies…
    Batts on # of murders “These are not numbers. These are people- human beings who lost their lives in streets of Baltimore.”
    Batts: # of pharmacies looted during riots now at 27 pharmacies and 2 methadone clinics. Enough drugs to keep Bmore intoxicated for a year;
    Batts: warrant apprehension task force arrested over 80 ppl w’outstanding warrants in last wk. Asked federal agencies to send more officers.
    It’s been fascinating to watch Baltimore Police Commissioner Batts spend so much energy on everything but ending corruption.
    Aha.

    University of Chicago Uses Extreme Force to Shut Down Peaceful Sit-in & Arrest 9 Trauma Center Activists, have a few pictures of this.

    At 6pm today, the University of Chicago Police Department sent in Chicago Firefighters to the UofC administrative building to cut through drywall with axes and break through glass windows with crowbars and a power saw. Protestors had been peacefully sitting-in the building to protest the U of C’s refusal to open an adult trauma center.

    Nine arrests have been made and all nine activists are being held at the 51st and Wentworth police station. As of 10am CST on Thursday, June 4th, Arrestees have yet to be booked. #FreeTCC9

    “The Trauma Care Coalition is horrified by the course of action that the University of Chicago chose to take in the face of peaceful protest,” said Veronica Morris-Moore, a leader from the Trauma Care Coalition, adding that she was “scared by the University’s use of force.”

    Student organizer Anna Nathanson agrees: “I was terrified of the UofC administration today. Not only do they refuse to open a level one trauma center, but they are not above terrorizing their own students engaging in peaceful direct action.”

    The Chicago Fire Department smashed UofC administration building windows in the faces of Trauma Center activists as they peacefully asked for a meeting with UofC President Zimmer to discuss the possibility of opening an adult level 1 trauma center on the Side Side.

    One bystander commented, “The University would rather have their property destroyed by the Chicago Fire Department than agree to meet with the Trauma Care Coalition.”

    However, organizers plan to continue as scheduled with their planned disruptions of the alumni weekend celebrations. Student organizer Aqsa Ahmad remarked, “Intimidation and repression from the University of Chicago will not stop our weekend of actions. There will be no more business as usual for President Zimmer until he agrees to meet with the Trauma Care Coalition”

    But I see the article already has most pictures I wanted to put up anyway.

    Inkster residents face tax hike in beating settlement – repeat news. Still not good.

  357. rq says

    Is there an update to the #OtisJamesByrd case? (background link at the link)

    Turmoil reigns in Wellston city council meeting over police department being disbanded. Disbanded, good – turmoil, not so good. Perhaps they rushed the process and didn’t think through the follow-up?

    A heated crowd Wednesday in Wellston as the city council is meeting for the first time since the police department got dissolved earlier this week.

    It was a very tense situation inside of this building as the meeting got underway; one of the council members was kicked out.

    Over 100 people showed up to tonight’s city council meeting. It`s the first since Tuesday’s dismantling of the city`s police department. The meeting was packed with people who demanded answers as to why the police department was dissolved without public input. And others who thought it was a good idea. On Tuesday Wellston became part of the North County Policing Cooperative. Council members who voted no are calling the change a hostile takeover.

    The North County Policing Cooperative includes Wellston, Vinita Park and Vinita Terrace. New officers were also on hand to speak with the community. Council members have also turned in sunshine law request to get more details about the contract regarding the new coop. They also discussed a unity event set for this Saturday.

    The contract with the coop is for one year, with an out after 9 months.

    At very looooooong last, a DEPARTMENT of African American Studies at Princeton! File that under General Good News Long Delayed.

    Black family faces jail time for cheering teen at a Mississippi high school graduation, yah, I know, repeat, but I can’t seem to get over it.

    “I can understand they can escort me out of the graduation, but to say they going to put me in jail for it,” Miller said. “What else are they allowed to do?”

    Exactly.

    Interlude: Basketball! Lebron James dominated Stephen Curry on Facebook in posts about the NBA playoffs, but Stephen Curry has the cuter kid.

    The research team tallied all the data from the start of the NBA playoffs on April 18. Since then, 26 million people on Facebook have created more than 165 million posts, comments, and likes about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. James, the 4-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), has his kingdom firmly set in the East and South. Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and the team’s home state of Ohio mark eight of the 19 states where James was mentioned more than Curry in every county.

    Curry is the reigning MVP in the NBA, but not the most talked about NBA player. He did not win every county in any state, although he was the most talked about in 48 of the 58 counties in California. However, Mecklenburg County, where Curry led its Davidson College basketball team on an improbable run to the Elite 8 in the 2008 NCAA tournament, mentioned James more than Curry.

    The glaring disparity in popularity between the two superstars is not remotely shocking. James is playing in his fifth straight NBA Finals, has won four of the last seven MVP awards, and his jersey has been the highest selling in the NBA for the past six years. Curry plays in the Sunshine State but that’s a candle next to the sun when compared to the man that many consider the best player in the world.

    Another comment re: Batts’ comment on pharmacy looting being the cause for recent upswing in violence, Last time I checked, there weren’t any gun manufacturing plants in the hood. And heroin isn’t made at the corner store.

  358. rq says

    The Most Important Lesson Pharrell Taught Us About Style

    That is: It’s weird. In the beginning, HBA hoodies and T-shirts helped usher in an era of huge logos and luxury designer gear that aped common streetwear tropes, instead of the other way around. Instead of Stüssy flipping a Chanel logo, now it was the big fashion houses that were doing the cultural sampling. As HBA and Shayne Oliver evolved, the designer moved beyond the large logos and Frankenstein Timberlands towards an overall aesthetic that blurs the line between tailored menswear, couture womenswear, and club-inspired gear that wouldn’t look out of place at a fetish party.

    Oliver’s designs have garnered his label equal parts praise, criticism (cue one particular A$AP Rocky lyric), and “WTF?!” reactions from the average person​. At last night’s CFDA awards, HBA designer Shayne Oliver and CEO Leilah Weinraub rolled up with “cool girl/model” Binx Walton in these outfits:

    So fine, HBA is weird. Very weird. But it’s wonderfully weird. ​Just like Pharrell.

    From the jump, Pharrell was an anomaly. He was a Virginia Beach kid with a Filipino best friend he literally met at band camp. He was into skateboarding, wore tight T-shirts, trucker hats, pastel polos, and made trends out of bright sneakers inspired by cartoon characters like Spongebob Squarepants and full-zip hoodies in whimsical prints featuring pagers, spent cigarettes, and buttered waffles.

    Pharrell’s lasting impact on hip-hop style, streetwear, and how we dress ourselves today is that he reminded us how amazing it is to be individuals. And individuals sometimes like the same things, the same brands, or the same sneakers, but the important thing is we wear them in a way that makes them our own.

    “That which makes us different is what makes us special, and that’s okay,” he said last night upon accepting his award. Sure, Kanye West is more of a Fashion-with-a-capital-F guy and has a wardrobe worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the dividing line between him and Pharrell is that while he trades in the currency of taste, Pharrell has always traded in the currency of vibes. It wasn’t about how a song or a sneaker or a hoodie made you look, it was how it made you feel.

    @deray In 1973 Rolling Stone highlighted a botched drug raid and murder coverup. There is a legacy. #BlackLivesMatter

    More on the Trauma Centre in Chicago, U. of C. Barricade Torn Down, 9 Arrested at Trauma Center Protest

    Police and firefighters broke through the wall and window of a University of Chicago administration building Wednesday evening after nine protesters barricaded themselves inside, demanding a meeting with the university president to discuss opening a trauma center.

    The protest began around 4 p.m. Wednesday, with police and firefighters beginning to force their way in around 6 p.m. They broke through drywall with axes, used crowbars to pry open a window frame, then used a power saw to cut through a bike lock that was keeping doors closed.

    University officials said the protesters were blocking access for the disabled and needed to be moved.

    All nine protesters were put in handcuffs around 6:30 p.m. and taken away by police to Wentworth District headquarters.

    All nine have been charged with three misdemeanors, mob action, resisting arrest and trespassing, and continute to be held at the Wentworth District, according to Jeremy Manier, a spokesman for the university.

    The nine detained were Kelvin Ho, Emilio Comay Del Junco (a U. of C. graduate student), Greg Goodman, Victoria Crider, Caroline Wooten, Veronica Morris Moore, Alex Goldenberg, Jackie Spreadbury and Michal David.

    Another 15 protesters were standing outside the Civic Engagement Office building at 5801 S. Ellis Ave., chanting as police pulled on the doors locked with a pipe through the handles, though none of them was detained by police.

    Protesters have promised four days of protests as the university gets ready for Alumni Weekend.

    “If you give us anything on this list, we’ll come out,” Veronica Morris Moore yelled to university police through the barred door.

    The protesters’ demands include a meeting with university President Robert Zimmer by the end of the week; raising the age limit to 21 for Comer Children’s Hospital pediatric trauma center; participating in a U. of C. feasibility study on opening a trauma center; and securing agreement on a trauma center before accepting the Barack Obama Presidential Library.

    More at the link.
    Meanwhile, This is just the start! Join @TraumaCenterNow for actions all week! #TraumaCenterNow, schedule at the link.
    Elecators in @uchicago admin bldg have been shut down, lobby occupied demanding #TraumaCenterNow #BlackLivesMatter

  359. rq says

    Black America is getting screwed: Shocking new study highlights the depths of economic disparities – what’s funny is that this isn’t shocking anymore, and it’s not particularly new information. It’s just never been examined by white eyes before.

    Before being assassinated, Martin Luther King envisioned a Poor People’s Campaign descending on Washington to demand better education, jobs and social insurance. He saw it as an extension of his work on civil rights, equal in importance and scope. In “a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education, adequate health services, meaningful employment, and even respect,” King wrote in announcing the Poor People’s Campaign, “all of us can almost feel the presence of a kind of social insanity which could lead to national ruin.”

    Forty-seven years after the Poor People’s Campaign ended, political discussion in liberal activist circles has bifurcated in unnecessary ways. There are separate economic and racial justice movements, and as my Salon colleague Joan Walsh points out, political leaders too often speak to only one or the other. But these movements are different facets of one fight; if black lives matter, surely their economic lives matter too. And a new report shows that people of color still face discrimination and hardship in their fight for economic dignity, as sure as they do in the fight for basic respect.

    The report, released today by the think tank Demos and the NAACP, focuses on African-American and Latino workers in the retail industry. While we’re supposed to believe that e-commerce and Amazon’s dominance has destroyed retail, the industry is actually the fastest growing in America, representing one out of every six new jobs in the economy last year. And while low wages and occupational hazards define retail work generally, that experience is even worse for people of color.

    According to the Demos/NAACP study, black retail workers are nearly twice as likely to be living below the poverty line as the overall workforce. African-Americans and Latinos have fewer supervisory roles in retail relative to white counterparts, and more low-paid cashier positions. Among retail workers of color, there are more involuntary part-time employees, who want more hours but cannot receive them. And Black and Latino workers make less than their similarly situated colleagues — 75 percent of the average wage of a retail salesperson, and 90 percent of the average wage of a cashier, for example.

    This isn’t all that different from the broader labor force, and it suggests a racial gap that resembles the gender gap on wages and opportunity — and is far worse when it comes to unemployment. Men and women are unemployed at the same rate, but African-Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed. It’s happening despite statutes like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, intended to make racial discrimination on the job illegal. Yet despite recent high-profile racial discrimination settlements with major retailers like Walgreen, Walmart and Wet Seal, economic results for people of color remain weak. Median black family income is actually less than it was relative to white families 50 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

    Drawing on data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey from 2012 to 2014, the report finds that 17 percent of black retail workers and 13 percent of Latinos live in poverty, compared to 7 percent of white workers. “Altogether, more than 40 percent of Black and Latino retail workers are in or near poverty, despite holding down a job,” the report notes. […]
    Poverty wages and limited mobility for black and Latino workers plays a role in segregating communities and increasing despair. Wall Street preyed on these same communities during the financial crisis, which generated the largest destruction of black and Latino wealth in history. The racial bias inherent in leaving people of color behind is as clear in the workplace as it is in oppressive police responses. Black Lives Matter and the Fight for 15 have recognized this, supporting one another’s actions.

    The racial wage, employment and opportunity gap erodes the basic respect for black and Latino families. It’s as much a problem on the job as it is in the streets, even if it’s carried out in a less violent manner. The nation doesn’t talk about this enough; there’s no “Equal Pay Day” for African-Americans and Latinos. But there’s a civil rights movement that can insist that earning enough money to support a family represents a basic fight for justice. The more that’s denied, the more it will be delayed.

    La. Deputy Allegedly Called Sheriff’s Office Employee ‘Stupid, Ungrateful N–ger’

    A sheriff’s second-in-command in Louisiana is accused of discriminating against a co-worker and using a racial slur against the employee, the New Orleans Advocate reports.

    Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jerry Ursin allegedly threatened employee Ronald Coleman Sr., calling him a “stupid, ungrateful n–ger” during an altercation involving parking last summer, the news site notes. According to the report, outsiders witnessed the altercation, which became the topic of discussion in the sheriff’s office at the time.

    Ursin, a veteran law-enforcement officer, is white. Coleman, who is an engineer for the office, is black. In a discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court last week, Coleman claims that he was “verbally assaulted.”

    Coleman claims that the incident began in August 2014, when he went to look into a “hot complaint” on the second floor of an administrative building for the sheriff’s office. The engineer looked at the air conditioning units on the roof but needed to check units inside the building, requiring the use of a ladder.

    Coleman claims that he parked his department-issued vehicle in the parking lot, only to be approached by an angry Ursin.
    See Also

    Cleveland Cop Michael Brelo Arrested 4 Days After Being Acquitted in 2012 Shooting of Unarmed Couple
    A Calif. Teen With Special Needs Gunned Down for Wearing Red Shoes in Wrong Neighborhood
    Texas Dad Charged With Murdering Son, Reportedly Over Potty Training
    Pregnant Texas Teen Allegedly Beaten and Kicked in the Stomach by Relatives
    NY Teen Arrested After She Rejected Cop’s Advances Settles Lawsuit for $45,000
    Md. Woman Dies After Receiving Butt-Enhancement Silicone Injections in an NYC Basement

    “Do you know that you are blocking my parking?” Ursin demanded, according to the complaint. Ursin allegedly continued his disparaging comments, accusing Coleman of not acknowledging the “Do not park” sign and calling him “ungrateful, selfish and just plain stupid.

    Coleman says that he “attempted to explain and offer an apology … but Deputy Chief Ursin requested his name” and employee identification before saying, “You will pay for this.”

    In the lawsuit, Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who is black, and Ursin are listed as defendants. Coleman is seeking unspecified damages and a court order “permanently restraining [the defendants] from engaging in such unlawful conduct,” the Advocate notes.

    Video released in fatal Carrollton officer-involved shooting

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released video of last week’s fatal shooting involving a Carrollton police officer.

    The pair of audio-less one-minute clips — seemingly taken from surveillance cameras at a nearby auto dealership — appear to show the moment Cpl. Chad Cook shot and killed 40-year-old Kenneth Joel Dothard. At about the 25-second mark of one video, Cook can be seen raising his hands in front of his chest before taking a few steps backward as Dothard falls.

    Little else is decipherable.

    According to information previously released by the GBI, Cook reported to the area near Bankhead Highway and Burns Road around 9 p.m. Thursday, responding to a 911 call made regarding a suspicious person with a gun at a nearby bank. The 7 1/2-year veteran of the Carrollton Police Department found Dothard there and noticed what appeared to be a holstered handgun.

    While context for the subsequent shooting is largely lacking in the video released Monday, it’s better captured in audio recordings of the encounter.

    The audio, released Friday, captures Cook speaking with Dothard calmly and coolly for about eight minutes. He repeatedly asks Dothard about his firearm before calling for backup.

    Dothard can then be heard growing agitated and asking why backup is necessary.

    “I’m going to have to have another unit to come out here with me right now because of the questions I’m asking you,” Cook says. “You’re making me feel like you know you shouldn’t have a gun on you.”

    At that point, Dothard allegedly puts his hand on his gun.

    “Don’t take that gun out!” Cook cries. “Do not take the gun out!”

    “Do not touch me,” Dothard replies.

    As Dothard allegedly continues to remove the weapon, Cook shouts: “Don’t take that gun out or I’ll shoot you.”

    About two seconds later, two shots can be heard, followed by Cook shouting into his radio.

    “Shots fired,” he says. “Shots fired. Shots fired. Suspect is down.”

    Dothard was struck in the head and killed.

    Cook has been placed on paid leave while the GBI investigates the shooting at the request of Carrollton police Chief Joel Richards.

    Yeah, they all look the same, don’t they? Case of mistaken identity lands Durham teen in jail

    A Durham high school student was handcuffed and hauled off to jail for a crime he says he didn’t commit.

    The teenager’s mother turned to ABC11 for help, calling it a case of mistaken identity.

    It was last week when LaVerne Johnson got a disturbing phone call. Her son said there was a warrant for his arrest and that he was going to jail.

    Johnson says her son Marquis Whitaker, 17, was publicly humiliated.

    “They went into my son’s class and arrested him. He was handcuffed, fingerprinted,” said Johnson. “This can, like, affect him.”

    The high school junior was charged with misdemeanor simple assault. He claims he doesn’t even know the alleged victim who took out an arrest warrant.

    The listed victim claims Whitaker– or someone with the same last name– grabbed him and tried to punch him.

    Durham County authorities went in search of Devon Whitaker, the named suspect in the arrest warrant. It’s just one a few discrepancies his mother found.

    “His name is not complete. It’s Devon Whitaker,” explained Johnson. “My son’s name is Marquis Devon Whitaker. It says that he’s 21.”

    Johnson pointed out the alleged suspect’s address which is different from their home address. The suspect’s date of birth was also missing on the arrest warrant.

    The Durham County Magistrate’s Office tells ABC11 an approximate age is sometimes allowed. After an alleged victim takes out a warrant on their own, authorities search for the suspect’s name in a statewide database. Then law enforcement is notified and the warrant is served.

    “How did they get his name from wherever they looked and chose him,” Johnson asked. “It clearly has to be mistaken identity.”

    So he’s in the system now, whether he would have been anyway or not.

    Officer in Tamir Rice Case Was Accused of Choking and Beating a Woman. A history of violence. And these people are cleared to be police officers in high-stress situations.

  360. rq says

    Police Give Update on Officer-Involved Taser Death on Tremont Street

    While many questions still remain about the incident that ended in the death of Richard Gregory Davis, 50, police said on Monday that cell phone video could give them some answers.

    “We have obtained at least one cell phone video from a cooperative witness which does show a small portion of the incident,” Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said. “We have also located a home security camera video which does have some view of the vehicle on it. We’re still trying to analyze now what time the vehicle is portrayed in that.”

    On Sunday morning, police say Davis did not obey their orders to stop his truck after a number of hit-and-run crashes on Tremont Street. Once out of the truck, they say he continued toward officers with his fists clenched even after they demanded he stop.

    Police say six officers were involved in the incident and the one who used the taser, Officer Thomas Frye, is an eight-year veteran and Taser certified. He is also on the response team for emotionally disturbed persons.

    Rochester Police Officer Dan Carlson, who is also the master taser instructor, explained when they typically use the taser.

    “The type of behavior that we would reserve that for with the subject was displaying active fighting behavior, closing the distance aggressively, attacking, fighting stances,” Carlson said.

    He also explained why another tactic like pepper spray may not have been used.

    “Pepper spray would be something that we might deploy even a little bit earlier than the taser,” Carlson said. “The taser we can deploy it from a safer distance, than for instance punches.”

    Carlson also added weather is a factor in deciding what tactic to use as well.

    Although Davis’ family said they the taser is what caused his death, noting he was 300 pounds and had a breathing problem, Carlson said being overweight can actually lessen the taser’s effectiveness.

    “Overweight by itself wouldn’t cause any particular extra concerns,” Carlson said.

    Even so, Ciminelli said they are working to make arrangements to speak to the family directly.

    “My message to them, as I said, is that they have our prayers, our sympathy and our thoughts, that this occurred,” Ciminelli said. “I can assure them that we will do a full, fair and thorough investigation to determine the facts and we will hold ourselves accountable for what we did and that’s my message to the family.”

    Time Warner Cable News reached out the Medical Examiner’s Office for Davis’ cause of death, but it hasn’t responded.

    It’s ridiculous.

    Family of man fatally shot by police in Lyndhurst library hires lawyer

    Relatives of a man who was fatally shot by police inside the Lyndhurst public library last week have hired an attorney but are not prepared to publicly comment about the shooting, at least not until receiving additional information from law enforcement, the Bergen County NAACP said Monday.

    The library reopened Monday for the first time since Friday afternoon’s shooting and Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli provided an additional detail about the utility knife police say the suspect pulled on officers before they shot him, describing it as being “like a box cutter,” with a razor for a blade.

    Kevin K. Allen, 36, who had been living in Lyndhurst and was wanted on a warrant for failing to report back to the Bergen County Jail as part of a work release program, was fatally shot by police officers on the library’s third floor, an area that contains computers for Internet access and a children’s room. Molinelli said detectives have talked to “a lot of witnesses” and police have said at least one child was among them.

    Anthony Cureton, president of the NAACP’s Bergen County chapter, said Allen’s family members had told him they were waiting to get more information from Molinelli’s office before deciding whether to publicly discuss the shooting. They also are waiting for relatives who live out of state to arrive in New Jersey, he said. Allen’s family members have not responded to messages left by The Record since Friday seeking comment.

    Allen had been wanted on a warrant issued on April 3 when he allegedly failed to return to the jail after spending the day at a job as part of a work-release program, according to jail records. He had been held at the jail since March when, according to jail records, he was arrested on a 2012 charge of being in arrears and a 2011 charge of improper behavior, a disorderly persons offense.

    As Allen walked into the library Friday, authorities said a township police officer recognized him and followed him inside, where he attempted to make an arrest. Molinelli declined to comment when asked whether the officer could have waited for Allen to exit the library, which was crowded with patrons.

    “It’s easy to say that after there has been a tragedy,” Molinelli said. He added that police were required to make arrests on warrants regardless of the nature of the offenses.

    “It’s not for police to decide how important it is,” Molinelli said. […]

    One patron, Roberta Murphy, called the shooting “a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” Another, Karen Kennedy, said she was disappointed the library didn’t reopen open on Saturday. It is scheduled to be closed on Sundays. “The library to me is one of the best places in the world,” Kennedy said.

    Cindy Paterno, who has lived in the township since 1999, said she thought it was “insane” that some residents said they might go to different libraries because of the shooting. “I’m not in the least bit worried,” Paterno said. “I feel perfectly safe.”

    Is she white?

    Black Drivers in St. Louis Charged with Resisting Arrest at Four Times the Rate of White Drivers

    Black drivers pulled over by law enforcement in the city of St. Louis in 2014 were four times more likely be charged with resisting arrest than white drivers. In St. Louis County, they were more than twice as likely to face such charges.

    That’s according to an analysis by Empower Missouri, which drilled down statewide statistics collected by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. Those same statistics led to a report from the office yesterday showing that black drivers were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over by police than their white counterparts.

    Now Empower Missouri has drilled more deeply into those numbers — offering insight both into what happens after drivers are stopped, and the track record of individual law enforcement agencies.

    The social justice group will discuss its findings at a press conference in St. Louis this morning.

    As Don Love, the agency’s Human Rights Task Force Chair, explains, the statistics compiled by Koster’s office aren’t as helpful as they might be from a strict legal standard. One big reason is that there’s no way to determine the racial breakdown of actual drivers on the road in any given municipality, which is key in arguing disparate treatment for minorities. Even for the statewide statistics, Koster was forced to use the percentage of driving-age population as a base number. That’s an imprecise base, at best, to argue that black drivers are suffering disparate treatment.

    But the datasets collected by Koster’s office do allow for a precise comparison on one front: what happens to drivers after they’re stopped. The base population — all drivers who were stopped by law enforcement in Missouri in 2014 — is meticulously defined, with each driver’s race documented. […]

    In St. Louis County, according to Empower Missouri’s analysis, drug dogs were called in for black drivers at a rate of 2.6 times that of white drivers. In St. Louis city, the disparity wasn’t quite so bad — but dogs were still called in for black drivers at a rate of 1.4 times that of their white counterparts.

    The rates of consent searches also showed disparity. In St. Louis city, officers were 1.4 more times more likely to ask to search a black driver’s vehicle. In St. Louis County, they were 1.2 times more likely.

    But nothing compared in either jurisdiction to the rate of drivers being cited for resisting arrest. In St. Louis city, black drivers were charged with resisting arrest 4.2 times as frequently as white drivers. In St. Louis County, it was 2.6 times.

    Those charges suggest a need for further training, Love says.

    “In some jurisdictions, officers have the skills to keep the situation from getting out of hand,” he says. “Some are good. Others aren’t quite so good. If you see a department has very few resisting arrests cases, and the disparity is also low, it’s a good sign they’re doing what they should be doing.

    “If it’s a high number,” he adds, “it doesn’t necessarily indicate bias. But they could use cross-cultural training. If the officers had better training on deescalating these situations, we’d see a lot fewer incidents we’d regret after the fact.”

    Overall, Love says, a preliminary look at the data suggests some improvement. Both Clayton and Ladue police departments did a good job, he says, and Ferguson’s numbers are pretty good as well.

    “In general, as bad as the numbers are in Missouri, there are some things that don’t look so bad,” Love says. “But there is definitely room for improvement. When a rate goes from a four to a three, that’s good — but the three is still bad when you’re the motorist being affected.”

    Baltimore jail’s appalling conditions may explain seven deaths, lawsuit says – I bet not just seven.

    Lawyers acting for the 2,500 people held by the State of Maryland in Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) say they have uncovered a shocking litany of problems with the jail that subjects detainees and prisoners to “serious harm, including death”. They describe the jail, one of the oldest custodial institutions in the country that was built in its current form before the civil war, as a “dank and dangerous place, where detainees are confined in dirty cells infested with vermin. The showers are full of drain flies, black mold, and filth”.

    A motion filed on behalf of the detainees with the US district court for the district of Maryland on Tuesday accuses the state officials who run the jail of violating the eighth amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. It calls for the federal courts to impose a binding order that would force the institution to bring both its physical infrastructure and medical care services up to basic humane standards.

    Baltimore was the location of recent unrest over the death while under arrest by local police of African American 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Though the new legal challenge against BCDC is not connected to any of those events, and the timing of it is coincidental, its findings do point to a serious problem in the way that African Americans are treated in the next stage of their exposure to the criminal justice system after being arrested – their detention awaiting trial.

    Some 90% of all those locked up at BCDC are awaiting trial. While African Americans make up 62% of the city’s population, they form about 80% of the BCDC population and a staggering 95% of all juveniles who are held there.

    The most shocking allegations contained in the motion relate to allegedly preventable deaths. A footnote chronicles seven detainees whose deaths since 2013 may have been preventable, the motion says, amid evidence that they suffered from an absence of the most elementary medical treatment. In a further six deaths, medical treatment, or the lack of it, may have played some part, the action claims.

    More at the link, but it’s not pleasant reading. :/

    Baltimore City Council growing impatient over police body cameras

    Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in December vetoed a City Council bill that would have put cameras on officers. She said the bill had too many legal holes.

    With recent events in mind, City Council members renewed their fight over that veto.

    In light of the Freddie Gray arrest, City Council members are growing impatient with the mayor’s move toward a pilot program to equip city police officers with body cameras by the end of the year.

    “At this point, a pilot is too slow. A pilot does not provide the citizens, nor the Police Department, what they need. We can’t afford another event to plague our city,” said Councilman Nick Mosby, D-District 7.

    A City Council resolution introduced Monday night, is asking the police commissioner and the Department of Finance to immediately get federal funds to get the cameras on officers sooner.

    But the mayor’s office told 11 News that paying for the cameras isn’t the holdup, because the city can get reimbursed later. The mayor’s office said the delay involves getting the camera software purchased and tested and getting officers trained.

    Based on recent hearings on the matter, Councilman Jim Kraft, D-District 1, said the Department of Finance has not received all the information it needs from the Police Department to get the pilot program moving.

    “We asked the administration to come in and bang their heads together and get them to be operating on the same page as quickly as possible, and get those cameras out on people’s bodies ASAP and not (by) Christmas,” Kraft said.

    The City Council resolution also calls for a quicker way to put cameras in the back of all police transport vans. The mayor’s office told 11 News that she will have an announcement soon about that kind of camera.

    Alleged Klansman Turned Little Rock Police Officer Sued in Death of Black Teenager. THIS IS WHO GETS HIRED.

    It appears an Arkansas Klansman may have traded in his hood for a badge.

    The family of a 15-year-old Bobby Moore, fatally shot by a Little Rock police officer, plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit. The officer, who had alleged connections to the Ku Klux Klan, killed Moore in August 2012.

    Over the course of his brief career with the LRPD, Josh Hastings “amassed many violations of police policy and earned many days of suspension,” attorneys for the Moore family said in a statement. “A disproportionately high percentage of individuals upon whom he used force were African-American or non-white.”

    Attorneys contend former patrolman Hastings, who was fired in 2012, had known associations with white supremacist groups prior to joining the department. Hastings is also the son of a high-ranking LRPD officer, and the family’s personal relationship with the police chief may be one reason that information was concealed.

    “Before Hastings was hired as an officer, the City learned that he had attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting. At that time, an African-American LRPD lieutenant drafted a memo in opposition, calling Hastings’ association with the KKK ‘an abomination,’ and identifying Hastings as ‘an unfavorable candidate and a potential liability’ to the LRPD,” the statement continued.

    It went on: “In addition to excessive force, the complaint will allege that a widespread custom of tolerating police misconduct and untruthfulness by its officers created a culture in which LRPD officers believed there were no penalties for committing such acts at the expense of Little Rock citizens, particularly, African-American citizens.”

    Attorneys for the family allege it was those customs that caused the teenager’s death.

    Michael Laux, who also represents the family of Eugene Ellison, is the lead attorney in the case. Ellison was unarmed when he was shot inside his own home by a Little Rock police officer. No criminal charges were ever brought in the case and no one has been reprimanded. The elderly Ellison was the father of two Little Rock police officers.

  361. rq says

    ~ Message to the DOJ~ We do not want #Ferguson Mayor John Knowles III in office when you deliver the Consent Decree.

    Going to preface the next article with the author’s own warning: My next story needs a trigger alert. It’s brutal. One of the ugliest cases of police murder I’ve ever seen. I don’t even have words…
    Shocking new video shows unarmed Utah man was listening to headphones when killed by police. No, not that one, the other one. The other one.

    On August 11, 2014, Dillon Taylor walked out of a local Salt Lake City, Utah, convenience store minding his own business. He wasn’t armed. He wasn’t committing a crime. He was listening to music on his headphones, probably in his own world.

    Just two days after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed an unarmed Mike Brown in Ferguson, Taylor would soon face a similar fate at the hands of a local officer. And on October 1, the district attorney in Salt Lake City, Sim Gill, ruled that the killing of 20-year-old Taylor was justified. Even in his determination, though, he stated that “Taylor’s shooting was justified not because he posed an actual threat, but because (Officer) Cruz reasonably perceived a threat.”

    Now that the full video has been released, it’s disturbingly clear that nothing about this police shooting was justified. Nothing at all.

    At 0:17, Officer Bron Cruz gets out of his vehicle. You will notice people confused by his presence.

    At 0:22, Officer Cruz walks past two men who were friends with Dillon Taylor.

    At 0:24, Officer Cruz walks behind Taylor, who has on a white T-shirt and is listening to music.

    At 0:33, we see the officer has his gun drawn and is yelling at Taylor, who’s holding his sagging pants up and does not appear to hear Cruz.

    At 0:36, the officer shoots Taylor. It would be fatal.

    Starting at 0:41, you will notice the headphone cord coming out of Taylor’s pocket.

    At 0:48, you will see that the headphones were clearly going up to Taylor’s ears.

    At 0:52, the officer asks Dillon to “give me your hands,” but Taylor is already near death. His friends begin screaming and crying in the background.

    At 1:03, the officer handcuffs Taylor.

    At 1:48, the officer turns Taylor over, the headphones are visible, and the officer states “it’s clear”—meaning that Taylor was actually unarmed.

    At 2:54, the officer turns Taylor completely over, keeping him handcuffed, and begins talking to him and trying to get him to talk. Taylor appears nearly dead and is completely covered in blood.

    At 4:56, the officer is rummaging through Taylor’s pockets instead of providing any first aid.

    What can you say to that?

    Alderman frustrated by increase in violent crime, response from city hall

    St. Louis Alderman Antonio French said he is upset by the increase in murders in the city and how city hall is responding to the problem.

    French said the city’s main strategy, hot spot policing, is not doing anything to solve the problem. Instead, French said it is simply shifting the crime to other areas. So far, there have been 72 murders in 2015 and the murder rate is expected to pass 2014 numbers.

    “The hot spot policing approach has become a whack-a-mole approach. What we want to see is a comprehensive long tern plan for those neighborhoods that have seen a history of violence through the years,” French said.

    French also said 2,000 people may be shot in the city by the end of 2015.

    French said his solution differs from St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, who wants to hire more police. The alderman told News 4 investment is needed in neighborhoods that have been forgotten. French said an example is a stretch of north Florissant where he is working to open North Campus, a summer academy and after school center. The campus is on a block full of abandoned buildings.

    “The violence we see happens in those areas that have the highest level of disenfranchisement, the highest level of disinvestment, the highest level of vacancy, the highest level of concentrated poverty. The violence we see is really a symptom of the situations we allow to exist in our neighborhoods,” French said.

    I make a note of this article especially, because Mr French has been besieged by one twitter troll in particular, who insists that there is nobody in the activist/protestor community who cares about black-on-black crime and that Black Lives Matter is a sham. This is only his latest public opinion and statement on the high levels of crime in St Louis. And he’s not the only one who cares.
    So there.

    Wisconsin Cop Cleared in Internal Probe of Tony Robinson’s Death

    A Wisconsin police officer who shot an unarmed teenager has been cleared of wrongdoing by an internal departmental review, officials said Wednesday.

    The Madison Police Department released the results of its internal affairs investigation, which concluded that Officer Matthew Kenny did not violate the agency’s policies on use of force.

    Kenny was cleared in a criminal probe last month, when prosecutors said his March 6 killing of 19-year-old Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. was “lawful.”

    Prosecutors determined that Robinson had Xanax, mushrooms and marijuana in his system and that multiple witnesses told investigators he’d been “tweaking out,” jumping in front of cars and intimidating bystanders.

    The departmental decision allows Kenny to return to active duty, the Associated Press reported.

    The shooting occurred after police responded to 911 calls that Robinson was running into traffic and threatening bystanders before he went back inside a friend’s apartment. Kenny followed Robinson inside the home and shot him seven times during a physical confrontation in which he feared for his life, investigators said.

    One dashcam video released by investigators shows the moment Kenny walks into the apartment from an outside entrance, firing seven shots as he backs away. “Stop right there, don’t move!” Kenny screams. The actual altercation is not seen. But part of Robinson’s body is visible on the ground outside the front door.

    Yes, the officer is returning to active duty.
    Ya really think he should, PD?

  362. rq says

    Michael Brelo. Cartoon: “More white-on-white crime to report…”

    #GamesSoWhite hashtag attempts conversation about race in games, and goes as well as you’d expect

    People on Twitter are using the #GamesSoWhite hashtag to start conversations about whiteness as “default” in video games and fantasy in general, particularly the idea that while dragons and super-weapons are usually embraced with an easy suspension of disbelief, the presence of people of color in these worlds is “just not historically accurate”.

    Tanya DePass, creator of the #INeedDiverseGames Twitter hashtag and Tumblr community, is just one of the people who’s led this conversation—she did a great piece here at Offworld on the “historical accuracy” argument as regards her favorite franchise, Dragon Age, and spoke to Arthur Chu at Salon about her diversity activism: “It’s more common to see a blue hedgehog than a person of color as a protagonist in a game,” she said. “And it wears on you.” […]

    One catalyst for the renewed discussion seems to have been Tauriq Moosa’s great new piece about race in games, particularly a troubling double standard that exists: Players given no choice but to play a black avatar are being “forced” for political reasons, but people of color who argue they rarely have choices except to play as a white person are met with hostility. […]

    A quick check of the hashtag shows all kinds of the most predictable arguments: If you don’t like it, don’t play it; people who care what color they play as are the real racists; minorities who want diversity are the real attackers, wanting to talk about it makes you the real problem, you’re “forcing quotas”, or “stifling expression”, things like that.

    You probably need a strong stomach to peruse the tag, which, as usual, demonstrates why it’s necessary.

    Some sample tweets at the link (the good ones).

    Ferguson police email deletion and search questioned

    For the past weeks, 5 On Your Side Investigates has been pouring through more than 2,000 pages of Sunshine Law requests concerning Ferguson, looking for information you haven’t heard before.

    Missouri has a public records law – the “Sunshine Law” — so you can find out what public officials are doing – and how your tax dollars are being spent.

    5 On Your Side is trying to examine what local officials were saying to each other in emails after the shooting in Ferguson.

    The documents we’ve uncovered raise new questions about what has – and has not been released.

    It’s something concerned citizens have wondered about since the day Michael Brown died.

    Would emails between Ferguson police and other officials shed any light on the shooting, the protests, law enforcement and National Guard reaction?

    We reviewed copies of open records requests from reporters and private citizens across the country, and around the world, that flooded Ferguson in the days and weeks after the shooting.

    Many of them asking for those emails.

    But one request stands out, from a reporter whose name may forever be associated with Ferguson’s open records searches, Jason Leopold.

    “I wanted every officer’s inbox to be searched,” Leopold said in an interview with 5 On Your Side. “I had assumed all the email boxes were searched.”

    Leopold, with the international online news channel Vice News filed, an open records request asking for “any and all emails” police sent about Brown and the protests in the five weeks that followed.

    He made national headlines when he had to pay $1200 for the search which produced seven email exchanges he published.

    That’s right, just seven emails, in more than a month.

    When we asked about the city’s search procedures, Ferguson’s city manager issued a statement.

    “The City has instructed the contractor to search all emails on the system,” said Ferguson City Manager John Shaw. “Including deleted emails for the keywords provided by the requester.”

    But we started asking more questions when we discovered a report on the email search.

    It’s from Acumen Consulting, the St. Louis-based company the city hired to do the email search.

    One line describes the search process.

    “Per City of Ferguson policy, it is assumed at this time that no one has violated the ‘no email deletions’ policy,” the document sent by Acumen to Ferguson says.

    What’s that mean? Two computer experts we consulted called it unusual.

    “This does not appear to be a thorough search,” said Minneapolis based cyber-security expert Mark Lanterman.

    Lanterman says although the consultant may have searched for some deleted emails, the only comprehensive way to do a search is to look for deleted – and purged deleted – emails, too.

    That’s because even after you hit delete – and clean out your trash box – they sometimes survive deep in a computer’s memory.

    But if you check the email search contract, there is a section called “Assumptions and Conditions.”

    The “Assumptions and Conditions” clause from Acumen states: “It is our understanding that no one has intentionally deleted or purged email.”

    St. Louis computer expert Vinnie Troia says making an assumption like that is like putting blinders on the search, and in his professional opinion, the Ferguson email search was not complete.

    “It isn’t,” Troia said. “As you’re looking at a forensic process, the first thing you’re looking at is deleted items.”

    No one knows for sure whether there were any deleted emails, but it raises the possibility that a hidden pool of them went undetected, a possibility Vice News’ Leopold said Ferguson officials didn’t explain, and that he didn’t know until 5 On Your Side contacted him.

    “No, no idea at all,” Leopold said. “I’m absolutely suspicious about what was deleted in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death.”

    And when you read the consultant’s report carefully, you discover even he thought additional searches could have been done.

    “It is possible to perform a ‘per computer deleted item search,'” the consultant told Ferguson officials it would “require 30 minutes per computer request.”

    The report goes on…

    “Per our discussion regarding budget control, I have stopped the search at five hours and am presenting the results,” Acumen said in its final report to Ferguson officials on the search.

    That has the reporter who paid big bucks for what he thought was a complete search – wondering:

    “I do believe there is a smoking gun out there someplace and it’s likely in someone’s trashbin,” Leopold said. “I’m outraged, and I think the public should be as well.”

    We contacted the consultant, Acumen, multiple times trying to get clarification about all of this. No one responded, but no one has suggested the consultant is a fault.

    Without a complete search, experts say there is no way to know whether there are any deleted emails.

    To find out, 5 On Your Side Investigates filed an open records request for every deleted Ferguson email since August.

    The city wants a down payment of $500 before they start. We’ll let you know what we discover.

    … Yep, that’s a thorough investigation if I’ve ever seen one.
    NOT.

    Madison Officer Who Shot Tony Robinson Cleared Of Wrongdoing, Will Return To Active Duty (Think Progress).

    Officer in Tamir Rice Case Was Accused of Choking and Beating a Woman, Mother Jones on the history of violence of Timothy Loehmann.

    Interlude: Jazz! Celebrating “Lady Day” turning 100

    Many artists African and otherwise in the 21st century have paid homage to Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 –July 17, 1959). Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia and was renamed “Lady Day” by tenor saxophonist Lester Young who was called “Prez.”

    Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse and Cassandra Wilson are the first to come to mind when I think of 21st Century artists who are in debt to Holiday. Wilson recently appeared on the Tavis Smiley show and talked bout her respect for “Lady Day.”

    Wilson’s latest project, “Coming Forth by Day,” honors Holiday, who would have turned 100 years old this year. She was crowned by Time magazine as “the true heir of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.” A native of Jackson, MS, she was classically trained on piano from age 6.

    “I am in that lineage of singers. I see myself in that line. Abbey Lincoln was very close to my heart, very dear to my heart. And she was my mentor. And of course, the icon that Abbey followed after was Billie Holiday. That the one of the connections. She is a musician’s singer. The musicians all love her. Because she has a certain approach to the music and a certain way of getting down in the trenches with the guys. I do that as well.”

    Many learned of Holiday’s life by watching the Berry Gordy (Motown) produced film “Lady Sings the Blues.” Angela Davis has pointed out in her volume, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism that, “The most common portraits of Billie Holiday highlight drug addiction, alcoholism, feminine weakness, depression, lack of formal education, and other difficulties unrelated to her contributions as an artist.”

    The record reflects that Holiday had contradictions like all human beings. However, Holiday was a “race” woman who stood up for herself as an African woman born in the United States. She is known internationally for the Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan) penned song, “Strange Fruit.”

    “Strange Fruit,” recorded in 1939 when Holiday was 24 years of age, portrays the United States as the “Land of the Tree and the Home of the Slave” and not the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” […]

    After “Strange Fruit” the other song that Holiday is known for is “God Bless the Child.” “God Bless the Child” was written by Holiday and Arthur Herzog in 1939. “God Bless the Child” became Holiday’s most popular and covered record. Holiday’s rendition of the song was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1976.

    I remember reading Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues which she wrote with William Duffy. In this volume she indicated that an argument with her mother over money led to the song. She indicated that during the argument her mother said the line (“God bless the child that got his own.”) “God bless the child who’s got his own” is a truth that many of us in the world African Liberation Movement took to heart. Cultural-freedom has to be political.

    “Lady Sings the Blues” is another song that should be singled out. It was written by Holiday, and jazz pianist Herbie Nichols. It is the title song to her 1956 album. The song was also chosen to be the title of the 1956 autobiography by Holiday and author William Duffy, and the 1972 movie starring Diana Ross as Holiday.

    Billie’s accompanied by Charlie Shavers (trumpet), Tony Scott (clarinet, arranger), Paul Quinichette (tenor saxophone), Wynton Kelly (piano), Kenny Burrell (guitar), Aaron Bell (bass) and Lenny McBrowne (drums).

    Moseka has the last word about this great ancestor. Says Moseka, “(Billie) Holiday was a philosopher and a queen without a court. She never sold her soul, and there has never been a more beautiful woman on the stage than Billie Holiday.”

    What is ‘feminine weakness’?

  363. rq says

    Pressure builds on Missouri officials after statewide report on racial profiling practices

    Missouri state officials are under pressure to respond to a report that shows disparities between blacks and whites in traffic stops are the worst they’ve been since the state began collecting data 15 years ago.

    According to the annual report released by the Attorney General’s office on Monday, black motorists in 2014 were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over by police officers than white motorists.

    A coalition of social justice groups is calling on Attorney General Koster and other state officials to take meaningful steps to address the issue.

    “This is data. This was not testimony; this was not video of an experience. These are just cold hard numbers,” said Montague Simmons, executive director for the Organization for Black Struggle, at a press conference on Tuesday.

    Simmons criticized Koster and Governor Jay Nixon for allowing the problem to persist.

    “We’ve been collecting this data since the year 2000. Our current governor was then attorney general and Koster’s been in office for a number of years. We still do not have a system of accountability that allows us to say that something real could be done.”

    The coalition includes nearly a dozen regional organizations, which, as of June 2, include:

    · ACLU Missouri

    · Anti-Defamation League, Missouri/Southern Illinois

    · Don’t Shoot Coalition

    · Empower Missouri

    · Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council

    · Missouri Civil Liberties Association

    · North County Churches Uniting for Racial Harmony and Justice

    · Organization for Black Struggle

    The coalition is calling on Attorney General Koster to convene a policing summit to address racial profiling before the end of 2015.

    Executive Director for Empower Missouri Jeanette Mott Oxford said the summit would look at ways to promote impartial policing and improving police and community relations.

    “We need better training with police and that needs to include training about unconscious bias. Community conversations between police officers and community groups are absolutely essential to making that happen.”

    A spokeswoman for Koster said the Attorney General’s office has scheduled to meet with Mott Oxford to discuss the coalition’s ideas and convening a statewide summit on policing.

  364. rq says

    So there’s an event going on, here’s some quotes pulled:
    “People want to commodity everything about blackness but the pain, and we’re giving it to you for free.” — @deray #eyeo2015
    “Protest is not the solution but #protest is the space-maker.” @deray #blacklivesmatter #eyeo2015 #eyeo
    “tell the truth in ways that empower people” @deray @samswey, thank you for your every word. #eyeo2015
    “when your proximity to whiteness increases, so does your legitimacy.” @deray pushing back on the concept of “real data” devaluing narrative
    @deray “black people were telling the truth about the police for their entire life. it’s just becoming mainstream now” #eyeo2015
    Can we use digital spaces to disrupt culture? For policy change? #sketchnotes of @deray & @samswey talk at #eyeo2015

  366. rq says

    Well, hell, why not? Implementing once she’s in office might be more of an issue, but hey, why not? Hillary Clinton Calls For Automatic, Universal Voter Registration

    Hillary Clinton in a speech on Thursday called for universal, automatic voter registration, saying every citizen in the country should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt-out.

    Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University in Houston, where she was receiving the Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award. She also said Republican-led efforts in several states to further regulate voting and voter registration disproportionately harm both underrepresented communities and young people, adding that Republicans need to “stop fear mongering” about the “phantom epidemic” of voter fraud.

    Clinton also called for a national standard that would require every state in the country to offer at least 20 days of early in-person voting, including keeping polling stations open on weekends and evenings.

    During her speech, Clinton also called on Congress to pass legislation to give the federal government power to review changes to state voting laws before they go into effect. A Supreme Court decision in 2013 struck down a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act that required certain states to have their voting changes pre-cleared by the Justice Department or by a panel of federal judges before they were implemented.

    How does this apply to those convicted of non-violent crimes and the like?

    25 Shocking Facts About the Epidemic of Police Brutality in America. Is it still possible to be shocked?

    The recent unveiling of the Counted, a tracking system designed by the Guardian to count the number of civilians killed by police, has brought more attention to the seeming epidemic of police brutality in the U.S.

    The tool comes at an important time. It seems every week new names of victims of police violence appear in the media. Twitter users often create hashtags to remember the fallen, many of whom are unarmed black victims, but activists can only recount so many heartrending stories of people killed by police.

    Recent news coverage of high-profile shootings in places like Baltimore and Cleveland have arguably raised public awareness of the fact that police abuse is a problem, but without data, it is hard to make a strong case regarding what to do about the perpetuation of overpolicing and police abuse throughout the country.

    Facts don’t lie. The more the public is armed with facts, the better advocates can make the case for systemic overhauls. To that end, here are 25 actual facts about police brutality in America.

    1. The number of people killed by police in 2014: 1,149, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative collecting data on police killings nationwide.

    2. The number of people killed by police so far in 2015: 470, according to the Guardian.

    3. The percentage of those people who were women: 4.6%, or 22 people, according to the Guardian.

    4. Of those women, the percentage who were women of color: roughly 41%, or 9 people, according to the Guardian.

    5. The number of people killed by police so far in June: four.

    6. The state where two of the four shootings took place this month: Texas.

    7. The likelihood that a black person killed by police, like 22-year-old Rekia Boyd (killed in Chicago), will be unarmed: Twice as likely as a white person killed by police, according to the Guardian.

    8. The group as likely as black Americans to be killed by police, according to 1999-2013 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Native Americans — like 30-year-old Allen Locke, who was killed by police in Rapid City, South Dakota, the day after he attended a #NativeLivesMatter Anti-Police Brutality Rally in December 2014.

    9. The number of Latino people killed by police in 2015: 67, according the Guardian.

    10: The percentage of those people who were unarmed, like 16-year-old Jessie Hernandez (killed by police in Denver in January): 25%.

    11. The age of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a black girl fatally shot by police as she slept on a couch in her family’s Detroit home: 7.

    12. The age of Tamir Rice, a black boy from Cleveland fatally shot by police while holding a fake gun in November 2014: 12.

    13. The name of the 27-year-old black trans woman who was killed by police in Baltimore in 2015: Mya Hall.

    14. In 2014, the state that led in police killings of civilians: California, according to KQED.

    15. The number of states with zero police killings of civilians this year: four, according to the Guardian — North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont.

    16. The state that ratified a tough immigration law in 2010, which critics have denounced as a doorway to profiling and overpolicing undocumented, and documented, Latino people: Arizona.

    17. The city that has paid out a whooping $129.7 million between January 2011 and September 2014 to settle civil rights lawsuits against police: Chicago, according to the National Journal.

    18. The number of full-time state and local law enforcement agency personnel according to the most recent Department of Justice data: 765,000.

    19. The estimated number of black Americans now incarcerated in the U.S.: 1 million (of 2.3 million) according to the NAACP.

    20. The number of officers involved in police misconduct cases in 2010: 6,613, according to the Cato Institute, a public research think tank behind the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project.

    21. The number of police officers convicted of a crime for killing a black person while on duty in 2014: Zero, according to Mapping Police Violence.

    22. The most common form of police misconduct in 2010: excessive force, according to the Cato Institute.

    23. The second most common form of police misconduct in 2010: sexual assault. Oklahoma City police Officer Daniel Ken Holtzclaw, for example, faces charges for allegedly sexually assaulting 13 women.

    24. The hefty estimated costs associated with civil judgments and settlements related to misconduct-related cases in 2010: $346,512,800, according to the Cato Institute.

    25. The number of centralized and federally operated up-to-date police misconduct tracking systems: Zero.

    It seems the Cato Institute is more on top of this than the government. True?

    Serena won a championship in a mostly white sport, in the most lilywhite country, in front of lilywhite crowd, & crip walked in celebration.

    Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Are Shutting Down Disneyland for North’s 2nd Birthday. On some axes, they have all the privilege. :P

    Every parent wants to give their child the world, but Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are reportedly giving North West something even better for her 2nd birthday. The couple is shutting down Disneyland for a private birthday party, InTouch reports in a story not yet online.

    If the report is true, North West will have the ultimate stunt of a birthday. Children from all over the world won’t be able to visit the Mecca of youthful joy and wonder for one day because Nori is turning two years old. She can’t even go on the good rides, but that doesn’t matter because she’ll have plenty of room to be wheeled around on a suitcase or whatever else it is she likes to do for fun.

    North’s first birthday party was dubbed Kidchella and included a Ferris wheel and lip-syncing stage. This year will no doubt be better, and her third birthday will need to take place on the moon to continue the pattern of escalation.

    Sadly, though, she’s only turning 2, and probably won’t remember the event. But I suppose they can do a repeat for her 10 year old anniversary. :)

    Video of #MikeBrown leading the line at his graduation. Think of all the times this should’ve been shown.

    Flashback: President Johnson delivers commencement speech at @HowardU, June 4, 1965.

    Not seeing crowds surround these cops making it hard to work in West Baltimore like the PC has said. Just… you know…

  367. rq says

    Need that song again. This will have to do.

    This is from last August, but still relevant: Young black victims are killed twice in America―once by gun, second by media. Let the victim be the victim this time. #Ferguson

    Investigator | McGinty wanted sheriff to make Tamir Rice finding

    Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty made a last-minute phone call to Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney in an attempt to force the department to issue a finding in the shooting death of Tamir Rice.

    Multiple sources have confirmed to WKYC Chanel 3 News that McGinty called the sheriff Wednesday, just before Pinkney was to publicly announce the end of his department’s months-long probe of the Tamir Rice shooting.

    The case was then to be forwarded to McGinty for review and a likely grand jury presentation.

    The sources say McGinty asked Pinkney in the phone call to make a recommendation on whether two Cleveland police officers should be charged in the November shooting of the 12-year-old child, whose death has sparked an international outcry against police.

    Neither Pinkney nor McGinty responded directly to calls for comment later Thursday afternoon. Through separate spokespersons, each denied that McGinty requested a recommendation on charges from sheriff’s investigators. There was no further comment.

    The case has increased public pressure on McGinty’s office to bring criminal charges against police.

    At the same time, police supporters defend the officer, saying the shooting was regrettable but justified. Police say the officer fired on Tamir when the boy reached for a air-soft replica gun in his waist band.

    McGinty’s relationship with the Cleveland police is already at a low point.

    Last month, McGinty’s office failed in its effort to win a manslaughter conviction against Patrolman Michael Brelo in the 2012 shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

    Sources familiar with the Wednesday phone call to Pinkney believe McGinty wanted the sheriff to make a finding or take a position on whether criminal charges were appropriate.

    When Pinkney said no recommendation of charges would come with his department’s final report, McGinty insisted one be made, two sources familiar with the case told WKYC News. Pinkney again declined.

    Finally, McGinty asked Pinkney for time to review the case before it was officially turned over to prosecutors.

    Pinkney again declined.

    I’ve met people over the last #300days that have looked out for me more than folks I have known my entire life. That’s love. #Ferguson

    Black, woman, queer, young. “We live at these intersections that are often ignored.” -@bdoulaoblongata #reprojustice #funds15

  368. rq says

    A coroner has ruled 22 y/o Matthew Ajibade’s death, found dead in restraints at Chatham Co. jail, as a homicide. Question is, what happens next?

    Fetty Wap On His Relationship With Kanye West and Learning His Work Ethic From Gucci Mane, more from the music scene.

    The always humble Fetty Wap stopped by Hot 97 recently to talk about his journey to this point as he prepares for his first ever Summer Jam. While Fetty is now basically a household name who continues to churn out hits, he still speaks in a way that genuinely sounds like he appreciates all the love he gets, and that even expands to Kanye West, who Fetty said would randomly text him and say how proud of him he was. He even revealed that it was Kanye who initially gave Drake his contact info, which seemingly lead to the “My Way” remix that has since taken off.

    Part of the reason that Fetty has become so popular so quickly is because he’s able to put out hits at such a fast rate and a lot of that has to do with his unmatched work ethic in the studio. “I learned my work ethic from Gucci Mane,” Fetty said. “When I go into the studio I don’t leave until I make at least 20, 30 songs. Full songs. Verse hook verse. Next song. Verse hook verse. Next song.”

    Fetty’s full interview with Hot 97 can be seen above.

    Speaking of Fetty Wap, here’s Ed Sheeran, the whitest of the white, covering his song “Trap Queen”. For fun.

    Our mayor and city council added *$32MM* to the #BaltimorePolice budget for 2016, but we can’t find another $1.5MM for summer youth jobs? Oh, Baltimore.

    Student sit-in at the admissions building to demand #NoCutsUChi
    I’m a @UChicago alum. Why are you making cuts to crucial staff & programs when the endowment is in the Billions? #NoCutsUChi cc @IIRONACTION
    Students don’t want fancy new dorms. We want jobs, good healthcare, and support for sexual assault survivors #NoCutsUChi #liabilityofthemind

  369. rq says

    And once more, with feeling. (Moderation.)
    [Edit: Because FtB logged me out and I had to log in again and I see PZ is on top of the moderation queue today!]

    Kendrick Lamar Talks Politics, Spirituality, Music + More [INTERVIEW], excerpt:

    EBONY: From a music fan standpoint, Black Messiah dropped a bomb. Everyone was listening, and then To Pimp a Butterfly dropped and had the same effect. Both records speak to the times we’re living through, reminiscent of 1970s concept albums like Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Can you make a parallel between that time and now? Things are hectic right now for Black folks, and that’s bleeding through your music.

    KL: First, that is an incredible album, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. And it’s a trip, because it took me nearly two years to create this record, without even knowing that [he] was on the same wavelength. For D’Angelo to drop out the blue and make a record like that, it was confirmation for me. ’Cause I was just wrapping up my project, and for him to do that, that was just confirmation. Of course it takes an incredible artist to do that anyway. He’s been on that wave. But to hear that, for my generation it was definitely confirmation.

    And it’s only right, man. The times that we are in, it’s something that you can only feel in the air. You don’t even have to talk about it. You don’t need the news or the Internet to watch it. You can walk outside and just feel it. And these are the same times that I believe Marvin Gaye and them felt, just in a whole other generational perspective. He’s been on that wave. And for me to know he’s been on that wave, Marvin Gaye, and to carry on that type of legacy is only right. I am from Compton. I am from the inner city, the ghetto. And if I can use my platform to carry on a legacy and talk about something that’s real, I have to do that, period.

    EBONY: Your recent Rolling Stone cover was a problem, people feeling like the woman doing your braids was too light-skinned or wondering if she was White.

    KL: We’re brainwashed. I don’t know what happened, but colorism is not a good thing, especially when you’re Black. Yes, it was a Black girl. And I wasn’t raised like that, because it’s lighter tones and darker tones in my family. We look so much on color that we forget about the soul. Color don’t tell if people Black. It’s the soul. Once these words come up out my mouth, and these yams come up out my mouth, you know I’m not faking. [laughter] You gonna get that instantly. Being where you from is a strong genetic. You can’t run from it.

    EBONY: James Baldwin, Richard Wright and others left the U.S. because of Blacks’ treatment in the pre-Civil Rights era. KRS-One even said, “We helped to make America great, so why can’t we help to make another country great?” How do you feel about that?

    KL: Bro, definitely. We can make it anywhere. Because it’s in our DNA. We’re built strong like that as individuals, to figure out a way. My grandma always said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” I think it’s just naturally in our DNA to be able to survive. We was always taught that: to survive. When you talking about slavery, it’s to survive.

    ‘There is no middle ground in racism:’ On Tahera Ahmad and the power of our silence

    Ahmad, who is Muslim and wears a headscarf, asked for an unopened can of Diet Coke “for hygienic reasons.” She says the flight attendant denied her request, then preceded to bring an unopened can of beer to the man sitting next to her. When Ahmad pointed out the subjective and unequal application of this policy, the flight attendant responded “We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane.”

    Her ordeal was complicated by a man behind her, who Ahmad said told her “you Moslem, you need to shut the F** up.” After an investigation, United issued a formal apology to Ahmad and removed the flight attendant from a customer-facing role.

    This story touched a nerve for the absurdity of her experience and it’s relevance to the experiences of so many marginalized peoples in society.

    Being a large black man, I am used to the stares, the tracking eyeballs of other passengers hoping I’m not sitting next to them. When I see someone on my plane with a headscarf I am suddenly an observer to the overt and aggressive disdain other passengers show towards the innocent person who happens to wear a headscarf or exhibit features that passengers find threatening. The sadness expressed in Tahera Ahmad’s facebook post takes me back to these experiences and whether I could have done more than be a witness.

    On the same day the diet coke story broke, the Supreme Court revived an employment discrimination lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch, which had refused to hire a Muslim woman because she wore a headscarf. […]

    These cases are about more than the isolated discrimination of a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf, or the heaping of insults by an ignorant onlooker. This is subjective application of rules/laws by individuals or institutions isn’t just an unfortunate occurrance. But to truly understand what is at play, there needs to be a discussion of what exactly is being protected by the discriminatory actions.

    In research published earlier this year, Elijah Anderson discussed the concept of “The White Space” – describing the impact of overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, restaurants and other public spaces on people of color. He summarizes his research by stating:

    In these spaces blacks and other minorities perceive or are greeted with treatment that suggest such settings (even though they may be public spaces) as “the white space,” meaning they are informally “off limits” for people like them.

    When I read this story about Ahmad I revisited Dr. Anderson’s research. I found it helpful in explaining how Ahmad’s experience is anything but isolated and trivial- instead it is endemic of larger cultural challenges facing a rapidly diversifying society.

    This is bigger than a job at Abercrombie or getting a full coke can on a flight – it is about the nature and pervasiveness of implicit bias in society and its institutions.

    The negative images we so readily exchange conspire to negate the humanity, the citizenship and the moral authority of marginalized people in the larger society and this is most evident when the “other” is attempting to navigate public or elite spaces. Take, for example… […]

    [examples]

    Why does this kind of racism continue? Borrowing from the great work of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide,

    “Race holds a central place in our society’s deepest and most persistent patterns of social inequities, exclusion and divisions. Racial disparities, discrimination and segregation are widespread and continue to undermine our nation’s social fabric.

    This system of racialization — which routinely confers advantage and disadvantage based on skin color and other characteristics — must be clearly understood, directly challenged and fundamentally transformed.”

    The discrimination and micro aggressive silence Ahmed experienced is familiar to many folks in society where public spaces are also socially policed spaces with an investment in clarifying who belongs and the other.

    When Ahmad turned to her fellow passengers for support, she said that one man yelled at her, “You Moslem, you need to shut the f— up.” Ahmad ended the flight “in tears of humiliation…”I can’t help but cry on this plane because I thought people would defend me and say something.”

    Many of us can relate with Ahmad – in situations where an injustice occurred in front of several others and when you look for someone to back you up, you only hear a loud silence. I say loud because the silence is confirmation of your seemingly permanent provisional status in society.

    There is no middle ground in racism. The silence of her fellow passengers to the clearly subjective application of the “Diet Coke can rule” wasn’t worthy of comment from fellow passengers. The rude and offensive statements of this man towards Ahmad isn’t worthy of any rebuke by fellow passengers. Their silence served as complicit agreement. […]

    If we as a nation aspire to live up to our stated democratic ideals — that all people are created equal and treated fairly — then these incidents cannot be treated as trivial. Nor can they be relegated to the court system to adjudicate. Racial equity and inclusion must be at the forefront of how we shape and hold accountable our institutions, policies and culture.

    Ahmad’s story is added to what feels like a daily reminder that we are ill-equipped to acknowledge and address the implicit bias and discrimination that pervades societal institutions and public spaces.

    Dismantling oppressive systems begins with interrogating our actions.

    But more importantly, we must also learn to question our silence.

    The author also looks closer at implicit bias.

    Challenge and Hope in Baltimore, with video.

    There is a lot of frustration and anger in America today. You see it in Baltimore, in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death. You see it in Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed with no prosecution. You see it in Cleveland, where Tamir Rice was fatally shot with no accountability, and in New York, where Eric Garner died with no consequences for the people who ended his life.

    The anger and frustration is understandable. But it’s about something bigger than the loss of these young black men. There is a segment of the population in the United States—mostly poor, and people of color—who have been living on the margins of our society for too long. And they have been victimized by an aggressive and unfair criminal justice system, the face of which is the police, who regrettably harass and threaten poor people and people of color every day.

    This segment of our population that has been so criminalized and demonized from the time they were very infant children that sometimes they lose hope. In my work, I talk to far too many 13-year-olds who think they’ll either be dead or behind bars by the time they turn 21.

    They grow up with an expectation of incarceration, because they see it happening all too often to their neighbors, friends, and family members. And when people begin to live with the sense that there’s no opportunity or chance for success, they sometimes express themselves in less productive ways.

    What’s the way forward, for Baltimore and so many other cities today? Reorienting the police is a big part of it. There are great police officers out there. There are people who go into policing because they care deeply about their communities. They just don’t represent the dominant mindset.

    But there’s a lot we can do. We can create a greater role for communities and citizens in managing and directing their police forces. That’s not historically the way it’s worked, but there’s nothing to prevent that. The communities with strong civilian review boards and strong police accountability are the communities with better police departments.

    We need better training, better recruitment, and more diverse departments. We also need better communication and transparency. We don’t know the demographics of the police departments in America, and we don’t have good data on the use of force. […]

    But progress is not inevitable. Justice comes when people struggle; when more people struggle, more progress is made. What encourages me is that we’re at that stage in the struggle when you see a greater degree of education and information. And with more education and information, the state of inequality and injustice we’ve been living with begins to crack and unravel.

    As we discuss in the video above, there is an opportunity at hand. We can seize it, to honor the memory of Freddie Gray, and Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. We owe it to the people of places like Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, and Baltimore.

    Some things are doomed to perpetuity, it seems: Grand juror in Ferguson killing case fights gag order anew

    A member of the grand jury that declined to indict a white Ferguson police officer in 18-year-old Michael Brown’s shooting death last summer has asked a county judge to expeditiously allow her to publicly discuss those secret proceedings and free of her of possibly being prosecuted for it.

    The woman, identified in her St. Louis County lawsuit only as “Grand Juror Doe,” asserts that St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch mischaracterized the jury’s findings. The suit against McCulloch came more than three weeks after a judge ruled in a similar lawsuit in federal court that the former grand juror needed to first press a state court for permission to talk freely.

    A McCulloch spokesman, Ed Magee, declined comment on the matter Thursday. […]

    Grand Juror Doe’s lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, alleges McCulloch wrongly implied that all 12 jurors believed there was no support for any charges, which “does not comport with (the grand juror’s) own opinions and view of the grand jury proceedings.”

    Under Missouri law, an indictment requires agreement by nine of the panel’s dozen members, and grand jurors are sworn to secrecy under the threat of contempt or other charges.

    After the decision was announced, McCulloch took the unusual step of releasing thousands of pages of testimony provided to the grand jury. Grand jurors usually hear a condensed version of evidence that might be presented at trial, but the Ferguson grand jury heard more extensive testimony.

    Grand Juror Doe’s lawsuit says she came away with the impression that evidence was presented differently than in other cases, with a “stronger focus on the victim,” rather than Wilson, and “the insinuation that Michael Brown, not Wilson, was the wrongdoer.”

    Wilson, who since has resigned, also was cleared by a Justice Department investigation.

    In her lawsuit, Grand Juror Doe insists her experiences on the panel – it met on 25 days over three months, hearing more than 70 hours of testimony from about 60 witnesses – “could aid in educating the public about how grand juries function” and help advocate for changing how grand juries are conducted in Missouri.

  371. says

    Police forced to admit being afraid to do their jobs has nothing to do with recent crime spike:

    In spite of all the headlines and police exaggerations about the cause of recent crime spikes, the Baltimore police have just admitted that the rise in crime has nothing to do with police being “afraid to do their jobs”.

    Officers have, since the Freddie Gray protests, suggested that they just can’t seem to work when they have to worry about being prosecuted for murdering suspects.

    But now, Baltimore’s top cop has admitted that stolen drugs are what’s really behind the city’s recent spike in murders.

    What that translates to is the so-called “War on Drugs” has produced a black market of illegal drugs, and drug dealers are now fighting it out on the streets of Baltimore, after huge amounts of prescription drugs were recently stolen.

    “There’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” Commissioner Batts said.

    That’s because more than 175,000 units of drugs were stolen from 27 pharmacies as well as two methadone clinics in April.

    Now, there is a violent turf war playing itself out… and it’s all due to the blackmarket for illegal drugs, not because of police being too worried about prosecution to make new arrests.

    “I think that part of it’s connected to turf battled between gangs and independent drug dealers. You also have a new source, a new inventory of drugs on the street that people have to sell,” DEA Special Agent Gary Tuggle said. “They’re selling to a limited number of people, so they’re vying for that customer base.”

    Last month, the homicide rate rose to 43, the highest in four decades.

    ****

    Police ‘leadership camps’ beat and choke kids to ‘build character’:

    Children were beaten bloody, handed towels and told to “clean yourself up” at police “leadership camps” in California.

    Police officers in Huntington Park and South Gate are now facing serious allegations of physical and psychological abuse from the families of seven children who attended these camps.

    They claim they were physically and verbally abused during the course of attending a San Luis Obispo boot camp. The children say that those who abused them said the abuse would “build character.”

    There were 36 children who were between the ages of 12 and 16 who attended in the Leadership Empowerment and Discipline (LEAD) program during the relevant time period when abuse is alleged.

    The allegations were made by those who attended between May 17-24 at Camp San Luis Obispo, a California Army National Guard Military Base in San Luis Obispo. But many are suggesting that children who attended previous camp dates may have experienced the same things but not come forward.

    The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office says that they received a report from Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) on May 28, documenting allegations of physical abuse inflicted on a child who attended the LEAD program. That program is sponsored by the Huntington Park Police Department, as well as the South Gate Police Department and the California National Guard.

    The Sheriff’s office said that they have responded by sending three “internal investigators” to conduct interviews with all 39 recruits.

    Those investigators talked to the children on May 30th. They say that in addition to the three initial victims, they have identified at least six additional victims.

    Those victims all claim LEAD drill instructors “slapped, punched, and stepped on their hands and backs while doing push-ups” and “took them into a dark room where they were beaten if they did not meet the expectations of the camp supervisors” as well as “given towels to clean the blood off of themselves prior to exiting the room after the beatings.”
    […]
    The victims claim that two instructors in particular, known as the “Gomez Brothers” were the most abusive officers to administer beatings and more.

    The Gomez Brothers work for the South Gate Police Department, according to attorney Greg Owen.

    “They would put their arms, forearms up against their neck, push them against the wall, and then both brothers would beat them,” Owen explained.

    What was the police department’s response? They have suspended the Gomez brothers from the LEAD boot camp program, but they are still on patrol, working their regular jobs as police officers, according to attorneys.

    The LEAD program was started back in 1998 as a way to “develop leadership and discipline in youth while offering guidance and support to reduce family conflict”, attorneys say.

    In a statement released Monday, South Gate Police Capt. James Teeples said they will “provide assurance that any matters of concern will be investigated thoroughly.”

    The statement further assured members of the community that they “take all allegations very seriously.”

    ****

    Here’s another article about the UN chastising the U.S. for police brutality- 117 countries slam American police at UN Human Rights Council:

    The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) takes place every four years to scrutinize the human and civil rights practices of each of the UN’s 193 member nations. Delegates from 117 countries took the opportunity to lambaste the US’ record of civil rights violations exacted by its brutal and racist police forces.

    In an attempt to fend off the inevitable, James Cadogan, a senior counselor in the Department of Justice’s Human Rights Division, said the US must “rededicate ourselves to ensuring that our civil rights laws live up to their promise,” listing several “tragic deaths” that sparked numerous demonstrations and wide-scale unrest across the country. However, he seemed to be blind to the fundamental basis for such outrage saying the US wishes to“identify and address potential policing issues before they become systemic problems,”, even asserting a fictitious good record for holding violators accountable. As Mary McLeod, acting legal adviser to the US Dept of State, put it, “We’re proud of the work we’ve done since our last UPR.” Most would disagree.

    What the US representatives touted as improvements, actually do more to highlight the systemic issue they claim to be on the lookout for. Cadogan cited 400 instances in the past six years in which charges were brought against law enforcement officials, but this doesn’t figure in the disproportionately light punishment that often results from prosecution of police officers. Even his own preemptive statement, naming Michael Brown and Eric Garner as examples, speaks far more to police impunity than accountability — and is hardly reflective of the totality of incidents. Over 400 people have been killed by police in 2015 alone.

    “Chad considers the United States of America to be a country of freedom, but recent events targeting black sectors of society have tarnished its image,” said Awada Angui, the delegate from that country.

    The representative from Namibia, Gladice Pickering, echoed the general consensus saying the US needs “to fix the broken justice system that continues to discriminate against [marginalized communities], despite recent waves of protest over racial profiling and police killings of unarmed black men.”

    Critics across the board urged improvements in training methods and legislation and included goals to eliminate racism and end excessive force.

    “I’m not surprised that the world’s eyes are focused on police issues in the US,” said Alba Morales of Human Rights Watch. “There is an international spotlight that’s been shone [on the issues], in large part due to the events in Ferguson and the disproportionate police response to even peaceful protesters.”

    A federal investigation was launched on Friday to determine if police in Baltimore have instituted a pattern of discrimination following reports from residents of brutal abuse before and after Freddie Gray was killed in police custody. Such investigations are often too little, too late for victims and their families, who see them more akin to the cynical joke; “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong.”

    Martinez Sutton, whose 22-year-old sister, Rekia Boyd, was shot by an off-duty Chicago police officer in 2012, observed from the sidelines. He feels that her killer’s acquittal three weeks ago is frustratingly typical: “I do not expect them to do anything because – I mean: Let us be real, it has been going on for years and what has been done? As I stated before, they say the guilty should be punished. I want them to show us instead of tell us. My sister was innocent, so why isn’t anybody paying for her death?”

    The UN will issue its report on the review along with recommendations on Friday, though its contents probably won’t be of much consequence considering the US “largely failed” to implement any of the 171 changes suggested in the previous report.

    There isn’t much comfort to be found in an atmosphere where calling the cops for assistance could potentially be your own death sentence. But if our own government doesn’t see a problem with its policing policies, at least 117 other countries around the world are starting to ask questions.

  372. says

    Cops claim man ‘mysteriously’ died in sheriff’s van, but evidence shows he was choked to death:

    Mitchell Brad Martinez, of Vero Beach, Florida, died following a police van ride. None of the Sheriff’s deputies are coming forward with any explanation as to what happened to the inmate.

    All that we know is that he was comatose from something that happened during the police van ride.

    Martinez had been a quite healthy 35-year-old upon entering the police van last Friday.

    But only eight minutes later, Martinez was in a coma. All that we know is he entered the Indian County sheriff’s deputies’ custody and when he was taken from the van he was in a coma.

    “9 a.m. he goes to court. At noon he’s in the ICU. Nobody knows what happened,” Martinez’ friend Ryan Monto said to local WPTV news.

    Martinez was alone in an isolated holding area behind the driver. Other inmates were in the more open part of the van. Surveillance video that was obtained by WPTV documents Martinez entering the van healthy, and being carried out unconscious.

    A Facebook page “calling itself Justice for Brad Martinez” has been set up.

    That Facebook support page shows a photograph, taken on May 31, of Martinez lying comatose in a hospital bed. The image clearly documents abrasions around his neck and blood in and around his mouth.

    “We can’t get any answers and figured we’d reach out for some help,” the support page requests.

    The Raw Story reports that Sheriff Deryl Loar flatly denied that the abrasions happened “when Martinez was in custody.”

    According to the Palm Beach Post, Loar is asserting that someone did this to Martinez while in the hospital or perhaps before? Why then was no report made of this before or after?

    “The sheriff has maintained that deputies acted appropriately and so far there are no indications of trouble inside the van, according to police interviews with witnesses,” the Raw Story reports.

    The autopsy for Martinez has been scheduled for today.

  373. rq says

    Man Who Filmed Freddie Gray Arrest Charged With ‘Inciting a Riot’. We previously looked at his arrest, but these are actually the charges brought against him. I think it would be more fair that the cops who first illegally stopped Freddie and then didn’t provide him with medical assistance should be charged with inciting a riot.

    Back in April, Counter Current News broke the story on Kevin Moore’s arrest before he had been processed. Working closely with activists on the ground in Baltimore, we were informed of the arrest on trumped up charges right as it happened. We have been following the story since then, and some of the latest developments continue to disturb and concern us, and they should concern you too.

    Why should you be concerned? Kevin Moore, the man who filmed the now infamous Freddie Gray arrest, just before police apparently killed the Baltimore resident in the back of a police van, was harassed continuously after he filmed the police. Following that harassment, he was arrested and charged with such outlandish crimes as “terrorism” and “inciting a riot” as well as “evading police,” “driving with no license,” and an open container charge.

    Baltimore prosecutors recently dropped the charges against Moore, but just yesterday as his friends and fellow Cop Watchers Chad Jackson, and Aahil TalalAbdullah (Tony White) appeared in court, they made it clear that the charges would stick for the others. Why? Because Baltimore is calling them “outside agitators” much in the same way that Northerners who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma were called during the Civil Rights Era.

    All of these protesters are now facing mounting legal fees and another day in court. They need your help now!

    Donation links at the page, for anyone with some spare cash.

    Press Release: protesters to hold press conference aimed @JenniferJoyceCA, asking her to act on PO misconduct, possibly in article form in a moment.

    Alert citizens and protesters of #Baltimore, there are reports of a protestant vehicle being shot up in your area. I do believe they mean ‘protestor’ vehicle, but the point still stands.

    Grand juror launches new fight against ban on speaking about Michael Brown’s case in Ferguson – yep, that’s one more on that!

    Evolution of the militarization of police #TeachTheBabies #ProtectTheBabies #BlackLivesMatter #ItStartsAtChavez, glimpse into a presentation on police brutality and racism and building community.

  374. rq says

    Organizers with the Peoples Power Assembly in Baltimore had their car shot 5X, suspect the Baltimore Police: this one with text attached. Protestors and activists also facing telephone harassment, technical attacks on phones, etc. Basically, intimidation. But they will not be intimidated.

    That privilege is undefeated, unflappable, indestructible and unbelievable. Attached article about white man convicted of selling cocaine, but not going to jail – because it would expose him to criminals. Ponder that for a while. Really ponder it.

    Coroner report confirms that Matthew Ajibade died because of blunt force trauma to his head

    A brilliant artist and photographer, Matthew Ajibade was killed by law enforcement while in their custody on this past New Year’s Day. His family called 911 for medical assistance when Matthew appeared to be having a mental health episode. They gave the police his medication and begged them to take him to a hospital instead of jail. A few hours later, strapped to a chair, Matthew was dead. It was filmed, but police, as they are doing all over the country, refuse to release the video.

    It’s now June and his family still has not received even a basic description of what happened on that day and have been denied the opportunity to look at the video privately.

    Below, you will see the newly released coroner’s report showing that Matthew died due to blunt force trauma to his head. Nine deputies were fired over his death and how it took place, but no arrests have been made and no answers have been given.

    This is unacceptable.

    These 9 Savannah, GA deputies were all fired over the death of #MatthewAjibade. Yet his family has NO ANSWERS.

    Saw this in tweet form yesterday: Marilyn Mosby Launches New Program That Gives Young Offenders a Second Chance

    Last week, Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the launch of her new program Aim to B’More. The program gives people convicted of nonviolent crimes a second chance.

    The first class of Aim to B’More included 30 non-violent drug offenders. The program requires participants to complete three years of probation, community service, a five-month internship, and search for employment. Participants will have their records expunged after successful completion of the program.

    “I would prefer to utilize the inundated courts for the worst of the worst and give our young people a second chance at redemption. People talk about Baltimore’s crime problem, but what isn’t talked about is the real issue at hand: systemic poverty,” Mosby told the Baltimore Sun.

    Read more about the program at the Baltimore Sun.

    Please support this book. QUEEN LIKE ME: The True Story of Girls who Changed the World, amazon link within.

    GUESS WHO’S ON KINDLE??????!!!!!! It’s Queen Like Me’s 1st bday & since her arrival, I’ve been in schools, libraries, community centers, etc . teaching the history our kids need & deserve early, rather than later. I’ve appreciated the experience beyond measure, but we ain’t done yet! Help me celebrate by downloading on Kindle today for FREE 99! And please share our birthday wish for all kids to enjoy reading and studying the past so that they might carve out a better future for themselves. Repost with the most likes (must ‪#‎QueenLikeMe‬) by 3pm CST gets a free paperback too!! No excuses for our kids not to have access to learning. We’ve got the technology, and most importantly, we’ve got the love ‪#‎HappyBirthdaytoUs‬ ‪#‎1stBirthday‬ ‪#‎LetsCelebrate‬ ‪#‎KindleBirthdayParty‬ ‪#‎BirthdayGifts‬ ‪#‎ItsAParty‬ ‪#‎Images‬ ‪#‎Identity‬ ‪#‎Power‬ #QueenLikeMe

    From the Amazon link,

    QUEEN LIKE ME: THE TRUE STORY OF GIRLS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD is a vibrant and adventurous learning experience that invites readers to explore the courageous and dazzling stories of 15 authentic women leaders of the past and present whose contributions to the world are captured in the form of rhyme! A dynamic array of women (including Queen Nefertiti, Coretta Scott King and First Lady Michelle Obama) are featured! With bold and majestic visuals, it’s terrifically fun and attractive and delivers quality content for teaching history, building self-esteem and developing leadership skills. Former Miss America Ericka Dunlap says, “it profoundly illustrates the direct correlation between strong queens of the past… with our present potential to achieve greatness.” QUEEN LIKE ME belongs in the libraries of families and schools interested in creating enjoyable avenues to education, providing multicultural exposure and nurturing successful children.

    Go representation!

  375. rq says

    Meanwhile, in Minneapolis:
    Council Member Yang moves to repeal spitting& lurking. Goodman moves to decriminalize it instead of eliminating it. #MplsBlackCodes Mentioned before, Minneapolis has spitting and lurking laws that disproportionately target people of colour, esp. young black people. And no, it’s not the laws that target, but those implementing them. So they had this hearing.
    @BlackLivesMpls @nvlevy Community has packed city hall to demand the repeal of spitting & lurking..the vote is today;
    I wonder how many people of color called Lisa Goodman’s office to ask her not to repeal spitting ordinance. #MplsBlackCodes
    Yang says “everyone spits, including the good folks from the Downtown council. But only some people get stopped by police.” #MplsBlackCodes
    Council Member Bender is speaking affirmatively about Black citizens who shared their stories during the committee hearings. #mplsblackcodes
    And… Spitting was just repealed! #MplsBlackCodes everyone voted in favor except CM barb johnson.
    Then they moved on to lurking…

  376. rq says

    CM Gordon talks about the history of the lurking ordinance and quotes Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow #MplsBlackCodes. Yes, they opened that discussion with readings from that book. !!!
    Annd…
    Gordon reflects on how the council has changed from 7 years ago when the repeal was voted down. #MplsBlackCodes #NewDay. @mnnoc
    CM Gordon shouts out BLMMPLS, NOC, @keithellison, MN Black lawyers and more who support repealing the ordinances#mplsblackcodes
    Spitting and Lurking have officially been repealed! Congratulations Minneapolis, we did it! #MplsBlackCodes
    Yay! Small step but important step. Maybe a pretty big step, actually. Yay!

    Just finished this…very much recommended read to understand how we’ve gotten to where we are today. Book: The Condemnation of Blackness.

  377. rq says

    Oh, Tony,, you mentioned Baltimore police blaming drugs?
    Enough narcotics to keep the city intoxicated for a year? Checking Batts’ fuzzy drug math

    At a press conference yesterday calling for more federal prosecutors and agents to help contain Baltimore’s recent outbreak of violence, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts suggested the looting of 27 pharmacies and two methadone clinics during the riots has contributed to the problem.

    Reading from prepared remarks, Batts suggested that, as a result of the looting, “there’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year.”

    We know that the commissioner has more important things to do than math problems, but this claim—which has since been repeated endlessly on local radio and TV newscasts—is so preposterous that it bears some simple calculation.

    Later in the press conference, a BPD representative quoted a DEA report that suggested 175,000 “dosage units” of schedule 2-5 drugs were stolen during the looting.

    If these doses were spread out about Baltimore’s entire population of about 622,000, it would be so diluted, it wouldn’t even keep Baltimore intoxicated for 10 minutes.

    But let’s assume that Batts is talking about keeping Baltimore’s addicts intoxicated for a year. If Baltimore has but 20,000 addicts (and not three times that many, as earlier estimates claimed), then the 175,000 units work out to less than nine doses for each of those 20,000 people. If they cop once per day, that’s a little more than a week’s supply. If it’s three times a day, that would be a three-day supply. If there are three times as many addicts, then that’s a one-day supply.

    Assuming they double the number of stolen dosages, or triple them, there is still no way to add it up so that the looted drugs could “keep Baltimore intoxicated for a year.”

    Just saying.

    So can we say ‘exaggeration’?

    Nero Tolerance: As O’Malley announces a run for president, a look at his Baltimore legacy.

    On Saturday, Martin O’Malley officially announced his bid for the presidency amid Baltimore’s most murderous month in more than 40 years.

    Baltimore City saw 43 murders in May, the deadliest month since 1972, when almost 300,000 more people lived in the city.

    Meanwhile, arrests for all crimes have plummeted in the wake of the riots and the criminal charges filed against six officers involved in Freddie Gray’s murder. Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 President Gene Ryan announced last Thursday that police are more fearful of going to jail “for doing their jobs properly” than of getting shot. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts apologized to the rank and file for giving them insufficient training and direction ahead of the riot, in which dozens of cops were injured.

    But the police department has been dysfunctional for decades, beset by poor training, low pay, and high turnover at all levels.

    Add to the mix consistent meddling by politicians and infighting between police and prosecutors, and you have a perfect storm of stupidity, and an institution that is all but beyond reform if equivalent changes are not also made to the city’s political culture.

    That is why Martin O’Malley, the former mayor and Maryland governor and now official candidate for president of the United States, has so much to answer for regarding last month’s riot and the subsequent killing spree.

    Though many focus on O’Malley’s zeal for “zero tolerance” policing, that was just a small part of the story. O’Malley’s real legacy lies in his attempts to micromanage his police chiefs—and what became of them when they displeased their boss. O’Malley’s vaunted CitiStat system promised “timely, accurate information shared by all.” But behind the scenes, the guitar-strumming mayor did everything he could to control the message coming from the department, including forbidding retired police brass from saying a word about what happened inside. His thirst for higher office fueled by quick, “measurable” results, O’Malley kicked off a long season of instability in the department’s command structure that has hobbled it ever since. Here is that history, condensed. […]

    Commissioner Anthony Batts came in with a mandate and a promise to clean house. He has told the press that he’s removed 50 officers for misconduct since he took the job in 2013. City Paper has asked the department to name those officers. The department responded by saying it has received our request; this week The Sun’s Mark Puente reported the figure is bogus. The internal discipline system in the Baltimore Police Department has never shown any signs of consistency, and it has never been anything like transparent.

    And O’Malley’s CitiStat, which was supposed to provide transparency, has not.

    “Together, we made our city a safer, healthier, and better place for kids,” O’Malley told the crowd Saturday as he announced his presidential bid. “Together, we made our city believe again. We invented a new and better way of governing called CitiStat, and we got things done.”

    Back in the mid-2000s, as police ramped up computer-aided zero tolerance, real crimes that citizens reported were being downgraded either by the responding officers, who sometimes declined to take a report, or by their superiors. Rapes were disappearing from the statistics. O’Malley cited his falling crime statistics as proof that his policies worked.

    The murder rate dropped—as O’Malley says, perhaps a thousand people lived who would have died otherwise. But the murder clearance rate dropped too. More cases went unsolved and the streets hardened.

    Freddie Gray, Tyrone West, Anthony Anderson, and others who have died in Baltimore police custody are the product of a decade and a half of hard policing done with broken oversight. The murder spree that now grips the city, and the “police slowdown” that some blame for it, is not a simple or recent cause-and-effect phenomenon. If police are scared, they have good reason to be: People in the communities they work in do not trust them, and their superiors must contend with a politically driven, statistic-dominated bureaucracy that leaves little room for creativity, compassion, or real police work. Perhaps better people at the top would have done a better job. But the system in which they work made it very hard to do, at best. That is Martin O’Malley’s Baltimore legacy.

    Marlene Davis just announced that she will not be taking public comment on @AntonioFrench’s police shooting cmte on Wed. (1)
    (2) Resolution 19 creates a special aldermanic committee to look at officer-involved shootings. Hearing is 1030am Wed June 10.
    (3) Her announcement does not mean the public cannot show up. Just means she will not be taking public comment.

    In Defense of “Trap Queen” As Our Generation’s Greatest Love Song, because the song was mentioned upthread.

    There is only one black church left in the neighborhood where I grew up. When I hear about the “decline of the American church,” I think not of what this means for Sunday mornings, but of what it means for Sunday afternoons. Particularly summer Sundays—those that tend to stretch their legs long into a hot night on porches in areas like my neighborhood. Places where (mostly black) poor families live pressed against the edges of a city that wants them gone. And yet, the Sunday afternoon was still a sacred thing, when I was growing up. A place where everyone had enough to be fed, even if they didn’t truly have enough to be fed.
    On Sunday afternoons where I’m from, someone’s father would put on a soul record. And then another. And then another. Maybe some funk, or a little jazz. But it would always come back to soul, maybe a little taste of late R&B, but not TOO late. You go to Redding for the pleading, Cooke for the praying, Marvin for the pleasure, and Aretha for everything else. It is almost an initiation, learning how to most effectively give language to our desires, our deepest loves. Turning your face away from whatever sadness the world has placed at your front door, taking off your shoes, and sliding across somebody’s mama’s wood floor. The right love song is the truest equalizer. There is a type of surrender in it. To grow up in a climate of violence and fear is to find a very particular joy in watching the perfect love song disarm even the hardest of your peers. I have always been of the belief that the most major function of prayer in our society was to allow for the idea of building vulnerability in the people who have the least reason to be vulnerable. We feel some odd relief when the gangsters in films walk into church, holding their aging mothers. Even if we know that there is blood on the palms of someone, we feel relief when those same palms are turned towards the sky, giving in to something larger than themselves.
    And so, yes. When I hear about the decline of the American church, I think about Sunday afternoons. I think about love songs. I think about boys getting nothing to face a hard world with. No understanding of what it is to surrender yourself to whatever you love enough to name a God. […]

    I don’t know that there has ever been a more unrelatable song that so many people have related to. Surely many of us singing along to this anthem have never shared an afternoon counting up 50 or 60 grand with our loving partner after distributing 500 grams of narcotics. But, this idea of rejoicing in shared success is touchable, to all of us. Every existing male narrative in whatever is left in the ruins of modern R&B is all about the lone man, and what he covets. Everyone wants to steal your girl, though only for a night, or perhaps a weekend. While I celebrate and encourage any and all consensual intimacy, it has been a long while since we’ve seen a hit this massive by a man, approaching the side of simply living life with someone you love. It was a forgotten art, expressing the normalcy of romance rooted in something other than desires running wild.
    And even with all of its popularity, “Trap Queen” remains true to the ethos of the Ultimate American Love Song, doesn’t it? It is unafraid to consider the future (“we just set a goal / talkin’ matching Lambos”), it is unashamed in its repetitive nature, the first verse being the exact same as the last; not out of lazy songwriting, but much like R.E.M.’s “The One I Love,” it exists as a reminder: Don’t forget that I made this for you. It is a love song for an era that watched their parents put their records away, and watched the needles collect dust. It is finally something that can make a summer feel like summer in every corner of a fractured country. “Trap Queen” has committed itself to the ultimate immortality in the time of dismissing all things popular, which is also undeniably brave. Though likely created for a sole muse, the Ultimate American Love Song knows that to truly resonate, it has to sacrifice itself at the altar of the people. The teenage girls in the mall, the packed dorm hall, the space in a bed between two bodies afraid to touch, and the ghetto. Of course, the ghetto. The porch and the boys upon it, watching their big brothers dance in the streets, the word amen forming in their tiny mouths for the first time. […]

    This is perhaps as much about a love song as it is about the fact that, just for today, I didn’t want to write about the omnipresence of black death. Because, in this moment, I wanted to stop thinking about the fear carried by so many people I love. Because I didn’t sleep while Ferguson burned. Because I didn’t sleep while Baltimore burned. Because I wake up most mornings knowing that there is smoke still rising somewhere. Because I wake up miles away from the only place I have ever called home. Because when I go back home, I don’t recognize it. Because I have yet to decide on the life that I want (or need) to live, but I know this: every salve that arrives in these times has to be held close. Every chance we have to sweat from anything other than more anxiety stretching wide in our bodies must be embraced. The ripe blessings are harder to find in the mess, and because of that, we need them even more. Even if it means closing your eyes for three minutes and becoming the other you. The one that has never known loss, or panic, or the hunt that seems to wear your name on its tongue.
    I write this with a painting of Otis Redding hanging above my desk, staring down disapprovingly at me, but no one wants to hear begging anymore. We want don’t want to hear about the love you have to get back, we need to visualize the present love. We need to know that it is possible, even for the worst of us. These are urgent times. Too many people aren’t making it home alive, and so perhaps we are past the age of supplication; we have gotten what we can get, by whatever means we can get it. We’re the generation of coming to terms. Of knowing what it is to keep our heads above water, or perhaps what it is to do whatever is needed to never be near the water again.
    There is no greater love than that which is shared between two people immersed in a common struggle. And this is how the drug dealing anthem comes home to roost. How it takes on a different body entirely when a singer bows in appreciation for the hands that do the hard work, the partnership that flourishes, in spite of those who wish ill upon it.
    Love alone will not save us. The idea that this is true has always been foolish, and perhaps even more so when we understand the violent times that the ideology was born out of. “Trap Queen” isn’t here to save any of us. It isn’t here to unite the ideals of the protester and the police officer, even if they both listen to it when the cameras leave. […]

    And that’s the secret, my people. The secret is that even if “Trap Queen” wasn’t about love, it would still be about love. The Ultimate American Love Song exists to engage us in a way that frees us from whatever would otherwise suffocate us. The revolution inside of the revolution is what will be left after whatever is won and lost. Whatever we can still sing in memory of this time, even decades from now. When we emerge exhausted, but still breathing.

    So there you go.

  378. rq says

    Someone’s thoughts on the police in Baltimore blaming increased crime on more drugs suddenly available:
    Government does enough damage as it is, without needing to resort to propagating erroneous information meant to instill panic & fear.
    Note: looters running into stores were not carrying tools or equipment necessary to crack open safes. The place were narcotics are kept.
    It actually harkens back to some of the same tired, old, dis-proven, classic #WarOnDrugs propaganda once preached as gospel.
    BTW, right now would be a really good time for any store with unexplained inventory losses (employee theft etc.) to blame it on “the riots.”

    Missouri Town Agrees That Holding People In Jail Because They’re Poor Violates The Constitution. How kind.

    A small Missouri town in St. Louis County agreed this week to stop jailing residents for municipal offenses just because they can’t pay hundreds of dollars for their release. The agreement to significantly curb the use of bail in Velda City was approved Wednesday by a federal judge, and may be the first court-approved pronouncement of its kind.

    In strong, sweeping language, the agreement declares, “No person may, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, be held in custody after an arrest because the person is too poor to post a monetary bond.”

    “I don’t think people have really applied these [equal protection] principles to the bail context, at least in the past 30 or 40 years,” said Alec Karakatsanis, who represented the plaintiffs in the case along with local lawyers from ArchCity Defenders in St. Louis. […]

    Velda City is one of a host of tiny municipalities in St. Louis County surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, where tensions erupted this summer after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown. In the wake of his death, national attention turned to the criminalization for profit of poor residents, mostly African Americans, in Ferguson and many of the surrounding towns.

    “This order will change the lives of poor people in the region. We’ve been putting poor and mostly black people in jail over traffic tickets in St. Louis and across the country,” ArchCity Defenders’ Executive Director Thomas Harvey said.

    But similar practices also occur around the country. In fact, another similar lawsuit in Clanton, Alabama, received the backing of the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year. Like Velda City, Clanton has a schedule of bail fees imposed on residents for municipal violations, and holds individuals in jail who can’t afford to pay. In a motion filed in that case in February, the Justice Department argued that this practice violates the Constitution.

    “Fundamental and long-standing principles of equal protection squarely prohibit bail schemes based solely on the ability to pay,” the Justice Department’s court filing said. “Fixed-sum bail schemes do not meet these mandates. By using a predetermined schedule for bail amounts based solely on the charges a defendant faces, these schemes do not properly account for other important factors, such as the defendant’s potential dangerousness or risk of flight.”

    New Jersey reformed its bail practices last summer to make jail time less dependent on poverty, after a study found that 75 percent of New Jersey jail inmates had not even been convicted, and 40 percent of those were there simply because they could not afford bail. And with increased focus on the bloated U.S. prison and jail population, some are calling for the elimination of bail altogether.

    Utah cop executes unarmed man who was listening to headphones, gets away with it, another look at Dillon Taylor – pretty much the same as the Daily Kos article upthread, though.

  379. says

    rq @374:

    Attached article about white man convicted of selling cocaine, but not going to jail – because it would expose him to criminals. Ponder that for a while. Really ponder it.

    I had to check out the article. Wow.
    Cocaine dealer avoids jail time because prison would ‘expose him to criminals’:

    A convicted cocaine dealer has avoided prison time after a judge said being behind bars would expose him to ‘streetwise’ criminals.

    Simon Beveridge kept his freedom after a court heard a “breathtakingly frank” testimony from him.

    The judge wondered whether it was in the public interest to put him in prison for his first offences, reports the Gazette.

    He said the “naive” defendant would attract attention from criminals who were “vastly convicted and streetwise to the nth degree” if he was jailed.

    “I ask myself, do the people of Teesside benefit by exposing him to that?” said Recorder David Myerson QC. “I have answered that question firmly in the negative.”

    The judge had called Beveridge into the witness box, saying: “I want him to come and talk to me. I want to hear it from him.”

    He asked the defendant: “Why did you agree to supply cocaine?”

    Beveridge, 27, replied: “I had no choice. I got in a bit of debt. They were asking for the money back.

    “I never had it. I missed a few payments. They give me a phone and white powder and said ‘that’ll clear your debt off’.”

    He said he did not ask family to borrow money because they were going through a bad time, and he had friends who used Class A drugs.

    Beveridge, of Queens Avenue, Thornaby, admitted possessing cocaine with intent to supply and possessing cannabis.

    Prosecutor Emma Atkinson said he was on edge and physically shaking when police came to search his home on September 10 last year.

    Asked if there were any drugs, he went to a black jacket and produced a package of 7.7g of cocaine in 15 bags, worth £310.

    He also had £208 cash, phones carrying drug-related texts, scales, a “tick list” and a small amount of cannabis.

    Andrew White, defending, said: “He’s extremely remorseful and through me he expresses his apologies and regret for this.

    “He’s a long-term user of cannabis. He’s got himself well out of his depth here.

    “He’s clearly never been to custody before. He’s a vulnerable young man. I can tell you he’s absolutely terrified at the thought of going to custody.”

    The judge said the sentence was in the interests of Beveridge and “much, much more importantly” the community.

    “In the normal course there is no doubt that people who sell Class A drugs go to prison,” added Recorder Myerson.

    “Drugs are a scourge. They are corrupting, they are addictive and people who prey on the weaknesses of others should expect immediate custodial sentences.

    “Of course his debt problems are entirely his own fault, nonetheless it seems to me there was a degree of pressure there.

    “I’m satisfied he told me the truth. That was, in my judgment, breathtakingly frank.”

    He said Beveridge was “a short-lived cocaine seller” whose crime was isolated, and proposed probation help had “reasonable prospects of success”.

    Beveridge was given a two-year jail term, suspended for two years, with supervision and 120 hours’ unpaid work.

    The judge should try to win Randi’s award, since he’s apparently a mind reader. Seriously, WTF is up with “I believe him because he told me so”?

    ****

    After I read the above article, another one caught my attention because of the headline-Teenage thug catapulted steel ball into bus driver’s face leaving it lodged in his cheek.
    I found it interesting because the teenage thug is white which makes me wonder how often the word ‘thug’ is used to describe offenders in the UK and if it typically has the same racist connotations as it does in the U.S.

    A teenage thug who shot a steel ball bearing into a bus driver’s face from close range in a shocking and unprovoked attack has been jailed.

    Callum Walters, 18, left Nestor De Barros with the metal shot lodged in the bone of his cheek after it missed his eye by just one inch.

    Walters launched the “cowardly” attack in Maidstone, Kent, after becoming enraged when the bus, which he thought would take him home, terminated at another location.

    He ran off after the vicious close-range assault but was caught after Kent Police circulated images of his face captured on CCTV.

    Walters had been travelling through the town on March 2 but became abusive to Mr De Barros, 33, when the bus terminated at Enterprise Road.

    The violent thug left the vehicle but as the driver pulled away he heard aloud bang.

    After getting out to inspect any damage, Walters walked up and fired the lead shot into the face of Mr De Barros from close range.

    The teenager, from Maidstone, was arrested on March 28 at his home address.

  380. rq says

    Denver DA Mitch Morrissey clears police officers in fatal shooting of Jessica Hernandez – remember her?

    Denver’s District Attorney has decided that police officers should not be charged for the fatal shooting of teenager Jessica Hernandez.

    Hernandez was killed in an alleyway near the intersection of 25th and Niagara on the early morning of January 26. Investigators said she was driving a stolen car toward two officers, who opened fire.

    The other teenage passengers in the same car were not hurt.

    Officer Gabriel Jordan and Officer Daniel Greene were “legally justified” in their use of force, DA Mitch Morrissey found.

    “Some in the community were quick to call this shooting ‘excessive force.’ Others felt it was a justified shooting. These initial reactions were made before the investigation was completed and without knowledge of all of the facts. Now, if people study and evaluate the facts of this case, and consider my ethical obligations as a prosecutor in bringing criminal charges, they may understand why criminal charges are not appropriate,” Morrissey wrote in his public letter to Police Chief Robert White.

    Morrissey’s 44-page decision explains that the Honda Civic Hernandez was driving was stolen between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Hernandez drove that car to several locations over the course of several hours, with four teenage friends as passengers.

    The teens provided the DA with inconsistent stories about how precisely where they went that night, but they eventually fell asleep in the car in the alley where the fatal shooting later occurred.

    Officer Jordan was the first to arrive and confirm the Honda matched the stolen vehicle report. At approximately 7 a.m. he noted that the teenagers in the car were starting to wake up and called for backup to respond with their lights and sirens.

    Officer Greene arrived at 7:01 and within one minute reported that shots had been fired. […]

    Following the announcement that no charges would be filed, the ACLU and Denver Police Department issued written statements:

    Denver Police Department statement:

    “The Denver Police Department (DPD) is aware of the outcome of the Denver District Attorney’s investigation into the incident where 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez was shot by Denver Police officers. We ask the community to review the shoot letter for a full understanding into the events, which occurred on January 26, 2015.

    “Now that DPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) has received the DA’s decision letter, it will proceed with the administrative review of the case. Once the administrative review is final, the releasable documents will be made available to the public. Additionally, Denver Police continue to review the policy and training of potential lethal force encounters involving persons in motor vehicles. This policy and training review, which has been ongoing, is expected to be completed within two weeks. ”

    ACLU statement:

    “In what has become a disturbingly predictable pattern, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has once again refused to bring charges against Denver law enforcement officers following a police-involved killing, in this case the January 26th shooting of 17-year-old Jessie Hernandez.

    “Beyond the obvious questions about conflict of interest, it is impossible to trust the objectivity of Mr. Morrissey, given that he has not filed a single indictment following an officer-involved shooting during his tenure as District Attorney.

    “In 2011, the ACLU of Colorado called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Denver Police Department’s ‘pattern and practice’ of using excessive force and violating the civil rights of Denver residents. We once again renew that call today.

    “A full independent review is necessary, now more than ever, as the community has lost its faith in Denver’s ability to hold police accountable in use-of-force cases.”

    St. Louis Civilian Oversight Board bill passed, another little bit of good news out of today. Bits and pieces, bits and pieces.

    The bill to establish a Civilian Oversight Board for the City of St. Louis became law Friday.

    Board Bill 208CS, introduced by Alderman Kennedy and sponsored by Alderman Antonio French, creates a civilian board to receive and review complaints about the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The City of St. Louis is now accepting applications to become one of seven members on the board.

    In order to be appointed, an individual must be nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the Board of Aldermen. Applications will be provided to the aldermen from an applicant’s Civilian Oversight Board district, but interested individuals may also contact their alderman directly to seek support.

    The COB Ordinance creates several qualifications for COB members including:

    •The individual must be a resident of the City of St. Louis;
    •At least 18 years of age;
    •Must not hold any public office;
    •Must not be an employee of the City or the State of Missouri;
    •Must not have an immediate family member who is currently employed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department; and,
    •Must not have been convicted of a felony.
    Not more than one member of the COB may be an individual who previously was a commissioned employee of a municipal, state, or federal law enforcement agency.

    They addressed Joyce, she responds: Statement from Circuit Attorney Jennifer M. Joyce regarding protest on June 5th, 2015

    Freedom of expression and assembly are as important to our free society as liberty, due process and every other fundamental right afforded in our great country. I respect those wishing to peaceably exercise their rights as citizens.

    As I have stated previously, my actions in this office have not, and never will be guided by public pressure, fear or favor. I understand, however, that as an elected official, my decisions will not satisfy everyone. I welcome conversation and constructive dialogue with the community, and I believe it’s essential to building confidence in the criminal justice system. That’s why my staff and I attend hundreds of neighborhood meetings each year, meet with dozens of community groups, personally return phone calls and respond to questions on social media.

    Since I announced our decision in the VonDerrit Myers case, I have extended multiple invitations to the Myers family through their attorney to meet with them. My invitations have gone unanswered.

    The doors remain open to anyone who wants to peacefully discuss their concerns. I have met with the NAACP, several city aldermen, state representatives, the Department of Justice and community leaders since the release of the 51-page report to the community. Most have not expressed concern over the Myers case.

    I have also met with some activists and protestors regarding this decision and those conversations have been very productive.

    Prior to Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment’s (MORE) announcement to protest today, I had not been contacted by them to meet with me. As I will be attending a previously scheduled event today, we reached out to them yesterday, and they have accepted our invitation to meet next week.

    While I am fully aware of concerns over various police policies, procedures and tactics used with protestors, as Circuit Attorney, my ability to hold officers accountable for their actions is specific and narrow. I have no authority over the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and the tactics they utilize when dealing with protestors. Those questions and comments should be directed to Chief Dotson. I know he, too, has met with dozens of community groups and welcomes constructive dialogue.

    If anyone has information that an officer has violated Missouri law, I encourage them to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chief of Police or my office. Should evidence arise that a police officer has violated the law, and I can prove it in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt, I will do so. Occupation does not discern justice in this jurisdiction.

    Our community has suffered a great deal of heartbreak. I want to work toward healing, hope and understanding. We achieve this only through honest and productive dialogue, and I applaud all those working toward that goal. Today, and every day, I pray for peace in our great city.

    A few pictures of that protest:
    “Those who preside in this building are complicit in this violence bc they continue to do nothing” @chicanapoet1
    We call on @JenniferJoyceCA to drop every protest related charge in the city! #decarceratestl
    This was not even a protest or action. This is the #STL Circuit Court’s LEO response to a *press conference*.

  381. rq says

    To folks equating protesting w/ violence, this has been the scene every Wednesday for years, and it’s peaceful. Attached, tweet with text: “97th consecutive West Wednesday #justicefortyronewest”.

    New Low in Preference for the Death Penalty.

    A majority of Americans favor life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty for convicted murderers, a first in ABC News/Washington Post polls.

    Given a choice between the two options, 52 percent pick life in prison as the preferred punishment, while 42 percent favor the death penalty – the fewest in polls dating back 15 years. The result follows a botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma in late April.

    Without an alternative offered, 61 percent continue to support the death penalty, matching 2007 as the fewest in polls back to the early 1980s. That’s down sharply from 80 percent in 1994.

    Clearly there’s remaining ambivalence; when offered the option of life imprisonment with no chance of parole, 29 percent of death penalty supporters prefer the alternative.

    INJECTIONS – Another result finds that most supporters of capital punishment hold that position even if lethal injections became unavailable or were outlawed. Just 16 percent of death penalty supporters say either of those would constitute grounds for doing away with capital punishment; eight in 10 would shift to another method, e.g., the electric chair or gas chamber.

    Lethal injections have come under scrutiny, on issues including the unavailability of customarily used drugs, following the 43-minute botched execution of inmate Clayton D. Lockett in Oklahoma. A new law in Tennessee allows for electrocution if lethal drugs are not available.

    Support for the death penalty is higher in the 32 states that have it, 64 percent, vs. 54 percent elsewhere. In a wider gap, people in death-penalty states divide about evenly in their preference for capital punishment vs. life without parole, while in other states life imprisonment is preferred by a 20-point margin.

    This survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, measures views on the death penalty in general. Previous polling has shown that attitudes on capital punishment can vary widely depending on the nature and circumstances of the crime.

    GROUPS – Views on capital punishment range among groups. Fifty-six percent of women support the death penalty, rising to 66 percent of men. And women prefer life in prison to the death penalty by 57-37 percent, while men are evenly divided.

    There’s also a vast gap by race; whites are more likely than nonwhites to support the death penalty, and to prefer it over life in prison, by 23- and 22-point margins. The gaps are widest comparing whites to blacks, a group that’s generally skeptical of the criminal justice system. Their support for the death penalty is lower than that of any other group.

    Among other groups, support for the death penalty peaks among evangelical white Protestants and Republicans, at eight in 10 each, dropping to 47 percent among Democrats. It’s 20 points higher among conservatives than liberals.

    Preference for capital punishment over life in prison follows similar patterns, peaking at 65 percent among evangelical white Protestants (vs. 36 percent of their non-evangelical counterparts). It’s 30 points higher among Republicans than Democrats, and 25 points higher among conservatives than liberals.

    In terms of change, preference for the death penalty vs. life in prison is down by 8 points since 2006, with the most pronounced drops (by 10 to 20 points) among non-evangelical white Protestants, seniors, nonwhites, less-educated adults, liberals and independents.

    Charts, tables etc. available in pdf at the link. I suppose this is also encouraging, no?

    Death of college student in Georgia jail ruled homicide – again, the pathological homicide, not the legal homicide. What happens legally next is up to other people. But I know what I hope for.

    The death of a college student in a Georgia jail has been ruled a homicide. The 22-year-old died from several blunt-force injuries to the head and upper body, according to the county coroner. The student was found dead in restraints on New Year’s Day.

    Matthew Ajibade’s cause of death “is listed as blunt force trauma, which was really a combination of several things that were enumerated in his autopsy report by the GBI,” Chatham County coroner Dr. Bill Wessinger said.

    He said he based his conclusion on the results of an autopsy by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which declined to make its report public.

    Wessinger cited “abrasions, lacerations, skin injuries about the head and some other areas of the body. There was some small amount of blood inside the skull case.”

    However, the coroner stressed “that homicide does not necessarily mean murder. It can be, but it’s death at the hands of another person,” the Savannah Morning News reported.

    Ajibade’s family learned of the cause of death from the death certificate – but not until a photo of it showed up on social media, according to their attorney, Mark O’Mara.

    “It’s really disgusting to me,” O’Mara told AP. “They owe anybody the common decency of letting them know first how their son died.” The family was completely unaware that a death certificate had been filed, he added.

    Last month, nine deputies were fired in connection with Ajibade’s death. According to Chatham County Sheriff Al St. Lawrence, the terminations were based on the results of an internal investigation, as well as one by the GBI. […]

    The 22-year-old Nigerian student, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was arrested following a call about a domestic disturbance. When officers arrived, they found Ajibade holding his girlfriend under a blanket, according to an incident report.

    When the woman was uncovered, they noticed the woman’s “face was bruised, and her nose was bleeding.”

    Ajibade refused to release the woman when ordered to do so, police said. When officers tried to arrest him, he “resisted apprehension in a violent manner.”

    According to O’Mara, Ajibade was having a manic episode at the time. He said the girlfriend gave officers Ajibade’s medication, and was told that he would be taken to the hospital. Instead, he was taken to jail.

    “It seems he got no medical attention. The only thing he got was restraint,” O’Mara said.

    Once at the jail, sheriff’s officials say the student was placed in a restraining chair in an isolation cell after becoming physically aggressive during booking and injuring three deputies. The department said that one deputy suffered a concussion and broken nose.

    Deputies said they conducted checks on Ajibade, and that he was found unresponsive during the second check. CPR was administered by the jail’s medical staff, and a defibrillator was used – both unsuccessfully.

    It won’t be five $1 billion projects that transforms St. Louis City. It’ll be a hundred thousand $50,000 investments over 10 years.
    Our first @North_Campus project, The Sanctuary, started with a $15k investment from @IWFDNSTL and another $15k I raised privately… (1/2)
    …For $30k we turned a vacant eyesore into a neighborhood anchor that has served kids everyday since. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. (2/2)
    He (Antonio French) has been spending time renovating the new North Campus building, a place for youth and others to spend time after school and learn, providing a safe, supportive and constructive space (see thenorthcampus.org for info).

  382. says

    More from Counter Current–
    Police brutally slam man to the ground and raid his house over a parking ticket!

    If it wasn’t caught on video, few would have believed it. “I think we all know what would have happened if he wasn’t there,” Octavius Johnson said about the video.

    It was his childhood friend who had secretly recorded four police officers abusing him in the video.

    “It would have been swept under the rug,” Johnson said without hesitation.

    Is he right? He certainly seems to be.

    But now, because of the quick-thinking of his buddy, all of the four officers involved have been fired.

    Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer was very animated when he talked reporters at a press conference about the “embarrassing” incident.

    “Many of the police actions that took place that day are in violation of our policies and do not represent how I want our officers to conduct themselves,” he said.

    “The final resolution will be fair to the citizens of Omaha, the Omaha Police Department and the specific employees involved so that we can move forward and restore any public trust that may have eroded with this incident.”

    The Johnson family is not satisfied with the firing. It doesn’t go far enough, they said.

    Now, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed suit seeking damages for the anxiety and depression that have surfaced in the months since. A full eight officers have been named in the suit with another 24 who remain unnamed.

    “This incident will live with our family for the rest of our lives,” Sharee Johnson – the mother of the two young men – said, “None of us can call 911 when we need help and believe that police would be there to help us. We live in a city where we feel we have no protection.”

    The suit alleges that dozens of Omaha police officers turned a parking violation into a brutal arrest, unconstitutional raid on the family’s house, and confiscation of video that was taken of these illegal police actions. All of this stemmed from Octavius Johnson parking his truck on the wrong part of the street. A secondary video taken by Johnson’s childhood friend shows the incident from a second story vantage point. Police can clearly be seen grabbing an non-resisting Johnson by the neck, and throwing him to the ground, then punching him numerous times, as other officers rush in.

    “He went around my neck, threw me to the ground, choked me out to the point where I couldn’t breathe or speak,” Johnson said of the illegal assault by police officers. “The officer told me to stop resisting, punched me in the face.” As if this were not enough, they implied that they would murder him right there in the street, saying “do you want to die today?”

    Octavius’ brother Juaquez, was chased and then arrested for filming the arrest on a camera phone, even though he was on private property, and did not interfere with the illegal arrest.

    It is a breath of fresh air to see the Omaha Police Department act quickly to fire these officers, but the Johnson family is right, were it not for that second video of the assault, no action would have been taken on their complains alone. They would have been ignored, shrugged off and ultimately they would have been prosecuted for the crimes alleged in the illegal arrest, crimes which they never committed.

  383. says

    More on the killing of William Chapman at the hands of Officer Rankin-
    First John Crawford, now William Chapman, unarmed and shot by cops at Walmart:

    First John Crawford, and now William Chapman. It seems that Walmart stores attract police shootings of unarmed young men like magnets.

    Last August, John Crawford, 22, was gunned down while holding a BB-gun he picked up off the shelf in the Beavercreek, Ohio store where he died. Now, another unarmed African American young man has been gunned down by the police.

    William Chapman, 18, had been accused of shoplifting. It remains to be seen if he had actually done anything wrong, but the police report in this case lists this as the officer’s reason for engaging him initially.

    The incident took place Virginia, when Officer Stephen Rankin of the Portsmouth Police Department killed the unarmed teenager.

    Rankin had been disciplined in the past for posting Nazi images online. Just three years ago he had killed another man, in a pattern eerily similar to that of Beavercreek Officer Sean Williams in the Crawford shooting.

    In that earlier killing, Rankin had killed unarmed 26-year-old Kazakh immigrant and later insulted his family online. Of course, he still kept his job.

    Chapman’s killing took place in April but so far it has barely registered among activists and the mainstream, corporate media. “I feel alone,” Chapman’s mother, Sallie explained. “Because my son is gone and because nobody is trying to help me understand why.”

    Note the part about posting Nazi images online. I’m sure he didn’t have any racist views though…

  384. says

    Filmmaker calls on poor blacks and whites to team up:

    The world famous filmmaker John Waters is a lifelong resident of Baltimore. In the wake of the Freddie Gray shooting and community protests, he decided to weigh in.

    During an interview during his current book tour, Waters told The Daily Beast that he believes the police brutality problem is bigger than just “black and white.”

    Waters discussed an array of topics, ranging from voter fraud to Jeb Bush. But when it came to the Baltimore protests, riots, or uprising (depending on who is defining them), he said the riots were not at all dissimilar to the ones back in 1968. But there are some key differences and suggestions Waters has.

    “I was around for the first Baltimore riots,” he said. “My first apartment in Baltimore was on 25th Street and Calvert, and there were tanks outside of my house. Everywhere was burning. Believe me, these riots were not as bad as those. But the riots in Baltimore this time were more widespread than what you saw on CNN.”

    He says that CNN and other mainstream media outlets only looked at a narrow portion of the protests, preferring those which could be spun in the most sensational and fear-mongering of ways.

    Waters said that “the problem in Baltimore is that there is also an equal number of poor white people. I really wish that they would team up. The poor people of Baltimore need to make it a class issue, not a race issue.”

    What do you think?

    I think Waters needs to learn more about the Black Lives Matter Movement and why it exists. He also needs to learn about structural racism.

    ****
    Something else that’s been bugging me a while. Coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests doesn’t focus enough on the other issues the movement seeks to address-the impact of the drug war on PoC, the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans, harsh sentencing laws and more. The movement is not just about police brutality and I’ve seen far too many comments from people who think it is.

  385. rq says

    Tony
    What they miss is the additional impact that race has on the poverty. That you can’t just say ‘oh, all poor people!’ because the poor people who are black will still have a harder time than those who are white. That goes for pretty much anything you look at – the baselines aren’t even the same, due to the colour of one’s skin, which means to tackle all the other issues, racism must be tackled – whether first and/or foremost, I don’t know (maybe if all poverty is eliminated, racism will go away, too), but certainly, racism as racism is an issue. And poverty is a race issue. [/myopinion]
    Oh, and the potentially violent protests attack the symbols of white supremacy that much more visibly, hence the concentrated media coverage. :P

    +++

    Nakkiah Lui: “It’s Not Racism That Australia Needs To Get Rid Of; It’s The Privilege Of Whiteness”, on racism in Australia. Excellent read, almost poetic.

    I’m Nakkiah Nellie We’ama Hope Lui. My name means ‘Special one who is grandmother’s daughter’. Except for ‘Hope’. That part’s after Hope Brady from Days of Our Lives. I’m a proud Gamillario and Torres Strait Islander woman.

    I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and the elders past and present.

    Now I’m going to say hello in my traditional language and I want you say hello back, okay?

    Hola.

    Now you say it back.

    Hola.

    Como estas? That’s “How are you?”.

    Isn’t it funny how that sounds like Spanish? That’s because it is. I’m not a racist but no one here could tell the difference between Spanish and an Aboriginal language. I guess as an Aboriginal woman it doesn’t matter what language I’m speaking to you in. You don’t understand it; it’s just tokenistic.

    Tokenistic cultural feel-goods, just like the acknowledgement of the traditional people who used to live on this land.

    You know who we should acknowledge? The owners of this land. The white people that stole it. Let’s take a moment of silence to remember the colonisers.

    Look, moving on — I think they’ve had enough of our time.

    The Urban Dictionary defines ‘I’m Not a Racist But’ as:

    1) A disclaimer that allows the speaker to say whatever they like regardless of how racist it actually is;

    2) What a racist may say before they lazily chuck around inherently racist sweeping generalisations, but don’t want to appear to be racist.

    For example, “I’m not being racist, but gee, I really hate black people.”

    I, personally, like to define ‘I’m not a racist but’ as defending Whiteness. For example, “I’m not a racist, but gee, I really like being white”.

    There is an irony in me giving this speech; I’m not a racist but here I am, a young black woman in the Great Hall of Sydney University surrounded by walls of portraits of Great, White Men.

    I’m not a racist but really, who cares what I am?

    I’m a black woman — what I am doesn’t matter.

    What matters is White Men.

    What matters is White Privilege.

    White Privilege that is sexualised.

    White Privilege that is radicalised.

    White Privilege that is gendered.

    White Privilege that is inherent in class.

    White Privilege that is a value system, that places a very small few at the centre and then Others everyone who surrounds it, and who don’t hold the values of ‘Whiteness’.

    I’m not a racist but you might be. You might not think you’re superior to any other races or disdain them for their race; you might have friends from all races; you might insist you don’t see colour (which if you actually don’t, you should probably see a doctor). I bet you love night noodle markets, and you sit through welcome-to-countries because you ‘get it’.

    You’re not a racist but you’re white and you’re privileged, and you’re not giving that privilege up. You’re hanging onto it, as Aboriginal people die on their knees in station cells, as we imprison refugees on an island out of sight just for seeking help, as we continually try and ban the burqa, as white people spout hateful vitriol on trains and buses at anyone who isn’t white (and if you’ve seen the videos on the internet, it’s always white people being racist, no one else). As all of this happens, you’re shaking your head with contempt, you’re reading this speech all the way through — but you’re still hanging on to your privilege.

    And what are you doing? These things I’m telling you aren’t things you don’t know. The influx of op-eds and clicktavism is at an all-time high, you come to these events, you read my speech, you wear the guilt of your privilege on your sleeve but still nothing changes.

    More at the link.

    @Nettaaaaaaaa there’s been protests across the country and this is how the media reports it – not necessarily all Australian media, but the fact that there’s some subset of Australian media that believes it okay to call Aboriginal peoples fighting for the right to live on their own land ‘selfish’ and ‘rabble’? That’s a problem.

    ‘Black women unnamed’: how Tanisha Anderson’s bad day turned into her last

    The coroner ruled Anderson’s death a homicide, but prosecutors have yet to announce whether charges will be brought. The officers’ individual answers to a civil complaint by the family are due to a court on Saturday, but the Andersons say they know what they saw.

    “It’s still kind of hard some days to even go outside and walk and hit that corner and know what happened,” said Theresa Anderson, the partner of Tanisha’s brother Joell, who said in the immediate aftermath that the police “killed my sister” as he watched.

    Lawyers for the family said even Anderson’s 16-year-old daughter, Mauvion, watched from a window as her mother died outside the home where they lived with Tanisha’s mother, Cassandra.

    Seven of the 22 women killed by police in the US since the start of this year were killed at home, according to data collected by The Counted, the Guardian’s project to track every police killing throughout 2015.

    In a lengthy interview with Anderson’s family, they told the Guardian that Tanisha was so much more than the “mentally ill woman” described in some news reports about her death, and that the night she died was the first time in years they needed to call 911 for help on Tanisha’s behalf.

    For much of her life, the family said, Anderson had beena good student who dreamed of becoming a broadcast journalist. In her 20s, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on medication.

    On 13 November, a cold night in Cleveland, her younger sister Jennifer said Tanisha was having one of her “bad days”. Wearing only in a nightgown, with no shoes on, Tanisha was disoriented and kept trying to leave the house. Joell Anderson – who as a child had been his two sisters’ appointed protector, walking them to school every day, warning them off strangers – was the one who made the first 911 call.

    Two sets of police officers arrived instead of an ambulance. Anderson seemed calmer for a time, but then the family called again. The second set of cops, they claim, were ruder and more brusque. They were Detective Scott Aldridge, a seven-year veteran of the force, and his partner Brian Meyers. They told the family to stay in the house and walked Anderson to their patrol car.

    The story of what happened next is chaotic, disputed, and the subject of the family’s lawsuit – as well as an ongoing investigation by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, which this week also received a police investigation into the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed while carrying a toy pellet gun by the Cleveland police force, one of the most scrutinized in the US.

    But everyone agrees on a few facts: within half an hour of the second police visit, Tanisha Anderson was lying on the pavement, handcuffed and not breathing. She arrived at the hospital, the coroner’s report says, in full cardiopulmonary arrest and could not be revived. Her death, the coroner would rule, was a homicide, with the cause listed as “sudden death in association with physical restraint in a prone position in association with ischemic heart disease and bipolar disorder with agitation”. […]

    Women’s stories, many in the #BlackLivesMatter movement point out, simply don’t garner the same kind of attention men’s do. Brittany Packnett, who sits on Barack Obama’s policing taskforce, told the Guardian: “We know the story of marginalized people, of repressed people in America, is often one of erasure. And when you talk about not only being a person of color but a woman on top of that, you can feel that erasure doubly.”

    Some are seeking to rectify that, like the Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who recently co-authored a report called #SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Women, for the African American Policy Forum. “The failure to highlight and demand accountability for the countless black women killed by police over the past two decades,” the report observes, “leaves black women unnamed and thus under-protected in the face of their continued vulnerability to racialized police violence.”

    A lawyer for Anderson’s family, David Malik, who has been involved in many Ohio cases involving police violence, told the Guardian that in his experience the erasure of those stories was typical. “I will tell you, I think the problem is male domination of police departments, of the media, of government,” he said. In newsrooms, he also said, “the combination of being a woman, being an African American, sometimes being poor, or sometimes having a police record means such individuals never even make it on the radar screen”.

    At least seven of the 22 women killed by police in 2015 were African American like Tanisha; 12 were white, one Hispanic, and one Asian American. (The Guardian is still seeking confirmation of the race of the two other women killed.)

    At least four of the women identified by the Guardian had documented mental health issues, as Tanisha Anderson did. But unlike Anderson, in almost all of the cases the cause of death was a gunshot. And almost all of the women were alleged to be armed with some kind of weapon: sometimes a gun, sometimes a knife, sometimes a vehicle. Anderson, everyone agrees, was unarmed.

    At least two of the black women killed by police – Meagan Hockaday of Oxnard, California, and Janisha Fonville of Charlotte, North Carolina – died in the midst of domestic disturbance calls, where the police had been summoned to help. […]

    While the legal process drags on, Cassandra Johnson has been working on recovering from the family ordeal. At first she didn’t want to go to any of the Cleveland stores that she and Tanisha had long frequented. “It’s just one day at a time,” she said. “I’m not where I was … but I’m not where I want to be either.”

    Cassandra mostly spends her days advocating for better training for police officers in dealing with the mentally ill, through projects like #SayHerName and others. At the end of May, she spoke at a rally in New York after the release of the #SayHerName report, along with the families of Rekia Boyd, Miriam Carey, Michelle Cusseaux, Shelly Frey and Kayla Moore.

    “What happened to my daughter,” Johnson said to the crowd, “was unjust. It was unjust. It was really unjust. I’ve been through all the range of emotions that I can go through, concerning this. But I will not stop, as all of the rest of the mothers have said, until I get some answers.”

    The family was encouraged by the consent decree recently imposed upon the Cleveland police in a settlement with the US Department of Justice. The additional training procedures outlined in the decree were the sort of reform they have been hoping for.

    The other day, in her lawyer’s office, Cassandra was clutching a copy of its mental health training provisions. Joell described the new measures as the “greatest joy”.

    “Like I tell my mom,” Tanisha’s sister Jennifer said, “my sister was going to school for journalism, to be a news broadcaster. She couldn’t do what she wanted to do in this life, but she’s doing it in another way in telling her story.

    “She’s not telling somebody else’s. She’s telling hers – she’s using my mom’s voice to speak her story. So that everyone knows who she is.”

    @deray Eric Clapton can have a song called Cocaine and be greatest guitarist of all time, but Fetty Wap mentions cookin’ and he’s a thug…

    Ezell Ford. LAPD finds officers were justified in fatal shooting of mentally ill man, sources say

    Department investigators found evidence indicating that Ford had fought for control of one officer’s gun, bolstering claims the officers made after the shooting, said two sources who spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

    Ford and one of the officers, Sharlton Wampler, had scratches on their hands, and the holster for Wampler’s gun was scratched as well, the sources said. Tests found Ford’s DNA on the weapon, according to the sources. [and there was that muzzle print on his back, DNA transfer much?]

    LAPD officials have never offered an explanation for why the officers stopped the 25-year-old Ford, but the sources said that the officers told investigators they decided to detain him because they believed Ford was trying to discard narcotics as he walked. The department has never publicly said whether narcotics were found.

    Bustamante concluded in his report to the Police Commission that it was unclear whether the officers’ observations were sufficient justification to approach Ford and then try to detain him, the sources said.

    And as the officers reached Ford, Wampler put his hands on him — a move that Bustamante found unacceptable. Department protocols instruct officers in such situations to address a suspect from a position of safety, such as behind an open car door.

    Ford’s death became a local rallying cry against killings by police, particularly those of black men. Ford, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, died two days after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which prompted nationwide demonstrations and a heated conversation about race and policing.

    Ford was one of 18 people killed and nine others wounded in LAPD shootings last year, the department said. As of Monday, police officers had shot and killed eight people and wounded another eight so far this year, the department said. […]

    If the commission follows Bustamante’s recommendation, it would then be up to Beck to decide what discipline, if any, to impose. Often when an officer’s decision to use deadly force is found to be justified but the tactics flawed, Beck opts to order the officer to undergo retraining instead of handing down a punishment.

    Bustamante and Cmdr. Andrew Smith, an LAPD spokesman, declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss the shooting before the commission issues a ruling . The two officers involved in the shooting are assigned to administrative duties, Smith said.

    Last year, Beck offered a brief account of the shooting. The officers, he said, told department investigators that they shot Ford during a violent struggle in which Ford forced one officer to the ground and grabbed his gun. The officer reportedly yelled for help, Beck said, prompting his partner to fire at Ford. The officer on the ground used a backup weapon to reach around Ford’s body and shoot him in the back.

    An autopsy showed Ford was shot three times, including once so closely in the back that the muzzle of the officer’s gun left an imprint.

    Ford’s mother was emotional when she learned of the department’s and inspector general’s recommendations Friday from a Times reporter. […]

    The officers’ attorney, Larry Hanna, said his clients had little choice but to make contact with Ford when they saw him turn away and appear to conceal something.

    “I’m hoping the commissioners will see it was within policy,” he said.

    Craig Lally, president of the union that represents rank-and-file officers, declined to comment on the officers’ tactics prior to the shooting, saying he did not know all of the facts.

    But he defended their use of deadly force, saying the situation escalated when Ford grabbed Wampler’s gun.

    “The only reason you try to take a gun away from an officer is to use it against the officer or use it against somebody else,” Lally said. “Had that person not escalated to try and get the gun away from the officer, this would be a non-event in everybody’s life. The suspect dictated what happened in this.

    “The officer has a right to defend themselves,” he said. “They have no other alternative.”

    “Attempt to conceal something”? Because it couldn’t just have been a telephone he was putting in his pocket?

    #Oakland: Don’t forget! #BreakTheCurfew demos tonight at 7pm at OGP and 8pm at Grand & Telegraph #LibbySchaaf

  386. rq says

    Overall, the #JusticeConference definitely seems to be a meeting of radical Christians.

    And I appreciate that it’s been said that “Black Lives Matter” over & over. Making some folks uncomfortable. #JusticeConference
    The tweet-quotes were definitely radical christian.

    Coroner: College Student’s Death In Police Isolation Cell Ruled Homicide, another article on Matthew Ajibade.

    California Prosecutors Barred from Death Penalty Case for Misconduct. This is the kind of people who make that decision.

    A California judge disqualified Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and his entire office from prosecuting a death penalty case after finding that prosecutors and police had engaged in misconduct.

    Evidence in the case of Scott Dekraii showed that, after Mr. Dekraii had asked for a lawyer, Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies deliberately placed him near a repeat jailhouse informant who had been instructed to elicit a confession from him.

    This practice is illegal because the Constitution bars police from attempting to obtain a confession from a defendant after he has invoked his right to counsel. Jailhouse informants can be used only when defendants voluntarily make statements to cellmates, not when they are orchestrated and recorded by jailhouse officials, which makes the interaction effectively a police interrogation by proxy.

    Further investigation revealed that this illegal use of informants has been standard practice in Orange County for decades — so standard it has been meticulously tracked in a massive database called TRED. The sheriff’s department and prosecutors have gone to great lengths, including testifying falsely in court, to keep TRED’s very existence a secret. As the judge wrote in his order: “[A] wealth of potentially relevant discovery material–an entire computerized data base built and maintained by the Orange County Sheriff over the course of many years which is a repository for information related directly to the very issues that this court was examining as a result of the defendant’s motion–remained secret, despite numerous specific discovery orders issued by this court…”

    The absence of direct evidence that the district attorney actively participated in the concealment of this information from the defense and the court “aggravated” the situation, the court found, because the DA allowed his agents to “habitually ignore[] the law over an extended period of time.” The DA neglected his responsibility for ensuring that criminal investigations and prosecutions do not rely on “peace officers who may try to cut legal corners” and ignored attempts to compromise suspects’ rights out of “loyalty to his law enforcement partners.”

    Because the evidence demonstrates that the district attorney “cannot or will not insure compliance by other team members with the orders of this court,” the judge recused all 250 prosecutors in Rackauckas’s office and transferred the case to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who has appealed the ruling. Her announcement that her office will investigate the allegations drew criticism from observers who noted the close ties between the DA and AG’s offices.

    According to OC Weekly, prosecutors have engaged in misconduct involving the illegal use of jailhouse informants, hiding exculpatory evidence, and committing perjury to cover up the tactics in at least 36 recent or ongoing cases, including five death-penalty trials. Legal observers note that while the scale of the cover-up by law enforcement and prosecutors sets Orange County apart, police and prosecutorial misconduct is a common feature of the American criminal justice system.

    And that is how people get convicted.

    We are honored to help the #TraumaCenterNow campaign & our friends at @StopChicago any way we can! See you on 6/18! That’s the National Lawyer’s Guild getting involved.

    Y’all, someone just told me that Larry Lomax, the protestor who got dragged by the @BaltimorePolice, JUST got out on bail last week! Yah, he’s charged with assault. Got pepper sprayed and manhandled by police.

  387. rq says

    The Guardian keeps updating The Counted. Might repost every now and then just to keep up.

    BLM Boston Statement on shooting death of Usaama Rahim by Boston Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – it’s on Facebook, but I can’t seem to access it either. Which is kind of disappointing.

    @deray DOJ contact on ground in Baltimore To make police complaints. [email protected]. CRS.

    Philadelphia City Councilman Attends “White Lives Matter” Rally

    According to Philadelphia ABC outlet WPVI, which covered the rally, demonstrators gathered at Fourth and Wolf Streets in the wake of “what they claim are racial attacks at the hands of four black women who live nearby” to protest the fact that Philadelphia police did not initially file a report on the alleged attacks or arrest the perpetrators. A woman identified as a victim of the attacks in WPVI’s segment says that her assailants yelled “white [expletive] we’re gonna [expletive] you up!” while they “pounded” her inside her home, and a man says that he was attacked on his doorstep by the same women. Both alleged victims declined to provide their names to WPVI and were interviewed with their faces obscured. Philadelphia’s NBC 10 also covered the rally without naming the alleged victims.

    WPVI’s video makes it clear that the rally was racially charged—one demonstrator is shown saying “white lives matter” into a megaphone while holding a sign that appears to read “Eliminate the thugs.” What’s not clear from the report is that Jack Owens—identified by WPVI as the rally’s organizer—may have a history of virulent racism.

    A Facebook profile under the name Jack Owens can be seen on a cached page promoting the event to a group called “Taking Our South Philadelphia Streets Back.” “We will gather on the corner of 4th and wolf to show our solidarity, to show the Police Department that we deserve answers and to show these victims that we care!”, the post reads in part.

    Jack Owens’ profile has since been deleted, but a a tipster in South Philadelphia sent screencaps of about a dozen racist Facebook posts that were published by what appears to be the same account between 2009 and 2012. In one, a photo of a gorilla is captioned “Quit comparing me to n*gg*rs.” Another captions a photo of an older black woman with “oldest living monkey not in captivity and/or jail dies today at 113.” Several posts refer to “n*gg*r history month.” […]

    Because the names of the alleged attackers and victims have not been made public, it is difficult to divine the circumstances surrounding the attacks. But the Philadelphian who sent us Jack Owens’ Facebook posts said that there are rumors that run contrary to the demonstrators’ version of events. Making clear that his claims were unconfirmed, the tipster wrote via email:

    Supposedly there was an argument between some women wherein a white woman was struck by a black woman. The police were called and determined it was a mutual fight with no real injuries and left the scene without arresting anyone.

    A small group of white people related to the white woman then organized a “protest” or rally. The rally was purportedly to speak out against violence in their neighborhood – specifically, they say, 4 black women they claim are “terrorizing” their neighborhood…

    The general gist though is that it was a seemingly small incident (no blood drawn) but the locals wanted an arrest. When the arrest wasn’t forthcoming, it quickly became exaggerated into the neighborhood being “terrorized.” It’s just an unfortunate distortion of what happens in the neighborhood where a very small minority of white people feel inexplicably threatened by their diminishing role of “running” the neighborhood

    Representatives of Mark Squilla’s office have not yet returned my request for comment. I’ll update if and when they do.

    UPDATE: Larry Lomax, dragged by @BaltimorePolice, has been charged with 2nd Degree Assault. That’s him.

  388. rq says

    Maced directly in the face, dragged down by his hair, never harming a soul, Larry Lomax charged with assault.

    No charges against Denver cops who shot Jessica Hernandez

    A 17-year-old driver behind the wheel of a stolen Honda did not hit two Denver Police Department officers who shot and killed her, according to a letter released by the city on Friday.

    Still, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said he will not prosecute Officers Gabriel Jordan and Daniel Greene for the shooting death of Jessica Hernandez on the morning of Jan. 26.

    The officers were justified because they reasonably believed the teen was accelerating toward Jordan and that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering a serious injury, the district attorney wrote in his decision letter.

    DA on No Charges: “Not because he posed an actual threat, but because (Officer) Cruz reasonably perceived a threat” #DillonTaylor @deray
    Just to drive that point home. They felt threatened.

    5th staffer leaving Baltimore mayor’s criminal justice office

    Amy Hartman, who led city efforts to increase public safety in the southeast neighborhood of McElderry Park, has submitted her resignation — meaning nearly a third of the 16-member office is departing amid the recent surge in violence.

    LeVar Michael, who led the city’s anti-violence program Operation Ceasefire, resigned in March over his concerns that the city wasn’t implementing the program properly. Last month, Angela Johnese, director of the criminal justice office, and Heather Brantner, the mayor’s Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator, left their posts. Officials declined to say under what terms they departed. And Shannon Cosgrove, the office’s deputy director, submitted her resignation days later.

    Well, she got convicted for the kicking, not the killing… Jury convicts LAPD officer for kicking woman in groin. Justice.

    The camera captured the Los Angeles police officer hissing a cruel threat at the handcuffed woman, striking at her throat with an open hand and kicking her in the crotch.

    The video of the arrest, recorded by a patrol-car camera, persuaded jurors to convict Officer Mary O’Callaghan on Friday of assault under color of authority.

    During the two-week trial, in which the defense argued that O’Callaghan hadn’t used excessive force, the video gave jurors an unvarnished view of what happened, one said.

    “It played a big role,” said Deedra Garcia, the jury forewoman. “It gave us a lot of evidence.” […]

    An autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner determined that cocaine intoxication was probably a “major factor” in Thomas’ death. It wasn’t possible to determine what role, if any, the struggle with O’Callaghan or other officers who took part in the arrest played in it. The official cause of death was listed as “undetermined.”

    O’Callaghan is one of three Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with assault under the color of authority for on-duty incidents captured on camera. In April, Officer Richard Garcia, 34, was charged with using unlawful force during an arrest in South L.A. Officer Jonathan Lai, 31, was charged last year with using excessive force while detaining a man near Staples Center in 2012.

    Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement Friday that patrol car cameras, when used appropriately, “can help ensure that officers who operate outside of the law, and tarnish our badge, are held accountable.”

    Oakland’s Mayor @LibbySchaaf wasting millions of dollars instituting an illegal night curfew on protests.

  389. rq says

    Yesterday there was a collection of goodish news.
    Here’s a warning of not-so-goodish news. Source: LAPD May Find 2 Officers Were Justified In Fatal Shooting Of Ezell Ford

    A source tells KNX 1070’s Claudia Peschiutta that the LAPD has determined the two officers involved in last year’s fatal shooting of Ezell Ford were justified.

    An LAPD media spokesperson said Friday evening that she was unaware of any such findings. The department is expected to make a formal recommendation to the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday, at which point the commission will make the final decision.

    An attorney for the Ford family tells CBS2/KCAL9 the family would be devastated if they decide to clear the officers.

    “The fact that there were leaks was appalling,” Board President Steve Soboroff told CBS2/KCAL9’s Erica Nochlin.

    Soboroff wants to make it clear no final decision has been made: “Any intimation that anything has been decided by the department, or that anything has been decided by anyone, is unfair to the Ford family. And I apologize sincerely to them.”

    Ford, 25, was killed Aug. 11 after he was approached by officers while walking in South L.A. He was shot three times. Officers maintain there was a violent struggle and Ford reached for one of their guns.

    His family says he was mentally ill and harmless.

    ‘LAZY N*****:’ Blind man finds racist note on windshield for parking in handicapped spot

    In the parking lot of a Maryland shopping center on Sunday, D’Anthony White — who is blind — received a racist note on his fiance’s windshield from a person angry that the vehicle displayed a handicapped placard and was parked in a handicapped space, a local Fox affiliate reports.

    White and his fiance had been running errands in the D.C. suburb of Silver Spring when they returned to their car and found the anonymous letter.
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    “THE ONLY THING HAdicap ON you is your BRAiN you LAZY N*****,” it reads. White posted the hateful note to Facebook: [image]

    White says this weekend’s parking lot incident is only the latest example of harassment directed at him for having a disability other people can’t immediately observe. “I try not to let any of the ignorance bother me too much – then they’ve won,” White writes in his Facebook post. “I keep going because it definitely beats the alternative! And, this bigot won’t get me down either.”

    “From a distance, I’m a tall, healthy looking, strong guy. So people don’t think ‘disabled’,” White tells reporters. But, he says, having a handicapped placard helps make parking lot navigation a physical possibility for him.

    “All disabilities are not visible,” White points out. “Just because you can’t see my disability, don’t make the assumption I don’t have one.” White adds that he does not owe repeated explanations to strangers in parking lots about how specifically he demonstrated eligibility for a handicapped parking placard.

    Fox 5 says that disability rights advocates report an uptick in parking lot harassment, including property damage to cars and an apparent anthology of mean, anonymous notes. “Just because the logo for handicapped parking shows someone in a wheelchair,” a broadcast reporter tells viewers, “doesn’t mean that everybody who uses [a placard] will be in one.”

    “I’ve stopped saying sorry,” White writes about other people’s ignorant reactions to his disability. “I say excuse me. Sorry don’t live here no more.”

    Oh, and STL passed that Civilian Review Board.
    This @SLMPD Citizen Review Board application looks similar to a FBI or DoD application, in all honesty.
    Compare the #STL Civilian Review Board application [link] … to the @SLMPD officer application [link] ….
    Compare #STL Civilian Review Board application [link] … to a military security clearance application [link] …
    To summarize, application to be a member of @SLMPD Civilian Review Board is as involved as an application for national security clearance.

  390. rq says

    Bucket List: 99-Year-Old Gets College Degree Before Turning 100

    She’s old enough to remember the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and most recently, the rise of the digital information age.

    Adding one more historical event to her life, 99-year-old Doreetha Daniels graduated college on Friday, accomplishing her own personal goal of earning a college degree before turning 100.

    “I accomplished what I wanted to do… this is my dream come true,” she said.

    Daniels stole the show at the graduation ceremony at the College of the Canyons when she was presented her diploma for associate of the arts degree from College of the Canyons.

    She’d been dreaming of going to college since she was a young girl growing up in Nebraska. Her final inspiration to go to school came when she watched her grandchildren get their master’s degrees.
    “So I said well, I’m not doing anything, I’m tired of my hobbies, so I’m going to go to school,” Daniels said.

    She lost her driver’s license after suffering two strokes during her seven years studying at the college. Her son said despite the impediment, she didn’t slow down.

    “Yeah, she’s fragile but her mind is sharp as a tack,” Robert Daniels said.

    Daniels also interned at the counseling office and stole the hearts of the entire staff.

    “You are so inspirational and have impacted the lives of all those who had the honor of working with you,” College counselor Liz Shaker told Daniels.

    Now that she has her associate’s degree, her family is encouraging her to go for her bachelor’s. Doreetha said she’ll think about it.

    Congratulations!!

    @deray Continued lack of justice 4 the Ford family. Ezell’s cousin Ceebo is doing 17 yrs. on bs charges cause of his #Justice4Ezell activism

    Former Cop Richard Aguirre Arrested In Cold Case Slaying, Eyed In Similar Cases

    A former Pasco police officer, Aguirre, 51, was arrested Tuesday for first-degree murder in the strangulation death of 27-year-old Ruby Doss. Doss, who was thought to be a prostitute, was found dead in a field on Jan. 30, 1986, police said.

    Spokane police said they used DNA evidence to connect Aguirre to Doss’ slaying. Detectives had obtained Aguirre’s DNA in November, when he was placed under investigation for a recent alleged sexual assault in the Tri-Cities area.

    Aguirre, a 27-year veteran of the Pasco Police Department, was placed on administrative leave when those sexual assault allegations surfaced. He later resigned, according to The Spokesman-Review. When authorities arrested him on Tuesday, he was at a court hearing regarding the sexual assault case, in which he has pleaded not guilty.

    Authorities conducted a search of Aguirre’s home, where they seized a number of items, including sexually explicit videotapes he allegedly made, police said.

    “What we’re looking at right now is the possibility of the additional charges of rape and voyeurism,” Fuller told HuffPost.

    Fuller declined to comment on whether Aguirre has been named a suspect in the unsolved murders of Mary Ann Turner, 30, and Kathleen DeHart, 37. The women, who were found dead in 1986 and 1987, were also strangled.

    “We’re going to try to piece together a timeline, and if there were other crimes similar to the Ruby Doss case that fall into that timeline, there is a possibility he could be a suspect,” Fuller said. “We’re obviously going to exhaust all those avenues.”

    Best of the best.

  392. says

    President Obama marks Immigrant Heritage Month:

    In honor of Immigrant Heritage Month, U.S. President Barack Obama wants Americans to share the stories of their families’ immigrant roots.

    In his weekly address Saturday, Obama urged Americans to go to The New Americans Project website to tell their stories.

    “We are a nation of immigrants. It’s a source of strength and something we can take pride in,” he said.

    The president also said, “We can’t just celebrate this heritage, we have to defend it by fixing our broken immigration system.”

    Obama said Democrats and Republicans in the Senate did that two years ago when they passed “a common sense bill” that included a pathway to citizenship.

    However, he said Republican leaders in the House of Representatives for nearly two years “have refused to even allow a vote on it.”

    “In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system more just and more fair,” Obama said. “It’s the right thing to do. And it will make America stronger.”

    This June marks the second annual U.S. Immigrant Heritage Month, meant to honor the accomplishments and role of immigrants in shaping U.S. history and culture.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, the nation’s immigrant population was more than 41 million, or 13 percent of the total population of 316 million.

    Mexican-born immigrants are the majority, comprising 28 percent of the 41 million total immigrant populations.

    Although the number of Mexican immigrants remains the highest in the country, in recent years it has started to decline as a result of recession, improved educational and economic opportunities at home, and tougher border enforcement.

    Meanwhile, immigrant groups from India and China, including Hong Kong, but not Taiwan, each account for about 5 percent of the United States’ total immigrant population; many moving to the country to work, study or join family members already here.

    The Philippines has the fourth highest number of immigrants living in the United States at 4 percent, while residents from Vietnam, El Salvador, Cuba and Korea each make up 3 percent of the immigrant total.

    ****

    Guess where else you’ll find a racial bias in USAmerica?
    Sports reporting:

    New research says African-American athletes are more likely to be portrayed negatively in the media than white athletes. The findings appear in a new book, entitled How You See Me, How You Don’t.

    Cynthia Frisby is an associate professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. As part of her strategic communication course, she challenges her students to face any biases they may have when reporting a story.

    Her interaction with her students eventually led her to research media coverage of male athletes – and whether black and white athletes receive different treatment.

    Frisby chose 155 online news articles from Sports Illustrated, the Bleacher Report, CNN, CBS Sports, Sporting News, Yahoo Sports, AOL, Sport Service and ESPN.

    “Of the total stories 68, or 43.9 percent, were on white athletes. And 60, 38.7 percent, were on black,” she said.

    She identified a number of themes, including crime, domestic violence, moral success or failure, cheating, lifestyle and individual accomplishments. She began with her findings on crime-related stories.

    “Sixty-six-point-seven percent of the stories were on crime that dealt with black athletes – compared to 22.2 percent for white. When it came to domestic and sexual violence stories 70.6, percent focused on the black athlete, whereas three, or 17.6 were on white. When it came to training, work ethic, their dedication, 42.9 percent were focused on white athletes, where 35.7 were on black,” she said.

    Frisby gave other examples, as well.

    “The morally successful stories: 83.3 percent were on white athletes, where there was only one story, which amounted to 8.3 percent, on black athletes. Accomplishments: 20 of the stories, 58 percent, were white, whereas eight stories, or 23.6 percent, were black. On their personal lifestyle: 42.9 percent were white versus 33.3 percent black. And then athletics or skills or abilities: 46.2 percent were about white athletes and 23.1 percent, or three stories, were on black.”

    One thing her research did not reveal was the race of the reporters behind the stories.

    “You know, honestly, that’s something that I want to do in the future. It was very, very hard to determine by their bylines. And then we tried to do that, but it was just taking an immense amount of time because, you know, we’d have to go to the newspaper site and then look up their staff.”

    Frisby said she wants her students to consider whether media portrayals of African-Americans are reflected in how they report.

    “When it comes to blacks, there are three typical portrayals that we find in the media: criminal, entertainer or athletic,” she said.

    A 2013 study, she said, shows many Americans believe black athletes are criminals. She questions whether that perception stems from modern TV, films and other media.

    “A lot of times people would say when I was talking about my research, well, is it true that athletes are more aggressive? And I went to the crime rate and statistics numbers and was again a little surprised to find that athletes, in general, regardless, commit fewer crimes than the regular male in their same age group,” she said.

    She also said that media portrayals of African-Americans may even affect how her students react to her.

    “So, for example, I’m an African-American professor and I will have students that sometimes the only experience or contact that they’ve had with someone like me is through the media. And you would be surprised at how much media consumption plays a role in our attitudes and our formation of particular kinds of stereotypes.”

    One such portrayal of African-Americans, she said, is found in rap music.

    “We know white suburban boys love rap music. What if you see these images and then you get to me, which I violate all of that, how do you respond to that disparity and discrepancy of what you’ve come to know through the media and now you’ve met somebody that doesn’t fit? Do you discount her?”

    The University of Missouri journalism associate professor said her research is just a first step. While she hopes it raises awareness for today’s reporters, it also raises many questions about how stereotypes are formed and affect behavior.

  394. rq says

    Just checking in to say yep, more on Serena Williams tomorrow, as well as info and reactions to those poor kids at the Texas pool party.
    I’m sure someone will get at least one article up before I feel woke enough to do it. :)

  395. rq says

    So contrast CD’s Vox article (I highly recommend reading it) to this headline: Serena Williams Is America’s Greatest Athlete

    Serena Williams’s victory over Caroline Wozniacki puts her in rarefied company in the history of women’s tennis. It was her eighteenth Grand Slam singles title, tying her with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. (The pair welcomed her to the club by giving her an eighteen-karat gold Tiffany bracelet.) Even before Sunday, Evert had said several times that Williams is the best woman ever to play, despite the fact that she remains four major titles behind Steffi Graf (who, the argument goes, faced lesser opponents), and six behind the all-time record holder, Margaret Court (who played before the modern open era). Williams has been to twenty-two Slam finals and has lost only four times. At thirty-two, she is less than two months younger than Roger Federer, who is considered to be playing in the near-twilight of his career, and the oldest player to hold the women’s world No. 1 ranking. After the match, Evert said, “People kept asking Serena the last year, ‘How’s it going to feel to be in the same company with Martina and Chrissie?’ and I’m thinking to myself, Well, I’m the one who’s honored to have Serena in the same sentence.”

    Forget tennis for a moment, though: when I say the greatest athlete in a generation, I mean the greatest in any sport. Sorry, LeBron. Sorry, Tiger. Sorry, Derek. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure. She is wealthy and famous, but it seems that she should be more famous, the most famous. Anyone who likes sports should love Williams’s dazzling combination of talent, persistence, style, unpredictability, poise, and outsized, heart-on-her-sleeve flaws.

    But not everyone loves her. Part of this is owing to the duelling -isms of American prejudice, sexism, and racism, which manifest every time viewers, mostly men, are moved to remark on Williams’s body in a way that reveals what might most charitably be called discomfort. What are they afraid of? The bodies of athletes, both male and female, are habitually on display, yet there has been something especially contentious and fraught about the ways in which Williams’s singular appearance—musculature both imposing and graceful—has been discussed. On Twitter, during the final, some people wrote admiringly about her obvious strength and fitness, but there were also observations about the size of her butt, her thighs, and suggestions that her toned arms made her look more like a male boxer or linebacker than like a women’s tennis player. Yet, while some fixate on what they see as Williams’s masculine traits, others seem to find fault in the parts of her that might be considered more feminine: her striking on-court outfits (and off-court interest in fashion) are criticized as flashy, unserious, and self-absorbed. No one, meanwhile, seems too upset by the beautiful mini-dresses worn by the likes of Maria Sharapova, and Federer’s Wimbledon cream-blazer frippery is admired as debonair. […]

    Credit Photograph by Darron Cummings/AP

    This week, as the sports world repays our slavish attention with more lousy, grotesque news, it’s worth noting that, on Sunday, the greatest American athlete in a generation won the U.S. Open, again, for the sixth time and the third year in a row.

    Serena Williams’s victory over Caroline Wozniacki puts her in rarefied company in the history of women’s tennis. It was her eighteenth Grand Slam singles title, tying her with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. (The pair welcomed her to the club by giving her an eighteen-karat gold Tiffany bracelet.) Even before Sunday, Evert had said several times that Williams is the best woman ever to play, despite the fact that she remains four major titles behind Steffi Graf (who, the argument goes, faced lesser opponents), and six behind the all-time record holder, Margaret Court (who played before the modern open era). Williams has been to twenty-two Slam finals and has lost only four times. At thirty-two, she is less than two months younger than Roger Federer, who is considered to be playing in the near-twilight of his career, and the oldest player to hold the women’s world No. 1 ranking. After the match, Evert said, “People kept asking Serena the last year, ‘How’s it going to feel to be in the same company with Martina and Chrissie?’ and I’m thinking to myself, Well, I’m the one who’s honored to have Serena in the same sentence.”

    Forget tennis for a moment, though: when I say the greatest athlete in a generation, I mean the greatest in any sport. Sorry, LeBron. Sorry, Tiger. Sorry, Derek. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure. She is wealthy and famous, but it seems that she should be more famous, the most famous. Anyone who likes sports should love Williams’s dazzling combination of talent, persistence, style, unpredictability, poise, and outsized, heart-on-her-sleeve flaws.

    But not everyone loves her. Part of this is owing to the duelling -isms of American prejudice, sexism, and racism, which manifest every time viewers, mostly men, are moved to remark on Williams’s body in a way that reveals what might most charitably be called discomfort. What are they afraid of? The bodies of athletes, both male and female, are habitually on display, yet there has been something especially contentious and fraught about the ways in which Williams’s singular appearance—musculature both imposing and graceful—has been discussed. On Twitter, during the final, some people wrote admiringly about her obvious strength and fitness, but there were also observations about the size of her butt, her thighs, and suggestions that her toned arms made her look more like a male boxer or linebacker than like a women’s tennis player. Yet, while some fixate on what they see as Williams’s masculine traits, others seem to find fault in the parts of her that might be considered more feminine: her striking on-court outfits (and off-court interest in fashion) are criticized as flashy, unserious, and self-absorbed. No one, meanwhile, seems too upset by the beautiful mini-dresses worn by the likes of Maria Sharapova, and Federer’s Wimbledon cream-blazer frippery is admired as debonair.

    When the culture at large grants athletic adoration to women, it is often of a temporary, fleeting kind directed toward teen-age American sweethearts at the Olympics. Williams has never been America’s sweetheart. She wasn’t when she won her first U.S. Open, at seventeen, in 1999, and she isn’t now, as she plays on into her thirties. There is concern on both the men’s and women’s sides of tennis about where the next generation of great players is: no one under twenty-five on either tour has become a proven winner, in a game once known for prodigies. (This year’s men’s final, won by Marin Čilić in straight, uneventful sets over Kei Nishikori, gave tennis fans a glimpse at what a landscape without Federer and Nadal might look like.) Yet there has, for years now, been a special eagerness to find the next young-woman breakout star, as if there were some dissatisfaction with Williams as the game’s untouchable queen. For a while, it was Wozniacki, and then it was the American Melanie Oudin. These days, hope has turned to the Canadian Eugenie Bouchard. This year at the Open, eyes lit up as the fifteen-year-old American CiCi Bellis won her first-round match. Yet, through it all, Williams has shown that those pining for her replacement may be left waiting for a while still.

    But it’s not enough to say that Williams would be more uniformly adored if she were a white woman, or a man. Instead, the failure to fully appreciate her importance is perhaps evidence of our inability to appreciate the stubbornly unfamiliar narrative arc of her career. Williams is underloved because, at times, she has been unlovable and, in the end, mostly unrepentant about it—something that might be admired as iconoclastic in a male athlete, but rarely endears women to a wide audience. As a younger player, she was criticized for being ungenerous to her opponents in interviews; despite all the evidence of her superiority, she was expected to be humble. But the great crisis in her public persona came later, in 2009, when she was penalized the final point in her U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters after berating a line judge over a foot-fault call on the previous serve. Williams is indeed singular: she is likely the only person ever to utter on a professional tennis court, “I swear to God, I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God.” (Of course, John McEnroe said things that weren’t so different, and he is beloved for it.) She eventually offered a full statement of apology, and her contrition seemed sincere. But, for such misbehavior, sports fans, the old-fashioned moralists that we are, might have expected Williams to apologize for the rest of her career (and, in so doing, to give us the pleasure of forgiving her).

    Yet the past five years have not left Williams abject or cowed, or much more interested in mass approval. Her career story isn’t a straight line from brash youthfulness to somber and admirable maturity. When she won the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics, she danced exuberantly on the court, offending some stuffy folks who claimed that she was doing a gang dance. She has sniped at her competitors in the press. She stills puts in occasionally odd and maddening performances; her attention to tennis sometimes seems to wane.

    This summer, after a disappointing showing in the three previous Grand Slam tournaments, Williams said that she adopted a new way of thinking about the game, to put less pressure on herself by appreciating what she had already accomplished. “That’s the beauty of my career,” she said before the Open. “I don’t need to do anything at all. Everything I do from this day forward is a bonus. Actually, from yesterday. It doesn’t matter. Everything for me is just extra.” This is surely wisdom, but it is also a form of sports sacrilege. I don’t have anything to prove; I have been great—so great, in fact, that at this point winning doesn’t even matter.

    But Serena did win, and in dominating fashion (without dropping a set during the entire tournament), prompting Evert and others to note that Graf’s total number of Grand Slam titles could be within Williams’s reach. She remains the future of women’s tennis, at least the immediate one. After the final point on Sunday, she collapsed on her back in joy. Later, at center court, holding the trophy and wearing a ridiculous and fabulous black blazer, she jumped into the air, bending her legs underneath her, and smiled the same bright smile that she’s been giving us for fifteen years.

    In other words, go, Serena!

    Photography: THE SELECTS: Walter Shoots Michael .

    For the music lovers, Ten black composers whose works deserve to be heard more often

    In the past 200 years, dozens of prominent black composers from America and other parts of the African diaspora have fought to be recognised by the western classical tradition. The earliest example is Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-99). Born in Guadeloupe, the son of a wealthy plantation owner and a female slave, Saint-George was brought to France at a young age. As well as being a champion fencer, a violin teacher to Marie Antoinette and a colonel in the republican army, his prodigious musical talents led to him being dubbed “le Mozart noir”. He was a prolific composer (with several operas, 15 violin concertos, symphonies and numerous chamber works to his name) and a rare French exponent of early classical violin composition.

    Saint-Georges would have perhaps come into contact with George Bridgewater (1778-1860), a violinist of African origin born in present-day Poland. By the age of nine, his father (who was probably born in Barbados) had taken him to London, where he was shown off as a child prodigy, performing in front of the likes of Thomas Jefferson and George IV. Several of Bridgewater’s compositions survive, although few have been recorded. His story was also the basis for a 2007 opera, written by Julian Joseph.

    Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was born in Croydon, the son of a white English mother and a Creole man from Sierra Leone. As a violin scholar at the Royal College of Music, he was taught composition under Charles Villiers Stanford and soon developed a reputation as a composer, with Edward Elgar recommending him to the Three Choirs festival in 1896. By the time he died of pneumonia – aged only 37 – he had already toured America three times and performed for Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.

    Compositions such as Coleridge-Taylor’s African Suite attempted to incorporate African influences in the same way that, say, Dvorák used Hungarian folk themes, but much more successful is Hiawatha’s Wedding, which is occasionally performed today. Even better are Coleridge-Taylor’s works for violin and orchestra, which are elegant pieces of fin de siècle romanticism.

    As Alex Ross observes in his study of modern classical music, The Rest Is Noise, the history of African American composition around the turn of the 20th century is full of sorrowful tales. Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954) founded Harlem’s Negro Grand Opera Company, but his two all-black Wagnerian operas are barely staged.

    Maurice Arnold Strothotte (1865-1937) studied in Berlin and wrote an opera and a symphony that were highly praised by Dvorák, but his work was rarely performed and has all but dropped off the musical map – he ended up making his living teaching violin and conducting provincial operettas.

    Like Strothotte, Will Marion Cook (1869-1944) also studied in Berlin and was praised by Dvorák. He was acclaimed for his Broadway shows and ragtime-influenced songs, but found it almost impossible to break into “straight” composition.

    Most sorrowful of all was Scott Joplin (1867-1917). The son of an ex-slave from Texas, he started as a travelling musician around the southern states, playing piano in “gentleman’s clubs”. By the turn of the century his piano rags, such as Maple Leaf Rag, had become a national sensation, but he was desperate to be taken seriously as an orchestral composer. His opera Treemonisha was all but ignored, and he died insane in 1917 after his brain was destroyed by syphilis.

    Other black American composers had happier endings. William Grant Still (1895-1978) wrote 150 works, studied with Edgard Varèse, was the first African American to conduct a major US symphony orchestra (the New Orleans Philharmonic), composed for Hollywood and found his works performed by leading orchestras around the world, including his 1930 Afro-American Symphony.

    Florence B Price (1887-1953) was the first African American woman to have a work played by a major orchestra – the Chicago Symphony premiered her Symphony in E minor in 1933, but despite success during her lifetime, her many compositions are rarely played today.

    And George Walker, born in 1922 and still working today, was the first black American composer to win the Pulitzer prize for music (for Lilacs, a piece for voice and orchestra, in 1996). However, for all his acclaim, he still remains a cult figure in the world of contemporary composition.

    With selected samples at the link.

    Anthony Riley, Philly street singer and ‘Voice’ contestant, dies at 28 – so sad to lose a talent.

    Mr. Riley was a fan favorite on The Voice, and was being coached by Pharrell Williams. After winning his first battle round, he told producers he was struggling with substance abuse and returned to Philadelphia to enter rehab.

    In March, after his departure was revealed on the show, he told The Inquirer, “it’s tough, because everyone’s just finding out and I’ve been moving forward.” By then, he said, he had completed the rehabilitation program and was working on an album.

    “He’d had his problems recently. But at the heart of all that was a very kind, gentle person,” said Robby Parsons, a fellow musician who met Mr. Riley years ago when they both performed in Suburban Station.

    In 2007, Mr. Riley made national headlines after being charged with disorderly conduct for singing in Rittenhouse Square. The charges were dropped and he was later awarded $27,500 in a lawsuit against the city.

    In 2014, Philadelphia Magazine named him the city’s best street performer.

    The Voice was Mr. Riley’s big break, and in the blind-audition episode that aired in February he became the fastest contestant ever to have all four judges fighting over him. He chose to work with Williams, who called his rendition of a James Brown hit “electric.”

    Mr. Riley said the stress and long hours of the competition had been “more responsibility than I could handle,” but added that the show was “a really great source of support.”

    While the show cited only “personal reasons,” Mr. Riley said he decided to disclose his substance abuse to clear up rumors about his reason for leaving, and to dispute a tweet his former manager sent out on Mr. Riley’s account that supported Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of gunning down a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

    This sounds like sound, logical thinking: Idaho school district buys guns to safeguard against shooting rampage . I mean, doesn’t it?

    A tiny school district in Idaho far removed from law enforcement has purchased firearms and trained a handful of staff to use them should the same school shooting rampage that has occurred across the country take place.

    It takes at least 45 minutes for officers to reach the Garden Valley School district – a district made up of less than 300 students all taught in the same building – where limited funds have prevented the school from being able to afford hiring police officers to patrol the building during school hours. Police often request schools to help offset the costs of being stationed at a school if grants are not available.

    As a result, the school board approved this month purchasing guns to remain locked inside the school and trained six employees to use the weapons in an emergency.

    “I hope we never have to use them,” said Alan Ward, a school board member who has been discussing this option with the school for two years. “But in the event something did happen, we wanted to be prepared.”

    Garden Valley’s actions are just one of many solutions schools across the nation have adopted to protect their campuses. Some have installed metal detectors, while others have expanded school resource officers to secure not only high schools but also middle and elementary schools.

    But I guess actually regulating guns and a shift in cultural thinking would be too much.
    I’m no t sure why I’m leaving this link here, it seems relevant.

    Oakland: Man fatally shot after standoff – you know what that standoff was? He was sleeping in his car.

    A man was shot and killed by a police officer near Lake Merritt on Saturday morning about one hour after city firefighters found him passed out in the driver’s seat with a loaded handgun nearby, authorities said.

    Oakland police’s first fatal officer-involved shooting in more than two years comes amid protests in this city and others around the country concerning police killings in Missouri, New York, Cleveland and Baltimore, and more recently outrage here about limits on nighttime protests against alleged police brutality.

    Police Chief Sean Whent, in an afternoon news conference, said police tried multiple less-lethal means to apprehend the man but did not say what led the officer to open fire, citing the ongoing investigation.

    A man was shot and killed by a police officer near Lake Merritt on Saturday morning about one hour after city firefighters found him passed out in the driver’s seat with a loaded handgun nearby, authorities said.

    Oakland police’s first fatal officer-involved shooting in more than two years comes amid protests in this city and others around the country concerning police killings in Missouri, New York, Cleveland and Baltimore, and more recently outrage here about limits on nighttime protests against alleged police brutality.

    Police Chief Sean Whent, in an afternoon news conference, said police tried multiple less-lethal means to apprehend the man but did not say what led the officer to open fire, citing the ongoing investigation. […]

    Oakland: Man fatally shot after standoff
    By David DeBolt [email protected]
    Posted: 06/06/2015 10:06:41 AM PDT
    56 Comments
    | Updated: a day ago
    Police continue their investigation into an officer involved shooting on the Lakeshore exit off of westbound Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif., on
    Police continue their investigation into an officer involved shooting on the Lakeshore exit off of westbound Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, June 6, 2015. The fatal shooting occurred earlier in the morning when police found a car stopped on the exit and a man with a gun inside. Details of the incident are pending. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group) ( Dan Honda )

    OAKLAND — A man was shot and killed by a police officer near Lake Merritt on Saturday morning about one hour after city firefighters found him passed out in the driver’s seat with a loaded handgun nearby, authorities said.

    Oakland police’s first fatal officer-involved shooting in more than two years comes amid protests in this city and others around the country concerning police killings in Missouri, New York, Cleveland and Baltimore, and more recently outrage here about limits on nighttime protests against alleged police brutality.

    Police Chief Sean Whent, in an afternoon news conference, said police tried multiple less-lethal means to apprehend the man but did not say what led the officer to open fire, citing the ongoing investigation.
    Police continue their investigation into an officer involved shooting on the Lakeshore exit off of westbound Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif., on
    Police continue their investigation into an officer involved shooting on the Lakeshore exit off of westbound Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, June 6, 2015. The fatal shooting occurred earlier in the morning when police found a car stopped on the exit and a man with a gun inside. Details of the incident are pending. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group) ( Dan Honda )

    Investigators were still interviewing at least 12 officers who were present during the shooting and planned to review footage from each officer’s body camera, which could provide details of the moments leading to the shooting from multiple angles.

    Police said the officers were wearing body cameras, as required for all patrol officers.

    The incident began before 7:30 a.m., when Oakland firefighters saw a man unconscious or asleep in a gray 2005 BMW stopped on the Lakeshore Avenue exit from west Interstate 580, police said. The car was stopped several feet from the stoplight at Lakeshore and Lake Park avenues, they said.

    After firefighters saw a handgun on the passenger seat, they called police, who arrived and set up a perimeter around the car, Officer Johnna Watson said.
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    Around the same time, the bustling shopping district on Lakeshore Avenue and a nearby farmers market began to see their typical Saturday crowds arriving. Across the lake at Laney College, Whent and Mayor Libby Schaaf were preparing to attend a summit on community policing.

    Over the next hour, officials said police attempted to wake the man and placed a block in the front of the car to prevent it from moving. Police first used a bullhorn in an attempt to wake the man and then unsuccessfully tried to break the car windows with bean bag rounds, Watson said. A group of officers next approached the car and used a device to break out the passenger side windows, she said. The loudspeaker was used again.
    Firearm found in vehicle
    Firearm found in vehicle (Oakland Police Dept.)

    “Upon the last attempt to (make contact), officers approached the car, the person at that time was awake, a confrontation ensued with the officers and the person, one officer deployed a Taser, a second officer deployed a firearm, the person in the car was struck by the gunfire,” Whent said.

    The man was taken to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His identity has not been released.

    Images of the handgun and a magazine clip were later photographed by police and released to local media. Police said the gun was loaded but did not say if it was fired.

    The BMW, according to Whent, was chased by San Francisco police Friday evening in connection with a burglary, but the driver got away. It was not yet known if the man shot by police was driving the car during the chase in San Francisco.

    Oakland police’s homicide unit and internal affairs division, along with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, are investigating the shooting. The investigation will include looking at the police’s tactical plan as they approached the car, Whent said.

    No information about the officer involved was released.

    Saturday’s fatal shooting was the first involving an Oakland police officer since May 2013, though there have been fatal shootings in the city involving the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and San Leandro police during that period. Oakland police have historically had about eight officer-involved shootings a year but had none last year.

    This latest shooting happened hours after an anti-police protest Friday night in Uptown. Oakland has seen multiple nighttime protests since city officials limited street protests after dark in the wake of a destructive protest May 1 along Auto Row.

    In a statement Saturday afternoon, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said, “We take all uses of force seriously and must closely examine the circumstances every time for the safety and assurance of the public and law enforcement. I am actively making sure that the protocols and supervision we’ve worked hard to put in place as part of our police reforms are being followed rigorously as this shooting is thoroughly investigated.”

    Cat Brooks, founder of Oakland’s Anti-Police Terror Project, offered a blunt response to the shooting.

    “The way we see it was that he was shot for sleeping in his car,” Brooks, a West Oakland resident, said. “How many Californians have license to carry (guns) in their car? That doesn’t mean he deserves to die.

    “Our police officers are trained, and there’s a lot of posturing OPD is doing around the country about how trained their officers are, but there’s a way to deal with people they perceive as a threat without killing them.”

    I suppose it could be rather terrifying to wake up to several police officers surrounding your car and probably yelling at you.

  396. rq says

    Wow, that was the weirdest blockquoting accident ever, above. And the stuff that wasn’t suppsoed to be there had an email address, therefore moderation. *sigh*

    Serena won her 20th title, with the flu, gave her speech in French and dipped out. My life.

    Well, they called riot police for fans trying to get into a concert illegally. Hot 97 Summer Jam Concert-goers at MetLife Stadium Clash With NJ State Police

    A New Jersey State Police trooper was hospitalized along with several concertgoers at Hot 97 Summer Jam at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford tonight after a crowd rushed a gate trying to get in, law enforcement sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

    Several arrests were made, order eventually was restored and a single gate was initially opened as the concert continued, with many inside not aware that the stadium and parking lots were temporarily locked down.

    Reinforcements in riot gear responded in armed personnel carriers after some fans were trampled when others rushed the entrance.

    The box office and gates were closed, leading to a larger disturbance that involved bottles being thrown at State Police by those trying to get in, law enforcement officers at the stadium said.

    Unconfirmed reports were that either tear gas or pepper spray was used.

    The NJSP issued a statement just after 11 p.m.:

    “This evening, security personnel at one of the entrance gates to MetLife Stadium were confronted by crowds attempting to illegally enter the sold out Summer Jam concert by climbing over fences and forcing their way through security personnel. The gates have been shut and troopers on site have called for assistance from several nearby stations to help maintain order.

    “Troopers and stadium security officials are insisting that all people outside of the gates depart the MetLife grounds to avoid congestion when the concert lets out. There is no number of arrests available at this time.”

    Sounds like an appropriate response.

    Officers who shot and killed unarmed, non-violent Jermaine McBean in Florida get award for heroism

    Just a few months after they shot and killed beloved computer engineer Jermaine McBean, the two officers who killed him then worked hard to cover it up, Sgt. Richard LaCerra and Deputy Peter Peraza, received a Gold Cross Award for their heroism. Doubly sick about this award, is that it was given to them in Fort Lauderdale at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center. Mind you, Jermaine committed no crime, had no criminal record, and posed no threat whatsoever to these officers. What exactly did they do that was heroic?

    It sure as hell wasn’t provide him first aid, because the nurse who offered it to Jermaine said she was denied access while he was still alive. She also pointed out to the officers that Jermaine was wearing headphones when they shot and killed him and went up to her balcony to take a picture, seen below, to prove it.

    What repercussions, again?

    “@Refugees:Please take a moment to think about this. For more information: http://trib.al/vigR00L #SouthSudan “
    And relatedly, US based activist goes on hunger strike

    Simon Aban Deng wrote a letter to President Obama last week, announcing the hunger strike, and also raising a number of concerns about the current war which has been going on since December 2013. He says he has been without food for the last seven days.

    Deng believes that the only solution to the conflict is for President Obama to take a stronger, more active role in pressuring the government and President Salva Kiir, as well as all of the other parties in the conflict, into controlling their various troops and militias to stop the fighting.

    Deng also believes that America is the one which helped South Sudan attain her independence and should now help in restoring peace in the country. He says that the country was ‘left to fend for itself’ after independence.

    “While we [the U.S.] were present and active for the whole process leading up to the birth, afterwards we turned away, washed our hands, and moved on,” he says.

    “It is beyond time for the U.S. to step up, take charge, and protect this precious baby we brought into the world. No other country can play this role,” he explains.

    He said many agreements on peace that have been signed under IGAD were not honoured by the warring parties. He urged the country’s leaders to work together to stop the suffering of the people.

    An apology! KSU Apologizes to Student Accused of ‘Harassment’ While Waiting on Adviser

    A Kennesaw State University student has finally gotten an apology after a student adviser accused him of harassment merely for sitting and waiting for a chance to speak to his own adviser, 11 Alive reports.

    Kevin Bruce tweeted out his encounter with student adviser Abbie Dawson, who berated him for harassing his academic adviser, even though he was calmly and quietly waiting for an opportunity to speak.

    “Sitting here until someone is available is harassing them,” Dawson insisted to Bruce during the interaction, which occurred in early May. “Would you like for me to call campus security?”

    Since then, KSU had been conducting a review. The school placed Dawson on administrative leave the day after the incident while the review was pending.

    Having completed the review, KSU revealed that Dawson has been handed a formal written warning and will not be allowed to advise students until she completes sensitivity training to demonstrate “the ability to be sensitive to students and their needs,” the news station reports.

    “We have made it very clear to Ms. Dawson and her supervisors that the behavior she demonstrated on the video will not be tolerated; and while we have apologized to the student directly, we also want to publicly apologize for her behavior, which is not representative of KSU’s student-centered culture,” Ken Harmon, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said, according to 11 Alive. “While we in no way condone Ms. Dawson’s actions, we also acknowledge that we need to make some changes in our advising structure to provide more training and support for our staff so that they are better equipped to help our students navigate their college experience.”

    The university also promised to make changes to improve its advisement polices, including student service, diversity and cross-training for all advisers, and also improving the adviser-to-student ratio.

  397. rq says

    Two consecutive comments in moderation so far. Monday morning.

    Why Joe Biden Wanted Barack Obama to Deliver His Son’s Eulogy

    Obama is often caricatured as aloof and professorial, with a poorly concealed arrogance, while Biden is Biden, prolix, comic both intentionally and inadvertently, self-effacing and engaging to a fault. Given these differences, it’s easy to assume that their declarations of mutual affections are for show.

    At the Biden funeral, however, Obama let his emotions rise to the surface as he publicly embraced his grieving vice president before a church full of mourners, including former President Bill Clinton; his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican; and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Obama said he felt so welcomed by his vice president’s large Irish clan that he considered himself an honorary member.

    Promising that he and his wife would be there to comfort the vice president and his family, Obama said he was giving his word “as a Biden.”

    Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, who later served as Obama’s coordinator on the administration’s response to the Ebola threat, said the two men long ago established a special intimacy. “The president . . . has this reputation for being cold or distant—but he isn’t,” Klain said. “For the people in his orbit, the people he has a chance to get to know, he has a real sense of family,” and the Bidens “are part of that. I think it’s a loss that he feels personally.” Ted Kaufman, Biden’s close friend and longtime Senate aide, said that “the president has been incredibly supportive, in every possible way, during this.”

    And an aide close to both men, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden wanted Obama to deliver the eulogy because he felt that Obama would know instinctively what the family would want others to know about Beau. The aide said the men “understand each other on a deep level based on their shared experience with loss and the deep void that creates.”

    “People think of them as the president and vice president of the United States, but they’re human, and they’re in unique positions where there are very few people who can appreciate the nature of their responsibilities,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser and one of the Obamas’ closest friends. “It is far more than just a professional relationship; it is a very close friendship,” Jarrett said. “It has strengthened and grown over time. They certainly have shared their life experiences with one another, both painful loss and extraordinary happiness, just as all good friends do.”

    I wonder how much of Obama’s arrogance and aloofness (to strangers) is due to having to maintain a public image as a black man. I’m glad he agreed to speak at Beau Biden’s funeral, and I’m glad they have that kind of a friendship for the support it provides.

    Ben Carson’s campaign faces turmoil amid staff exits and super PAC rivalry

    The presidential candidacy of Ben Carson, a tea party star who has catapulted into the top tier of Republican contenders, has been rocked by turmoil with the departures of four senior campaign officials and widespread disarray among his allied super PACs.

    In interviews Friday, Carson’s associates described a political network in tumult, saying the retired neurosurgeon’s campaign chairman, national finance chairman, deputy campaign manager and general counsel have resigned since Carson formally launched his bid last month in Detroit. They have not been replaced, campaign aides said.

    The moves gutted the core of Carson’s apparatus and left the 63-year-old first-time candidate with only a handful of experienced advisers at his side as he navigates the fluid, crowded and high-stakes contest for the Republican nomination.

    Carson is a hot commodity on the right-wing speaking circuit and has fast become a leading candidate, winning straw votes at conservative gatherings and rising in public polls.

    But his campaign has been marked by signs of dysfunction and amateurism, alarming supporters who privately worry that Carson’s sprawling circle of boosters is fumbling his opportunity. And, they argue, the candidate has been nonchalant about the unrest.

    More at the link.

    Intersectionality. What Do The Black Lives Matter, Fight For $15, And Marriage Equality Movements Have In Common?

    The concept of “Intersectionality” suggests that because our identities are complex, our approaches to social justice issues–like Arquette’s cry for wage equality–should also recognize and embrace complexity. Race, class, gender, ability, and ethnicity don’t exist in isolated bubbles, but have lots of intersections.

    For example, when we read about social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, the Fight For $15, and the movement for Marriage Equality, they’re often treated as separate, distinct causes. But are they, really? What if you’re an LGBT person of color who makes minimum wage?

    Aurielle Marie is a 20-year-old artist and activist living at exactly that intersection. She’s been making a powerful impact through her work in the Black Lives Matter and marriage equality movements, and in support of the Fight For $15. She is the co-founder of #ItsBiggerThanYou, a coalition of youth activists, and a teaching artist at Atlanta Word Works, where she teaches other young people how to use their voices and their art as tools in social justice work. MTV News caught up with her to talk about what it’s like to live and work at the intersection of so many pressing issues.

    “It definitely feels like all one effort,” Marie said. “It’s a pretty complex network of conversations, but they all have one central point…there’s a line of continuity between economic disparity, racism, homophobia, and misogyny.”

    “It’s easy for me to see all those things working in tandem both statistically and in real life,” she continued. She pointed out that for a young, single black mother in Atlanta, it’s equally important to her survival that she is protected against police violence as it is that she has access to a living wage.

    “There are so many things that can be included in one person…I talk all the time about not putting oppression into any kind of hierarchy. It does us no service to put one issue at the helm and the others in the background. …why would I just fight for the color of my skin, and not also fight to be allowed to marry the partner I’ve been with forever who I love? Or for the lives of trans women, who are much more likely to be killed by someone who doesn’t think their life is valuable? It’s dangerous to put one of these issues in front of the other.”

    She pointed out that there was recently a backlash within the Black Lives Matter movement over the fact that everyone knew the names of Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown, but no one was talking in the same way about all the women who were victims of police violence — like Shelly Frey, Yvette Smith, and seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, to name a few. The outcry generated the #SayHerName campaign on Twitter and multiple days of action for women affected by police violence.

    “Black Lives Matter — as an organization and not just a battle cry — was founded by three black queer women on behalf of a heterosexual black man, Trayvon Martin,” Marie said. “There have been so many black queer and trans women doing this work on the front lines. So what does it mean for us to stand up for them?”

    Marie also pointed out that you don’t have to be black to support the Black Lives Matter movement, or gay to make a difference in the fight for marriage equality, or make the minimum wage to be involved in the Fight For $15. Ultimately, we all have battles to fight, and we’ll be stronger when we’re all in it together.

    “There’s never someone who has so much privilege that they’re not oppressed in some way,” she said. “And there’s never someone who is so oppressed that they don’t have any privilege.”

    More at the link.

    Artist’s Nude Self-Portraits Explore Former Sites Of Slavery Throughout New York

    Slavery was introduced to Manhattan (then New Amsterdam) in 1626 and, for two centuries, remained a significant part of New York life. In fact, the New York City Common Council declared Wall Street the city’s first official slave market on December 13, 1711, deeming it a space where human beings could be enslaved for the day or for the week. The slave market took the shape of a wooden structure with open sides, and held approximately 50 people at a time. It operated as such, on the corner of Wall Street and Pearl Street in the heart of the Financial District, until 1762. Slavery was legally abolished in New York in 1827.

    Wall Street’s odious history has since been covered up, while New York’s reputation as a space of diversity and inclusion continues to blossom. But what remains of this 200-year period of discrimination, oppression and hate? What residue remains caked to the skeleton of the place, beneath the sky-high buildings and engorged American flags?

    Through her photography, artist Nona Faustine investigates such convoluted spaces, with pasts and presents that don’t quite line up. Her photo series, titled “White Shoes,” revisits many of the New York locations once plagued by slavery — from City Hall to the Supreme Court — capturing the traces that may or may not have been left behind.

    “Standing at Wall Street at the exact spot where they sold Native and African men, women, and children 150 years ago, I wasn’t able to feel any of the horrific sorrow and pain of the activities that once went on there,” Faustine explained to The Huffington Post. “Perhaps it was a defense mechanism that wouldn’t allow me to tap into that for fear of crumbling. What I did feel was the energy of New York City, an incredible force. There I found myself at the curtain of time between two eras, past and present. I went into a deep reflection.”

    Visiting these sites, Faustine added, does feel spiritual at times. “My eyes are wide open, and still I’m there and not there. My body is pumping with adrenaline. My anxiety is extremely high. During all that, you filter out as much abstractions as possible so that you can maintain some sort of composure for the camera as people, cars and buses go by. My senses are elevated. Sounds in particular I hone into. I have this feeling of being watched, by something or someone not actually there at times. I’m extremely aware of my presence in these places.” […]
    Revisiting the spaces haunted by such atrocious tales, Faustine drapes her body across the implicated grounds like a bold protestor or a spiritual medium. Her bare flesh recalls the stories of so many strangers that went untold, simultaneously raising questions about why bodies matter and, more specifically, which bodies matter.

    Faustine cited artists including Zanele Muholi, Lorna Simpson, Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker and Grace Jones as inspirations, encompassing themes including resistance, hybridity and intimacy between women. The works also recall Carrie Mae Weems’ “The Museum Series,” a collection of self-portraits, in which the artist visits the world’s most renowned artistic establishments that, despite her widespread success as an artist, continue to treat her as an outsider.

    “The images are my truth,” Faustine concluded. “My work is situated inside a photographic tradition, while questioning the culture that bred that tradition … I often feel like an ethnographer or anthropologist. Ours is a haunted, incomplete history, one that contradicts what we are taught about this country and its people. We must acknowledge and pay tribute to those that founded and built this country. Not just some of them, but all of them. Like the thousands of Africans buried under lower Manhattan, there are others in long forgotten places.”

    In the end, Faustine series lays bare the complex and often horrific layers of history that comprise the pristine images we encounter today. Past and present can never quite be untangled, and Faustine’s photos illuminate the hushed voices and invisible bodies too often pushed away as part of an ugly history that yearns to be forgotten. “I do believe as human beings we have a responsibility to improve the course of life in whatever way that we can, and artists have a unique role in that. Artists serve as the world’s conscience.”

    Images at the link,very powerful.

    #TeachForAmerica’s community is more diverse than ever.

    BREAKING: Friendly Fire? Cop on cop dispute lands one officer in hospital.. Just, you know, an ordinary day of policing.

  398. rq says

    Crowd Attacks Florida Cop During Arrest

    A crowd of people in Melbourne, Florida had enough. During an arrest recently, passersby circled an officer trying to make an arrest, and began fighting him off.

    The arrest of Phoenix Low, 22, took place last Saturday over a minor “ordinance violation.” The idea of arresting Low seemed so ridiculous to the people who witnessed it, that many of them jumped in to fight the cop off of him.

    At this point Low fled, but the officer caught back up with him. That’s when a somewhat large “crowd surrounded the officer and began to interfere with attempts to arrest Low by yelling, striking and pulling at the officer and the prisoner.”

    The arresting officer said he used “less-lethal force” on the crowd, which could mean anything from pepper spray, to a Taser, to a baton or a combination of these.

    At that point, Low was said to have broken free again.

    He was later charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting with violence, resisting without violence and open container of alcohol… That’s right, all of this was over him having an open container of alcohol.

    Police in Melbourne say that this is the second time a crowd has tried to stop an arrest in the past two weeks.

    I… just… okay. I suppose the open container charge is really that important.

    Here is an example of how people use the “strong black woman” narrative to deny BW vulnerability & humanity – yes, “Serena’s illness shouldn’t be an excuse”. Excuse me, I’d like to see you play tennis with the flu, and win. I think I’d die in the first ten minutes or less. Definitely less. And if Serena had? It’s the fucking flu, and that would have been (should have been) alright, too. The fact that she didn’t speaks to her as an individual, and her training, and mental fortitude, and just plain endurance – but not as The Black Woman, but as Serena Williams, awesome tennis player.

    Protestors overtake U of C event. #TraumaCenterNow – still after that Trauma Center! I hope they get it.

    Protesters Angered Over Lack of Charges in Ezell Ford’s Death March in South L.A. – Yesterday I was unclear whether the ‘no charges’ were pending or actual, but I suppose they are actual. I confused myself. ANyhoo,

    Protesters angered over recent reports that charges were not expected to be filed in the fatal police shooting of Ezell Ford marched in South L.A. on Saturday. Steve Kuzj reports from South L.A. for the KTLA 5 News at 6 on Saturday, June 6, 2015.

    Yah, it’s video only.

    FFS. Police: Man tossed off platform onto T tracks in race-related assault

    Police credit a gutsy witness for leading to the arrest of a 21-year-old man suspected of throwing a black man onto the tracks at a downtown T station in an assault they said appears to have been fueled by alcohol and racism.

    Police said the witness not only saw the victim get thrown onto the rails and beaten unconscious Saturday night, she followed the suspects out of the Wood Street station and into the streets, where officers were waiting.

    “In my 21 years here, this is one of worst attacks I’ve seen,” Port Authority Police Assistant Chief Matt Porter said, referring to surveillance video that shows Kevin Lockett, 55, being grabbed and tossed off a platform.

    According to the criminal complaint, Ryan Kyle and four friends who were headed home from the Kenny Chesney concert had argued with Lockett on the T. When they got off at Wood Street, words continued to be exchanged and Kyle allegedly threw Lockett onto the tracks, police said.

    Once Lockett was down on the rails, one of the people with Kyle stood at the edge of the platform so the man could not climb to safety, according to the complaint.

    Lockett eventually got back up to the platform, only to be beaten by Kyle as the suspect’s friends stopped him and robbed him, police said.

    In the complaint, a police officer wrote that the suspects “were very upset and wanted to know why they were being stopped” when he found them at a bus stop on Sixth Avenue near Smithfield Street.

    “I addressed them as a group and informed them we were investigating an assault that had just taken place on the platform at Wood Street,” the complaint said. “Kyle stated that he was the one who hit the guy, and ‘who cares it was only a (n-word).'”

    Another man with Kyle said, “I don’t know why you are making a big deal about this, he is a crackhead (n-word),” according to the complaint.

    “There were some racial terms during and after with one of our officers, all directed at the victim,” Porter said.

    May Lockett’s recovery be swift and complication-free.

    And here’s the Texas pool party, with a text recap: Texas officer suspended after pool party video shows him pulling gun on teens

    A Texas police officer has been suspended after video posted online showed him breaking up a pool party in an extremely aggressive manner, including drawing his gun.

    On Friday, units from the McKinney police department were called to the party, at Craig Ranch North Community Pool in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, over reports of a fight. Police said the incident involved “multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave”.

    On Sunday, McKinney police chief Greg Conley spoke to reporters about what followed.

    “Several concerns about the conduct of one of the officers at the scene have been raised,” local ABC affiliate WFAA8 reported him as saying. “The McKinney police department is committed to treating all persons fairly under the law. We are committed to preserving the peace and safety of our community for all our citizens.”

    Conley did not name the officer in question, who was not named when his suspension was announced.

    According to WFAA8, Conley added: “A 14-year-old female was temporarily detained by one of the officers. She was ultimately released to her parents.”

    Video posted to YouTube on Saturday shows one officer sprinting past the camera, falling and losing his flashlight, then running again.

    Teenagers are seen returning the flashlight to another officer, who responds politely, before the first officer returns and shouts: “On the ground! I told you to stay! Get your asses on the ground. I told you to stay!”

    The officer, who was not named when his suspension was announced, is then seen forcing a number of teenagers to lie on a grass verge and a sidewalk and telling others to “get your ass out of here”. Some teenagers are handcuffed.

    One teenager can be heard saying: “Sir, we just came from a birthday party, please.”

    Another says: “Officer, I can’t find my bag.”

    The officer replies: “I don’t care, sit down.”

    The officer is then shown talking to teenagers on the ground.

    “Don’t make me run round here with 30 kinds of fucking gear on in the sun,” he says, “because you want to screw around out here.”

    He then forces a group of bystanders to leave. One, a girl, does not comply and the officer wrestles her to the ground. When other teenagers surround him to remonstrate, he draws his gun. Two other officers move to restrain him, and the officer re-holsters the weapon. He then slams the girl back to the ground, shouting: “On your face!”

    As the officer appears to sit on the girl to keep her subdued, hectoring her all the while, a voice, possibly that of the person filming the incident, says the officer pulled a gun on the girl.

    “No I didn’t,” he says, pointing at the camera. “Now get your butts outta here.”

    The officer is later shown in close-up, lecturing two boys who are sitting on the ground.

    “You just did what everybody else did,” he says, “and what everybody else did was illegal. You did it and you got caught. Now you’re sitting here paying for it.

    “I asked y’all to sit,” he adds, “you didn’t and you became a part of the mob. You could’ve been the guys that were doing right and you weren’t, so now you’re sitting here in trouble.”

    The officer in question is white; most of the teenagers on the video are African American. A number of white men in civilian clothes are also shown.

    The poster of the YouTube video, named on the site as Brandon Brooks, wrote: “A fight between a mom and a girl broke out and when the cops showed up everyone ran, including the people who didn’t do anything. So the cops just started putting everyone on the ground and in handcuffs for no reason. This kind of force is uncalled for especially on children and innocent bystanders.”

    More in upcoming comments.

  399. rq says

    Scenes from .@BLMLA’s @OccupyLAMayor #LAWakeUpCall
    #LAPD just informed @BLMLA that they have to take down their signs on LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s home. #OccupyLAMayor
    .@BLMLA says they have 3 demands of LA Mayor Eric Garcetti…1) immediately remove Chief Beck or see a repeat of former mayor Hahn’s fate…
    …2) .@BLMLA wants a reparations policy for families of those killed and/or brutalized by the the police…
    And 3) @BLMLA wants LA Mayor Eric Garcetti to ensure that police commission discusses in open their decision on Ofcrs in #EzellFord killing.

    And if that’s not enough to get the blood pressure up, here’s one more, re: the officers from the Tamir Rice shooting – Officers involved in Tamir Rice shooting remain on the job, away from public

    The Fox 8 I-Team has answered one of the most common questions surrounding the Cleveland police officers involved in the Tamir Rice case. We’ve found what they are doing now as the case remains under investigation and review.

    The chief’s office confirms both officers are still on the job and working in units that do not involve any contact with the public.

    We’re told Officer Timothy Loehmann is currently assigned to the budget unit. A police spokesman points out, Loehmann is not making decisions about the actual police budget, but he is handling other tasks as needed in that unit.

    Officer Frank Garmback is currently assigned to the police gym. We’re told he is there to help move equipment as the gym undergoes some renovations and to handle supplies. Officers in police shootings are often assigned to the gym for mental health reasons. They can work out, get counseling if needed, and clear their minds. But we’re told Garmback is not in the gym currently for those reasons.

    Police shot and killed 12-year-old Rice last November. They received a call about a male pointing a gun at people outside the Cudell Recreation Center. Investigators found he had an airsoft pistol that looked like a powerful handgun.

    Police have said Officer Garmback drove the patrol car to the scene, and Officer Loehmann fired the shots. Investigators said the boy was shot as he reached into his waistband in an encounter that lasted about 2 seconds.

    Just this week, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office wrapped up an investigation into what happened and handed findings over to the county prosecutor for review.

    The prosecutor is expected to do more investigating and have the case considered by a grand jury for any possible charges against the officers.

    No. Consequences. Whatsoever. Boggles. Mind. What?

  400. rq says

    Some twitter commentary on that failed pool party:
    “Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic…didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.” That’s from the Buzzfeed article, which is forthcoming.
    This moment. What could they be thinking besides “this officer who just assaulted our friend is about to kill us”?
    James Brock pours acid in the pool exclaiming that he’s “cleaning it” in St. Augustine FL, 1964. Now they call cops.

    Per @buzzfeednews, the white 15 YO who shot the video says the incident began when white adults denigrated black kids who came to the party;
    The ADULTS told the kids to “go back to section 8 housing” and one adult woman got into an argument with a teen. Then police were called.
    A 14-year-old girl says she was the only white teen cuffed, and plans to file assault charges against the woman who made theracist comments.

  401. rq says

    Texas Police Officer “On Administrative Leave” After Pulling Weapon On Teens During Pool Party

    A police officer in McKinney, Texas, has been placed on administrative leave after being filmed aggressively handcuffing, and then pulling a weapon on, a group of black teens following an “incident” at a local pool party on Friday night.

    Officers were called to the a local community pool around 7:15 p.m. local time to respond to a “disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave,” the McKinney Police Department said in a post on its Facebook page. Other calls also advised that the teens were “actively fighting,” police said.

    “First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands. Nine additional units responded to the scene. Officers were eventually able to gain control of the situation,” police said.
    However, video later emerged of one officer aggressively handcuffing and detaining teens who described themselves as bystanders, before wrestling a girl in a bathing suit to the ground and drawing his weapon on others who came to her aid.

    After ordering a girl to leave the area, the officer can be seen throwing her to the ground and pushing her head down. [he drags her down by the hair, btw]

    He is then seen pulling a weapon from his holster to scare off two males who had come to the girl’s aid. [and can we not call them ‘males’?]

    The officer is also shown sitting atop the girl to subdue her.

    “A fight between a mom and a girl broke out and when the cops showed up everyone ran, including the people who didn’t do anything,” Brandon Brooks, who uploaded the video online, wrote on YouTube.

    “So the cops just started putting everyone on the ground and in handcuffs for no reason. This kind of force is uncalled for especially on children and innocent bystanders.”
    “This video has raised concerns that are being investigated by the McKinney Police Department,” police said. “At this time, one of the responding officers has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this [investigation].”

    Teens at the pool party told BuzzFeed News the police were called after a fight broke out between adults and youths at the pool after the adults made racist comments telling the black children to leave the area and return to “Section 8 [public] housing.”

    Brooks, the 15-year-old who shot the YouTube video, told BuzzFeed News many students had arrived at the end-of-school celebration at the pool on guest passes. Some had also jumped over the fence.

    “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” said Brooks, who is white.

    Grace Stone, a white 14-year-old, told BuzzFeed News that when she and her friends objected to the racist comments about public housing an adult woman then became violent.

    When police arrived on scene, teens began fleeing. That’s when Brooks began his recording.

    “Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,” he said. “[The cop] didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”

    Stone told BuzzFeed News that when she approached the officers to explain what had happened in the pool the cop featured in the video ordered that she be handcuffed. “I asked why I was in handcuffs and he wouldn’t tell me,” she said, adding that she was the only white person handcuffed.

    Stone’s father, Donnie, soon arrived on scene and was also not given a reason as to why his 14-year-old daughter was in handcuffs. “All they would say is that she’s not arrested,” he said. “I was fixing to get really irate. I thought they were going to put me in handcuffs. I was shaking. It was very aggravating.”

    Stone was released from her handcuffs after about 25 minutes and allowed to go home.

    The Stone family said they would file assault charges against the adult woman at the pool who made the racist comments.

    Despite multiple people being placed in handcuffs, Brooks said he was aware of only one person who was actually taken to the police station.
    McKinney Chief of Police Greg Conley held a press conference on Sunday afternoon, saying he is “committed a complete and thorough investigation of this incident.”

    So it’s girls and males, fyi. When speaking of groups of black children. :P
    That got a bit long, plus there’s more at the link, incl. the pool’s totally awesome thank you signs to the police for keeping it safe!!! Seriously. That melanin doesn’t wash off in the water, I don’t think. You’ll still have clean water if they swim in it.

    McKinney Police Pool Party Video: Officer Who Shoved, Handcuffed Teenagers In Dallas-Fort Worth Community Is Suspended (International Business Times);
    Watch: Texas Cop Suspended After Drawing Weapon on Teens at Pool Party (Raw Story).

    “yall wanna make everything about race” hm (see photos attached)

    And elsewhere, such as STL,
    #VonDerritMyers’ dad says the new plaque should be installed @ the memorial site w/in a few weeks.
    Had both our tazing survivors out tonight. Police don’t seem to realize their brutality is not a deterrent. #STL

  402. rq says

    Ezell Ford protesters camp outside of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s home

    A group of protesters seeking justice in the case of Ezell Ford plan to camp outside of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s home in Hancock Park until Tuesday morning.

    On Sunday afternoon, people held signs and pictures of Ford, as they tried to get the mayor’s attention.

    A remembrance was also held for Ford at 65th Street and Broadway in South Los Angeles at noon. The event was a kickoff to what civil rights leaders are billing a “48 Hour Justice for Ezell Ford Police Commission Call In,” according to Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Roundtable.

    Ford’s mother Tritobia Ford said that Garcetti has not given her family the respect they deserve.

    “In other cities, you see the mayor come forward and he speaks of what’s going on, the issues that’s going on. I’ve seen the mayor dancing with Beyonce and doing all kinds of other stuff,” Ford’s mother Tritobia Ford said.

    Hours later, a spokesman for the mayor reached out to Tritobia Ford at the protest in an effort to set a meeting up.

    The protest, organized by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, comes on the heels of a report by the Los Angeles Times that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and Inspector General Alex Bustamante believe that the two officers were justified in their use of deadly force. LAPD Police Commission President Steve Soboroff declined to confirm or deny the validity of that report.

    Now that’s an interesting sentence to tack on to the end there.

    Just putting this here as preview of a horrible interview with the Interim Ferguson PD chief. Meet The DOJ Police Reform ‘Pioneer’ Who Could Bring About Change In Ferguson. Because… well, keep this in mind when reading that interview.

    Cop Under Investigation After Allegedly Manhandling Teen – CBS on the pool party. I like the ‘allegedly’ but I think that’s been discussed before.

    Mississippi high school graduation attendees face jail time for cheering

    Senatobia High School Superintendent Jay Foster had asked friends and family attending the May 21 graduation to hold cheers and applause until the end of the ceremony, according to WREG-TV, a CBS-affiliated television station. He threatened that those who didn’t comply with the rule would be forced to leave.

    Four audience members, relatives of graduating seniors, broke the rule and were subsequently kicked out. However, one week later they were also served with court papers.

    Under Mississippi law, breach of peace crimes are considered misdemeanors and punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500.

    Henry Walker, one of the four people facing penalties, was asked to leave the ceremony after he yelled “You did it baby” at his daughter and waved a towel.

    “It’s crazy,” Walker told WREG-TV. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs, or a $500 fine for expressing my love, it’s ridiculous man. It’s ridiculous.”

    His wife, Linda Walker, said the family could not afford the fine.

    “Why assign papers on someone? We don’t have money for anything like that,” she said. […]

    While schools have the right to maintain order during events, the conduct in question would still need to rise to the level of disturbing the peace in order to sustain a criminal conviction, he said. “The first question the judge will ask is whether there was a substantial disruption. Merely being irritated wouldn’t rise to criminal conduct.”

    Ursula Miller, an aunt of one of the graduates also facing charges, told WREG-TV that she was asked to leave after she called out her niece’s name.

    “When she went across the stage I just called her name out. ‘Lakaydra.’ Just like that,” Miller told the news channel. “I can understand they can escort me out of the graduation, but to say they going to put me in jail for it. What else are they allowed to do?”

    According to Policinski, charges of disturbing the peace are typically filed in connection with fan conduct at sporting events where the disruption is “persistent and substantial.” He added that society generally treats “hold your applause” as a formality not meant to be strictly enforced.

    “I’m not sure the average person would think that cheering for your daughter would constitute criminal conduct even if it’s rude or impolite. Here, we get into manners and courtesy as opposed to matters of criminal conduct,” he said.

    Yeah, persistent and substantial. And I can’t believe that they’d actually wait a week before presenting the people with charges. That just makes it sound petty and vindictive.

    Black Mothers Suspect Hospital of Stealing Babies

    Eighteen Black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families.

    The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate. No one is sure who was responsible, but Price’s daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later.

    Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother.

    That bit via Ebony, more at The Grio.

    @Nettaaaaaaaa speaking on her work with #BlackLivesMatter in St. Louis. So thankful for her insight today!

  403. rq says

    Ferguson Police Department from interim chief’s point of view

    Alan “Al” Eickhoff, interim police chief in Ferguson, Mo., took over the embattled department in March after former Chief Tom Jackson resigned amid investigations into how police handled the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

    Eickhoff, 59, had joined the department as assistant chief five days before Brown’s shooting Aug. 9 by Officer Darren Wilson. Previously, he spent four years with the nearby Creve Coeur Police Department and 32 years with the St. Louis County Police Department. […]

    [q] Why did you want to be interim police chief, given what’s happened during the past year? [/q]

    I really wasn’t asked, I was kind of told. But had I been asked, I would have taken the job. I was assistant chief and when Tom stepped down; we needed someone to lead the troops…. I’m not sure if we had [gone] outside of the department, we would have found a lot of people who wanted to go into that hot spot.

    Ferguson was the igniter and we have continued to be the hot spot. Everybody blames us…. We don’t need any more problems. There’s a lot of work we need to do with the community and with our officers. There was tension all over the United States. We’ve had a lot of meetings from visiting chiefs and people from all over the United States and everybody pretty much admits we were the igniter. It turns out the “Hands up, don’t shoot” didn’t even happen.

    We got a lot of negative notoriety and it all stemmed from Michael Brown’s body having to [lie] on the parking lot for 41/2 hours. The reason he was there for so long was because of hostile fire against our officers. We could not get to Michael Brown’s body. [uh okay which is exactly why police could keep medical professionals away from the body and all those photos of police cordoning the area, yeah, they could get past their own tape]

    It just so happens we were the starting point, the first ones out of the gate, but when I hear people blame things on Ferguson I don’t think it’s fair. Because I don’t think other people have paid protesters flying to their city. [words, anyone?]

    [q] What is the toughest part of being a police officer in Ferguson now? [/q]

    Everybody feels there’s this big lack of trust between the citizens and the police, so we’re trying to develop that trust. The other thing is, everybody is watching you. If you get out of your car, there’s people filming you with phones, there’s media — so you feel like you’re being scrutinized. [good]

    I tell the officers: “If you’re doing your job right, you don’t have to worry about it. You can’t be afraid to do your job. If you treat everybody with respect, treat everybody nice, a lot of times on a traffic stop or anything like that, it goes a long way.”

    There’s a lot of stress…. Everyone wonders, “Could I be the next Darren?” It’s hard on the officer, and it affects their families too. [Please tell me what bad things happened to Darren]

    We’ve had a couple families [that] have been uprooted and had to leave town. The kids say, “Dad, why do we have to move?” “Because I don’t think it’s safe.” It wears on any officer. [PLEASE TELL ME WHAT BAD THINGS HAVE HAPPENED TO ANY OFFICER IN FERGUSON]

    [q] What would you like the Ferguson community to know about your department? What would you like the country to know? [/q]

    Right now when you talk to people outside of our area, a lot of people believe Ferguson is a racist police department. Unfortunately, I can’t go into the [Department of Justice] report. I would have a field day with the DOJ report.

    There were some questions about why we didn’t have more minorities. We didn’t have a high turnover rate. Now recently we have been losing officers due to retirement. We lost two due to the email incident.

    We have officers who take pride in the community, who have kids go to school in the community. A lot of the interaction with protesters was not our department: the tear gas, [protesters] were saying they were pointing rifles at them. A lot of that was the unified command down on West Florissant [Avenue].

    Anytime anything bad happens in Ferguson, it’s Ferguson’s fault even if it isn’t our department. When all this kicked off, we didn’t have riot helmets or gas masks — we were pretty much a bedroom community. All this was new to us.

    St. Louis County, those other departments, assisted us. And all those things they did saved lives. Tear gas may irritate your eyes, but long term it doesn’t harm you. [he’s a medical professional, too!] To have … violent clashes during those three days [following Brown’s shooting] and not lose a life is pretty impressive. […]

    [q] Of the department’s 47 officers, four are African American, one is Latino, one Asian and three women. Do you plan to hire more minorities? [/q]

    We are looking to sponsor one or two people in the police academy. We have nine contestants and seven are African American. We are looking to hire more minorities. But one thing I’m adamant about is that they meet certain standards and pass certain tests, background checks.

    They sign a contract where they will stay for three years, they get paid while they attend the academy and come work for us. It’s a big commitment. If I hire a graduate from the July class… it will probably be February before I can get him in a patrol car.

    Ladies, please note, only men should apply.
    Emphases mine, commentary mine.
    I think I don’t like this guy.

    #FightFor15. Detroit.

    Oakland Police Shoot And Kill Armed Suspect Found Passed Out In Car Near Lake Merritt – I ‘like’ how the suspect was armed, yet was passed out in his car, therefore shot… Doesn’t ‘unconscious’ kind of count as ‘unarmed’?

    First graduates of Jalen Rose Academy march with pride

    Jalen Rose didn’t forget where he came from or those he left behind.

    The ESPN/ABC analyst and former 13-year NBA star, raised his arms, clenched fists as if he had just won the NBA Finals, as he beamed with pride as he walked passed the inaugural graduating class of Jalen Rose Leadership Academy (JRLA).

    The teens were in line, donning graduation caps and gown— young ladies in yellow and young men in blue — in the lobby waiting to enter the Masonic Temple Jack White Theater on Saturday.

    Following Rose passed the students was Michael A. Cater Sr., academy co-founder and former Detroit mayors Dennis Archer Sr., and Dave Bing.

    And bringing up the rear was former Detroit Piston and 12-time NBA All-Star and Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, who hummed the familiar portion of “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1: Land Of Hope And Glory,” that has and continues to be played at countless graduations annually.

    Parents, guardians, extended family, and academy founders and donors assembled inside the theater, where Rose and his guest addressed graduates.

    “The only person that you are destined to become is the person you decide to be,” Rose said.

    He told the young men and women to make quality decisions and face adversity with a countenance of unwavering determination.

    Rose happily exalted that 100 percent of the graduating class has gained college, trade/technical school or military acceptance. Founded in 2011, the academy remains involved with their graduates as they pursue higher education.

    “This is not goodbye. This is just see you later. The job is not done,” said Rose.

    Way to go, graduates!

    Apparently they’ve been able to identify the precise scratch-off tickets taken during the #BaltimoreUprising to cancel them. 2015. Can’t have any looters winning the lottery. Almost wrote ‘the lootery’.

  404. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @rq:

    Not just “stealing,” but kidnapping for profit.

    Apparently there’s some evidence that people at the hospital – and that would include people very high up in the hospital – were actually ***selling*** the babies that they kidnapped.

    I actually feel – though others can reasonably disagree – that using the “stealing” frame continues to dehumanize black lives. They were kidnapped. And the kidnapping continues until the present day …sort of. Once the child reaches 18, if they really have come-and-go freedom (as we would expect) then their kidnappers can no longer face criminal charges for any failure of the adult children to be returned to/put in contact with their actual parents.

    I wonder, though, when the last child was kidnapped? It doesn’t look like there’s a Missouri state anti-racketeering statute, so you’d have to go federal RICO, but if the enterprise is ongoing, or was until not too long ago, filing a civil RICO action against the jerk wads isn’t out of the question.

    Although justice would have been for this not to happen, or to have been immediately investigated and fixed with trials decades ago, it’d still be nice to have the racist fucks that kidnapped Black children get perp walked out of their homes/neighborhoods/even their assisted living facilities, if that’s where they’re living. I doubt we’ll get a federal criminal RICO indictment, though, so we’ll have to settle for no perp walks and just a lot of money thrown at people by others who “admit no wrongdoing”, which just…AAAARRRRGHHGHGHGHGHGGGGH

  405. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @rq, about the Oakland killing:

    Whent said officers blocked off the area and spent roughly an hour trying to wake the suspect.
    Officers deployed beanbag rounds at the car in an attempt to get the driver’s attention, but police said the driver was unresponsive.

    Officers then approached the car with a metal pipe to break the passenger-side window in an attempt to talk to the driver, police said.

    At that point, the officers were able to confirm that a gun was inside the car, according to police.
    Whent said that during the last attempt to contact the driver, officers approached the car, the person woke up and then a confrontation ensued.

    Yeah. Driver won’t wake up when you shoot the windows, but when the officers actually get close to the car, they snapped a twig and the sudden movement of the driver waking up put them in fear for their lives, dont’cha know!

    Too bad they hadn’t opened up the car with a slim jim and taken the guy to the hospital at some point during that hour. But there’s probably a very, very good reason that they couldn’t possibly have done that.

  406. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    re: the comments from the interim Police Chief in Ferguson-what hostile fire is he talking about?
    And ‘Hands up. Dont shoot’ remains valid regardless of the circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Brown, Jr bc cops continue to kill PoC even when they posr no threat or have surrendered.

  409. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    – Pool party, a group of black kids are present and totally within their rights to be there.
    – Racist white guys say racist things and tell the black kids something along the lines of “get back to your sec 8 housing”.
    – Fight kicks off between “black youths” and racist white guys.
    – Police are called.
    – Police arrest some black kids in a needlessly brutal way.
    – Some of the other black kids are angry about this and swear a bit. Police arrest them in a needlessly brutal way.
    – None of the racist white guys are arrested.
    – Racist white guys and their friends and neighbours applaud the police’s actions. Because of course they fucking would.
    – Other racists and the cluelessly privileged crawl out of the woodwork to defend the cops, because of course a swearing 15 year old can present a real danger to a heavily armed cop, providing said teenager is black.
    – Pool puts up a sign thanking local PD “for keeping us safe”. Melanin can be used as a deadly weapon, dontcha know.

    – ‘Merka! Land of the oppressed and home of the cowardly.

  410. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    Edits:

    – Apparently it was a white woman who initially said the racist comments about housing. A mixed group of kids sat nearby objected, the white woman and her other (adult) friends grew violent.
    – The Buzzfeed article linked to in the article is much more informative than the one I linked to directly, and contains video.

  411. rq says

    Tony
    That whole interview is a mess of lies. And that’s what he’s spouting as fact, as rationalization for everything that happened.
    It’s pretty disgusting.

    Crip Dyke
    Yeah, back in the winter there were a few more articles on the kidnapped babies – as far as I know, the number of women affected (who were told their babies died) keeps increasing. And now any black woman who had a stillbirth or a dead baby due to other complications, who didn’t get to see the body, will always be wondering…
    It’s revolting.

    Also, re: Oakland, gee. Nobody thought to walk up to the window, give it a good tap, or a yell, maybe, you know, one person in plain clothes so as not to freak out the unconscious person…? Yeah, beanbag rounds is def. my first choice, too, when I wake the kids up in the morning. Gives them that extra bit of adrenaline to get out of bed (a bit hard to hit the second floor window from down on the lawn some mornings, though – high winds and all…).

    Thumper
    For once the BuzzFeed article is pretty comprehensive, compared to others.
    And I’m mad at whoever owns or takes care of that pool. Thank you signs for keeping them safe from black children swimming. *barf*

  412. rq says

    noteworthy: McKinney officer’s enraged comments about teens’ making him chase them initially. Recurring theme in violent police incidents

    Take a look at just how experienced Officer Eric Casebolt is. 22 years of experience. Except that linked in profile has since been taken down, ast the officer has been deleting his online presence.

    Black women have been sharing their feelings: You know what’s so hard about this one in #McKinney? Looking at that teenager, I see myself. My braids. My friends. My life. This is wild.
    Like, every time I see her face, I see myself. I see every black female friend I’ve ever had. I see my cousins. I used to look JUST like her;
    I see her & remember how fragile my 14 year old body was, how much my braids hurt when pulled. How my dignity would have been shattered.
    I see that girl and see innocence robbed. Dignity erased. Human ignored. #Casebolt didn’t see a child. He saw blackness to be controlled.

  413. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @ rq

    Yeah, the sign was horrific. “Thank you, officers, for beating up a load of teenagers on our property”. Arseholes.

    Like I said; it’s like these people think melanin is a weapon.

  415. says

    In better news, last week, the head of Toronto’s Police Services board came out against the practice of “carding”.* Yesterday, the mayor, who had been in favour of modifying the procedures around it, had a press conference and stated he’s changed his mind and will be voting to abolish it altogether. http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/06/07/john-tory-to-call-for-full-stop-to-carding-citing-eroded-public-trust.html

    *think of this as a cross between “stop & frisk” and NSA data-gathering. Police stopping young black and brown men for no reason and questioning them, writing notes, and storing that info (often erroneous) in a database. http://www.torontolife.com/informer/features/2015/04/21/skin-im-ive-interrogated-police-50-times-im-black/

  417. rq says

    Tony
    That’s only semi-good news until he’s convicted of the full charges he deserves (and not some weird assault thingie lesser charge). But semi-good news is still better news than no indictment (I’ve just lost hope that ‘indictment’ actually means something, for the most part, esp. coming so long after the shooting).

  418. rq says

    Just a few current things from Canadian media (by ‘Canadian’ I mean CBC and Toronto Star, as those are the two I frequent most – if anyone has recommendations for other news-worthy Canadian media sites, you’re more than welcome to suggest them to me!).

    McKinney, Texas, police officer on leave after video shows him pushing teen, pointing gun – note, as pointed to before, elision of racial factors in the headline.

    McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley said at a news conference Sunday that the incident began when officers responded Friday to a report of a disturbance involving a group of young people at a neighbourhood pool. The police department has said they did not live in the area or have permission to be there.

    When officers arrived, residents and private security pointed out the juveniles, who were “fighting and refusing to leave,” Conley said.

    As officers dispersed the crowd, the 14-year-old girl was “temporarily detained” by an officer, said Conley, who did not describe what led to her detainment.
    […]

    The video showed the apparently white officer pulling the girl to the ground then appearing to use his knees to pin her face-down. He can also be seen pointing his gun at other teens and cursing.

    McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller said in a written statement that he was “disturbed and concerned by the incident and actions depicted in the video.” He called for the city and police to quickly investigate.

    Conley did not identify the officer or the girl. McKinney is an affluent, predominantly white city. Most of the kids seen in the video are black.

    Incidents involving white law enforcement and black suspects have raised concerns across the U.S., in particular since last August when a white police officer fatally shot a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, fuelling a nationwide “Black Lives Matter” movement.

    Some witnesses told The Dallas Morning News that the police targeted black kids at the pool party. But Benét Embry, a local radio personality who is black, said the police officer’s action was not about race.

    “That’s what they are supposed to do: protect us,” Embry said. “I don’t know any other way he could have taken her down or established order.”

    See? That’s the general white opinion: they were being protected, though they are most likely ignorant of any events preceding the arrival of the police. (More on that when I get home.)

    Video of officer pulling gun on teens at Texas pool party sparks outrage – at the Toronto Star, the focus is on the pulling of the gun, rather than the brutalization of a 14-year-old girl. Actually, considering all things, I’m not sure which actually is worse, since the pulling of the gun could have ended badly, but then, so could the ‘detainment’ of the young black girl.

    A call to police about unwelcome teenagers at a community pool thrust this affluent Dallas suburb into the national spotlight on race and police relations Sunday.

    Police Cpl. Eric Casebolt was placed on administrative leave after a video surfaced showing him pulling a 15-year-old girl to the ground and pinning her down outside a pool party Friday night in the expansive Craig Ranch subdivision. Seconds later, he pulled his gun and pointed it at two teens who appeared to try to come to her aid.

    The profanity-laced seven-minute video, posted to YouTube on Saturday, had been viewed more than 4 million times by Monday. It shows white police officers trying to control black teens who had scattered as officers arrived in the neighbourhood.

    McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller said that he expects city staff and police officials to quickly conduct an investigation into the officer’s actions.

    “I am disturbed and concerned by the incident and actions depicted in the video,” Loughmiller said in a written statement. “Our expectation as a City Council is that our police department and other departments will act professionally and with appropriate restraint relative to the situation they are faced with.”

    McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley, who declined to say what specific behaviour in the video led to the investigation, said Sunday that the officer was immediately placed on leave.

    “Any time you confront a large group of people, it’s a very dynamic situation and tensions can rise very quickly,” he said.

    Ah, tensions. From the beginning of this article, it sounds like it were the white community members who called the police.

    Re: carding in Toronto, as pointed out by Ibis3 above, another opinion:
    Councillor Michael Thompson says fight to end carding isn’t over. He’s the only black member of Toronto City Council… in a city of millions, and a fair portion of that not white… ANNNyway. I’m so glad they’re taking a closer look at carding.

    Councillor Michael Thompson (open Michael Thompson’s policard), the only black member of Toronto City Council, is “pleased and relieved” that Major John Tory (open John Tory’s policard) has called for a “permanent cancellation” of carding.

    But Thompson doesn’t believe the fight to end the practice is over.

    “I’m very pleased the mayor is now on-side with many Torontonians and Canadians,” Thompson said. “He has identified carding for what it is — discriminatory against everyone’s Charter rights and freedoms.

    “I don’t believe elation came to mind when I heard the news, because I felt this practice should never have happened. This is the first step. There is a lot more to come.”

    Tory and Thompson met to discuss carding while attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference in Edmonton on the weekend before Tory’s announcement Sunday.

    Thompson believes Tory is sincere in his intentions, but stressed that the nayor is only one person, and it will take more to end the controversial practice.

    “People like Bill Blair fed the mayor and his staff a whole bunch of nonsense,” Thompson continued. “It’s been said by some that police are not going to be able to talk to people now. It’s nonsensical to make comments like that. We don’t want to stop police talking to the community.”

    Thompson said that during his four years on the Toronto Police Services Board, he never saw any evidence that showed carding produced material of substance to assist in a major police investigation or criminal matter.

    The councillor emphasized that it’s a policy that could negatively affect outside opinions of Toronto if the issue is allowed to fester.

    “We don’t want a situation where young baseball and basketball players don’t want to come to Toronto because we’re viewed as a city with a special type of practice that focuses on black people,” Thompson said.

    “Carding allows officers to demand co-operation through policy even though no criminal activity has taken place. In a free and democratic society, we don’t tolerate that.”

    Thompson is a senior advisor to Concerned Citizens to End Carding, the group of influential Ontario civic leaders who called for an end to carding last week.

    “We’re very proud of our diversity in Toronto,” Thompson said. “Diversity is our friend, and for anyone to think it was only the black community complaining, or it was less important because it was supposedly only the black community complaining, that was egregious in its own way. [italics mine – rq; note subtle point to racism on the part of people saying it’s only the black community complaining so who the fuck should give a shit amirite]

    He continued: “I’m proud of the city and community for standing together against a socially, morally and legally flawed practice. We need to move forward and enhance the relationship between police and our communities. We’re all prepared, willing and ready to work with the mayor, police and service board on police-community relations.”

    Tory plans to bring a motion to halt carding at the June 18 meeting of the police board, but carding may not be abolished entirely.

    Just abolish it entirely, people.

    Oh, and since we’re all about the Freeze Peach and political correctness, as proper SJWs should be, here’s… well, another complaint. Free speech on the run, even in the home of the brave.

    Legally protected speech, no matter how offensive, is a glorious and uniquely American invention, a gift to the marketplace of ideas and an example to the world. [didn’t the French invent it…?]

    Coming from a journalist — me — that statement should not be even mildly controversial.

    Increasingly, though, such a statement is being reviled even here in the U.S. as archaic, revanchist, bigoted, paternalistic, reactionary, sexist, probably tinged with racism or just out of tune with modern thought.

    That would be no surprise in Canada or European nations where the impulse to regulate real or imagined insult, using hate speech laws, human rights commissions and the like, can trump free speech.

    But in today’s America, the domain of constitutionally protected expression, anti-free-speech forces are stepping up co-ordinated attacks.
    […]

    Legally protected speech, no matter how offensive, is a glorious and uniquely American invention, a gift to the marketplace of ideas and an example to the world.

    Coming from a journalist — me — that statement should not be even mildly controversial.

    Increasingly, though, such a statement is being reviled even here in the U.S. as archaic, revanchist, bigoted, paternalistic, reactionary, sexist, probably tinged with racism or just out of tune with modern thought.

    That would be no surprise in Canada or European nations where the impulse to regulate real or imagined insult, using hate speech laws, human rights commissions and the like, can trump free speech.

    But in today’s America, the domain of constitutionally protected expression, anti-free-speech forces are stepping up co-ordinated attacks.
    […]

    The bigger example: the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo who were blamed for inciting the massacre at their magazine.

    Most big media organizations, some undoubtedly cowed by the hate-speech police, refused even to republish the magazine’s answer, a depiction of Muhammad weeping, on the grounds that it might offend Muslims.

    Eric Posner summed up this new journalistic let’s-have-less-free-speech ethos last week in the online magazine Slate: “Americans need to learn that the rest of the world — and not just Muslims — see no sense in the First Amendment,” he wrote, finger wagging.

    America’s right wing can be censorious, too, especially when someone disdains the military it so deeply cherishes.

    Suggest publicly that a soldier killed in the dust of Iraq died neither for his country nor for freedom and watch the reaction.

    It doesn’t help that after years of hearing about terror, terror, terror, the American public is increasingly telling pollsters that there’s too much free speech here.

    What Kirsten Powers glosses over, though, is that not even America’s guarantee of free speech safeguards anyone from consequences like shaming or termination of employment, or even expulsion from a (private) school or university.

    In fact, such retribution is itself protected expression.
    […]

    Consistently, the courts here have rejected offensiveness per se as grounds for challenges to the U.S. First Amendment, he says.

    The best example is the odious leadership and congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church, the crackpots who show up at solemn events like military funerals with placards announcing “God Hates Fags.”

    The Supreme Court found 8-to-1 that their homophobic craziness is protected. Opponents are free to line up across the street and yell “God Loves Queer People.”

    Hate speech laws do not exist here in the U.S., the logic being that you never know when the government might decide you’re a hater, and go after you.

    Being a journalist, I’m all for the American approach.

    I will miss it when I return to Canada, where the government suppresses communication by its bureaucrats, declares “zero tolerance” for certain types of expression it considers offensive, points to expanded hate-speech restrictions in the Criminal Code, and has just passed what it calls an anti-terror law that looks to criminalize certain forms of speech.

    Maybe I’ve been in the U.S. too long, but my friends on the left probably need to keep in mind that free speech is worthless if it doesn’t protect offensive speech.

    But then I suppose I’m revanchist and patriarchal and reactionary and just out of tune with what passes for modern thought.

    1) I think he’s mixing up several different issues into one not entirely homogeneous one (like free speech and consequences of free speech and the freedom to have a platform vs. everybody owing you a platform, those kind of things);
    2) Retribution and shaming via social media? Eeeehhhh… Okay. But it’s funny, I don’t see him providing concrete examples of people being fired for free speech (and yeah, if your free speech exercised is something stupid and wrong and bigoted, damn straight there should be consequences);
    3) the woe-is-me-I’m-a-old-white-(straight?)-man attitude, retranslated as I’m-a-victim-of-your-oppression, well… kinda grates the nerves very fine.
    Anyway. Just thought it seemed relevant to things here, esp. regarding offensive language and expressions of one’s racism by flying the confederate flag or tattooing swastikas onto oneself.

  419. rq says

    Just finished an advance copy of @TaNehisiCoates’ incisive, necessary, upcoming book. Pre-order it now, you must. I think I must.

    Your wacky grandma who says racist things that you laugh off? She calls the cops on me in a sundress for walking her neighborhood.

    Bystanders accuse Austin police of excessive force, more on this as I work through my tabs.

    The Austin Police Department is under fire Sunday morning after a video allegedly showing officers using excessive force surfaced overnight on Saturday.

    The video appears to have been shot in downtown Austin by Jericho Tucker. He said he posted the video to his YouTube channel because he knew it would get attention and wants people to discuss the bigger issue.

    In the video, it looks like mounted patrol officers are keeping the crowds away as they make an arrest.

    Several people can be heard yelling at officers, using profanities. It appears one officer grabs a man’s phone who was standing in the crowd.

    “While she grabbed his phone, he took a couple steps towards her with his arm outstretched, and that’s when the other police officer used what I assume is mace. I don’t think it was pepper spray. It still burned the area. I have no experience with either, so I can’t say for sure,” Tucker said. “They sprayed the guy who had phone taken, and the female officer who had the phone threw it back at him before riding away.”

    The video has already been viewed thousands of times on YouTube and has hundreds of comments criticizing the officers’ actions.

    Owner: Standoff house in Greenwood Village is “destroyed”. That’s cops, protecting yer property!

    A man whose Greenwood Village home was destroyed by police in a barricade situation is angry, claiming police used excessive force to get the job done.

    “My house has been destroyed by a paramilitary unit,” owner Leo Lech said Friday. “We’ll have to basically doze it down to the foundation.”

    The home, at 4219 S. Alton St., has been condemned, Lech said.

    Lech also fears that he’ll be left alone to deal with the damage and aftermath.

    His nightmare began Wednesday when Lech’s 25-year-old son, who lives in the home and rents from his father, called and told him police had cordoned off the property and he couldn’t get in.

    On Thursday morning, his son called back.

    “He said: ‘The house is totaled!’ ” Lech recalled.

    “I thought, they broke down the door, or fired tear gas through a window,” Lech said. “When he showed me the pictures, I was just aghast — unbelievable!”

    The bilevel home, built in 1974 and purchased by Lech a couple of years ago, now looks like it’s in the middle of a battle zone.

    Windows, front and back, were obliterated, blown out to the point of exposing the wooden frame of the house. Piles of wasted timber, wood framing, siding, exterior trim and decking are dotted around the house.

    Portions of the landscape are torn up, looking like a tank or heavy equipment rumbled through.

    Most of the damage to the home was caused by “some kind of explosive,” Lech said. “I can tell you that for sure.”

    Scanner traffic during the incident also indicated authorities were using explosives at the house.

    Greenwood Village police did not return calls Friday for comment and have not explained how they damaged the house or why they used so much force. Neighbors described sounds of gunfire and explosions when the standoff came to an end.

    Some more at the link, but wow. No more house! Just going to excerpt this pair of comments, though:

    Lech said Police Chief John Jackson told him: ” ‘Well, we did what we had to do.’ ”

    “One suspect with a handgun, and they have to use this kind of force?” Lech said.

    Multiple Reports of Tear Gas, Pepper Spray Use By New Jersey State Police At Hot 97 Summer Jam, previously mentioned by tweet, but here it is in full article glory!

    Multiple arrests were made outside MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where police clashed with concertgoers attempting to attend the annual Hot 97 Summer Jam. State State Police spokesman Sgt. Gregory Williams said additional troopers had been dispatch to the scene, where there were reports of pepper spray being used on concertgoers and concertgoers hurling bottles at police, the Record reported.

    The Record said police used sound generators to try to disperse the crowd as hundreds of officers in riot gear pushed back against crowds trying to get into the stadium. Record photographer Tyson Trish said he was hit over the head by a riot shield as he attempted to take photos.

    Pepper spray and teargas were also had. Summer fun!

    Line of NJ state trooper behind the gate at MetLife. Officer threatening to use pepper spray over LRAD.

  420. rq says

    61 arrested after Summer Jam concert chaos at MetLife Stadium

    New Jersey State Police arrested 61 people after concert goers climbed fences and trying to push past security at the MetLife entrance gate for the Summer Jam Concert, a major hip-hop concert at the stadium.

    The crowds became upset when the gates were closed and blocked off by police in riot gear, officials said. Multiple people in the crowd outside the gate threw bottles and trash at police and security. Troopers used protective equipment including shields and helmets to avoid injuries from flying objects. Additional troopers were called in from nearby stations to assist. Noise generators, pepper spray, and tear gas were used to disperse people who refused to clear the area outside of the main gate.

    After police used tear gas, people scattered and there were numerous arrests. Eight troopers suffered minor injuries during the confrontation, officials said.

    The gates were briefly re-opened to try to accommodate those with tickets who had not yet entered, but they were closed again when non-ticket holders attempted to push their way in. Some legitimate ticket holders were not able to get into the concert, officials said.

    The power of music. 61 arrested! Whew.

    Arrests made at Summer Jam concert after some fans clash with State Police , just another point of view.

    Hm, Eric Casebolt YouTube list was literally just made private this moment. Here’s a screenshot. @deray #McKinney (Casebolt is the officer terrorizing those teens at the pool party.)

    Kalief Browder, 1993–2015

    Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.

    In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home, in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.

    Then, late last year, about two months after my story about him appeared, he stopped going to classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych ward at Harlem Hospital. One day after his release, he was hospitalized again, this time back at St. Barnabas. When I visited him there on January 9th, he did not seem like himself. He was gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. He had recently thrown out his brand-new television, he explained, “because it was watching me.”

    After two weeks at St. Barnabas, Browder was released and sent back home. The next day, his lawyer, Paul V. Prestia, got a call from an official at Bronx Community College. An anonymous donor (who had likely read the New Yorker story) had offered to pay his tuition for the semester. This happy news prompted Browder to reënroll. For the next few months he seemed to thrive. He rode his bicycle back and forth to school every day, he no longer got panic attacks sitting in a classroom, and he earned better grades than he had the prior semester.

    I’m pretty sure we’ve heard about him on one of these iterations, because I remember the story, because it’s so non–sensical… accused, no trial, and in jail for so long… and it gets more tragic, so TW for suicide, mmkay?

    Browder’s story also caught the attention of Rand Paul, who began talking about him on the campaign trail. Jay Z met with Browder after watching the videos. Rosie O’Donnell invited him on “The View” last year and recently had him over for dinner. Browder could be a very private person, and he told almost nobody about meeting O’Donnell or Jay Z. However, in a picture taken of him with Jay Z, who draped an arm around his shoulders, Browder looked euphoric.

    Last Monday, Prestia, who had filed a lawsuit on Browder’s behalf against the city, noticed that Browder had put up a couple of odd posts on Facebook. When Prestia sent him a text message, asking what was going on, Browder insisted he was O.K. “Are you sure everything is cool?” Prestia wrote. Browder replied: “Yea I’m alright thanks man.” The two spoke on Wednesday, and Browder did seem fine. On Saturday afternoon, Prestia got a call from Browder’s mother: he had committed suicide.

    That night, Prestia and I visited the family’s home in the Bronx. Fifteen relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins—sat crammed together in the front room with his parents and siblings. The mood was alternately depressed, angry, and confused. Two empty bottles of Browder’s antipsychotic drug sat on a table. Was it possible that taking the drug had caused him to commit suicide? Or could he have stopped taking it and become suicidal as a result?

    His relatives recounted stories he’d told them about being starved and beaten by guards on Rikers. They spoke about his paranoia, about how he often suspected that the cops or some other authority figures were after him. His mother explained that the night before he told her, “Ma, I can’t take it anymore.” “Kalief, you’ve got a lot of people in your corner,” she told him.

    One cousin recalled that when Browder first got home from jail, he would walk to G.E.D. prep class every day, almost an hour each way. Another cousin remembered seeing him seated by the kitchen each morning with his schoolwork spread out before him.

    His parents showed me his bedroom on the second floor. Next to his bed was his MacBook Air. (Rosie O’Donnell had given it to him.) A bicycle stood by the closet. There were two holes near the door, which he had made with his fist some months earlier. Mustard-yellow sheets covered his bed. And, to the side of the room, atop a jumble of clothes, there were two mustard-yellow strips that he had evidently torn from his bedsheets.

    As his father explained, he’d apparently decided that these torn strips of sheet were not strong enough. That afternoon, at about 12:15 P.M., he went into another bedroom, pulled out the air conditioner, and pushed himself out through the hole in the wall, feet first, with a cord wrapped around his neck. His mother was the only other person home at the time. After she heard a loud thumping noise, she went upstairs to investigate, but couldn’t figure out what had happened. It wasn’t until she went outside to the backyard and looked up that she realized that her youngest child had hanged himself.

    That evening, in a room packed with family members, Prestia said, “This case is bigger than Michael Brown!” In that case, in which a police officer shot Brown, an unarmed teen-ager, in Ferguson, Missouri, Prestia recalled that there were conflicting stories about what happened. And the incident took, he said, “one minute in time.” In the case of Kalief Browder, he said, “When you go over the three years that he spent [in jail] and all the horrific details he endured, it’s unbelievable that this could happen to a teen-ager in New York City. He didn’t get tortured in some prison camp in another country. It was right here!”

    Out-of-control Texas cop pulls gun on children – BoingBoing. I like that ‘children’ in the headline, because it is so true, and other media outlets have called the 14-year-old a ‘woman’. Clearly, she is not, except that she is black. So.

    Dear Fellow White Folk,

    Please don’t call the cops on kids enjoying a summer day.
    Even if they are Black.

    No, seriously. Stop.

    Love, me
    And me, too.

  421. rq says

    I missed a tweet in this series:
    So they knew they weren’t alone. These kids have seen the videos. They know kids have been KILLED by the police but they STILL risked….
    ….their lives to support & show their love for one another. Like….talk about courage. COURAGE.

    This is how it started: Can someone ID these Racists who attacked 19 y/o Afro-American girl for no reason. #EricCasebolt #McKinney @deray … That 19yo was looking out for a 14yo who was telling these women to stop their racist comments. Yeesh.

    And then there’s this.
    America.
    (That first is Casebolt slowly disappearing from the online world.)

    Video: Police Brutality Incident at a Pool Party in Texas – UPDATE: Cop Added Video to His YouTube Playlist, and then made that playlist private.
    So yeah. America!

  422. rq says

    Video Shows Texas Police Officer Pulling Gun On Teens At Pool Party, NPR. This really got around.

    So many thoughts on my mind with this violent anti-Black racism in #McKinney. These white WOMEN assaulted CHILDREN

    MyBlackMatters: The Voice of Today’s Young Black Woman

    What is the point of being divided as a race when so much is going on to break our race? The great divide being referred to is this turmoil surrounding being “light-skinned “or “dark-skinned”. Colorism started way before the troubles of modern society started to boil. Colorism can easily be traced back to slavery with darker Africans being put to work outside with cruel manual labor, while the light Africans worked inside in better conditions. This separation lead to the instilled value of the lighter African being worth more or valued more. As generations went on this same value stayed with not only blacks but whites, the treatment of lighter African-Americans is easily found in media and society.

    The new generation has taken the battle of melanin and made it broad and open on social media which is calling more attention to the situation. Many rappers and song writers have often degraded dark women by finding their lighter sisters a better model or more superior. One of the most known lyrics to have done this is in Lil Wayne’s song “Right Above It”. The popular artist said “Beautiful black woman, I bet that b**** look better red”. Although it was the simple rhyming of words he showed the favoring of a light woman over dark. May lighter model have been chosen over darker models and are more accepted in society’s view of beauty. Although others don’t find our race beautiful we should. As black women we should be uplifting each other not tearing each other down .In newly streaming hashtag on twitter #UnconventionalBlackBeauty, many black girls and women used this hashtag to let go of their biggest insecurities and flaunt tot the world what wouldn’t be beautiful. A downside to this hash tag was that when asked what conventional beauty was many users pulled up pictures of light women and used pictures of dark skin women to be unconventional. Gratefully, the creator of tag cleared up the misconception and set it all straight but this shed light on how black women have still divided themselves in the eyes of beauty.

    As a race we need to pull together and especially as a sisterhood. How dark you are should not determine how black you are. Why fight internally when there is an external fight going on? Black women and black men don’t be distracted or be misled on colorism it is real and it needs to change, we are one. We should be united as a people not divided. We should be united as sisters, not divided.

    Thank you Akon for renovating Africa, you’re appreciated. #AkonLightingAfrica

    Summer Heat, an essay.

    “Ms. K, they got me again.”

    Six words set up the familiar routine. A car ride to the station. An unwanted and unwelcome conversation with the officer at the desk. Rudeness, contempt and that awful perma-smirk. Waiting in anticipation; false alarms. A reprieve: An escape without ransom. More waiting. Finally, the bowed head and slumped shoulders of a young Black man walking towards me. No tears. Where are the tears? Another court date or maybe not. Another record to expunge, always. Then it starts all over again.

    I dread summer. It’s the season of hyper-surveillance and even more aggressive policing of young people of color in my neighborhood.

    The urban summer criminalization merry-go-round; a kind of demented child’s play. Quotidian terrorism in the service of law and order. Low-intensity police riots against young Black people. My anecdotal observations are supported by empirical data. The ACLU of Illinois says that last summer, based on population, Chicago police made “far more street stops than New York City police did at the height of their use of stop-and-frisk. The CPD stopped more than 250,000 innocent people.” Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of those stops involved Black people who, while making up 32% of Chicago’s population, were 72% of the stops.

    Some studies suggest a correlation between summer and a rise in “crime.” I can hear the justifications: “If crime increases in the summer, then police more aggression is justified.” This fails to take into account that “routine” interactions between police and young people in my community are fraught all year long. Summer exacerbates these oppressive contacts because many more young people are out of school and usually without jobs hanging out in public spaces.

    Public spaces in urban and suburban towns are contested. Residents collude with law enforcement to police and enforce boundaries. Young people of color are criminalized not only by the police but also by community residents.

    Yesterday, yet another video went viral on social media. It depicts police officers in McKinney, Texas, swarming a pool party filled with teenagers and one particular officer manhandling a 14 year old Black girl wearing a bikini. The young people are cursed at, have a gun pointed at them, and are taunted for being afraid of the cops. Fifteen year old Miles Jai Thomas explains what happened:

    “So a cop grabbed her arm and flipped her to the ground after she and him were arguing about him cursing at us,” Thomas said.

    When two teens went toward the cop to help the girl, they were accused of sneaking up on the cop to attack.

    “So a cop yelled ‘get those motherfuckers’ and they chased [us] with guns out. That’s why in the video I started running,” Thomas said.

    I was scared because all I could think was, ‘Don’t shoot me,’” he said.

    Watching the video, I was struck by how the young people were denied the right to be afraid. Their fear was illegitimate. And it makes sense; only human beings are allowed to be afraid. For the cops these youth of color (mostly Black) are not human.

    I dread summer.

    Please read the rest at the link. It is excellent. Absolutely read it.

    And here is PZ’s There were no surprises in McKinney.

  423. rq says

    A couple more and then the rest tomorrow.

    Bikers rally outside Waco courthouse to protest handling of Twin Peaks shooting, just as a note that no National Guard has been called in.

    Austin Police Investigating Viral Pepper Spray Video

    A YouTube video that has gone viral shows police in Austin, Texas, blasting bystanders with pepper spray during the course of arresting another person.

    According to the man who took the video, this incident happened at approximately 1:30 a.m. ET Sunday on 6th Street in Austin, Texas. The witness told NBC News said he he saw a lone police officer push through the crowd and tackle a single person. In the video’s caption the poster had said the person who was tackled looked “a little young to be drinking.”

    After that person was arrested, “police pushed all back and started kicking people too close. Pepper spray/deterrent was used on bystander who was filming the incident, doing nothing,” the witness told NBC News.

    Officials didn’t release details of the arrest, but told NBC News that “the Austin Police Department is aware of this incident, and they are conducting a review to determine if the officer’s conduct is compliant with our policy.”

    ACLU, other groups plan ‘Freedom Rides’ against police brutality from Baltimore to Annapolis

    More than a dozen civil and religious groups calling for police reform in Baltimore will embark Monday on “Freedom Rides” to Annapolis to spread their message in the state’s capital.

    The effort — which includes the ACLU of Maryland, Amnesty International and local healthworkers union 1199 SEIU — was scheduled around the first meeting of the Legislative Public Safety and Policing Workgroup, a task force created by legislators in Annapolis to study public safety issues highlighted by the death of Freddie Gray.

    The groups gathering Monday said they will “set out acceptable principles for police reform” at a news conference in Baltimore at 11 a.m. before heading to Annapolis.

    The task force is set to meet at 1 p.m.

    According to the ACLU, the event will also include Bmore United, CASA, Communities United, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Empowerment Temple, Jews United for Justice, Justice League, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, Southern Elections Foundation, Ujima People’s Progress, and Universal Zulu Nation.

    Judge orders Mosby to respond to defense motions in Freddie Gray case by June 26

    Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby has until June 26 to respond to three defense motions in the trial of six officers in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, a judge ordered this week.

    Attorneys for the six Baltimore officers have filed a motion asking that Mosby be removed from the case. The also asked that the case be moved from Baltimore and for it to be dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.”

    The defense attorneys have argued Mosby has multiple conflicts of interest; one of them, they contend, is that her husband, City Councilman Nick Mosby, represents the area of West Baltimore where Gray was arrested. […]

    Mosby has dismissed the allegations of conflict of interest and said she will not step away from the case. In a previous filing in the case, Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow called the defense attorneys’ arguments for Mosby’s removal “illogical, unsupported, frivolous, and unprecedented.”

    The three defense motions were filed May 27. Under normal rules of the court, Mosby would have until June 11 to respond. But earlier this week, Mosby’s office requested an extension until July 10.

    The officers’ attorneys opposed an extension. […]

    On Thursday, Circuit Judge Charles J. Peters filed a one-page order, saying he had considered Mosby’s motion for an extension and the response from the defense attorneys.

    His ruling essentially split the difference between the initial June 11 deadline and Mosby’s request of July 10.

    On Friday, Mosby’s office said it is “prepared to honor the court order.”

    Also Friday, the defense attorneys filed a motion reiterating their opposition to the gag order Mosby requested to prevent those involved in the case from speaking about it publicly.

    In the motion, the attorneys repeated earlier arguments that Mosby’s public comments on the case have been prejudicial, saying “obtaining jurors untainted by the emotion generated in this case is now impossible” and asking for a change in venue.

    The attorneys also said the officers “acknowledge the important role of a free press in our society,” and join in the opposition to the gag order filed with the court by 19 media outlets, including The Baltimore Sun.

    @deray We’re protesting in Mckinney today and the NAACP supposed be here meeting with the Chief today. #StopPoliceTerrorism

    McKinney, Texas, and the Racial History of American Swimming Pools

    Like many flourishing American suburbs, McKinney has struggled with questions of equity and diversity. The city is among the fastest-growing in America, and its residents hail from a wide range of backgrounds. Formal, legal segregation is a thing of the past. Yet stark divides persist.

    In 2009, McKinney was forced to settle a lawsuit alleging that it was blocking the development of affordable housing suitable for tenants with Section 8 vouchers in the more affluent western portion of the city. East of Highway 75, according to the lawsuit, McKinney is 49 percent white; to its west, McKinney is 86 percent white. The plaintiffs alleged that the city and its housing authority were “willing to negotiate for and provide low-income housing units in east McKinney, but not west McKinney, which amounts to illegal racial steering.”

    All three of the city’s public pools lie to the east of Highway 75. Craig Ranch, where the pool party took place, lies well to its west. BuzzFeed reports that the fight broke out when an adult woman told the teens to go back to “Section 8 housing.”

    Craig Ranch North is the oldest residential portion of a 2,200 acre master-planned community. “The neighborhood is made up of single-family homes,” says the developer’s website, “and includes a community center with two pools, a park and a playground.” Private developments like Craig Ranch now routinely include pools, often paid for by dues to homeowners’ associations, and governed by their rules. But that, in itself, represents a remarkable shift.

    At their inception, communal swimming pools were public, egalitarian spaces. Most early public pools in America aimed more for hygiene than relaxation, open on alternate days to men and women. In the North, at least, they served bathers without regard for race. But in the 1920s, as public swimming pools proliferated, they became sites of leisure and recreation. Alarmed at the sight of women and men of different races swimming together, public officials moved to impose rigid segregation.

    As African Americans fought for desegregation in the 1950s, public pools became frequent battlefields. In Marshall, Texas, for example, in 1957, a young man backed by the NAACP sued to force the integration of a brand-new swimming pool. When the judge made it clear the city would lose, citizens voted 1,758-89 to have the city sell all of its recreational facilities rather than integrate them. The pool was sold to a local Lions’ Club, which was able to operate it as a whites-only private facility.

    The decisions of other communities were rarely so transparent, but the trend was unmistakable. Before 1950, Americans went swimming as often as they went to the movies, but they did so in public pools. There were relatively few club pools, and private pools were markers of extraordinary wealth. Over the next half-century, though, the number of private in-ground pools increased from roughly 2,500 to more than four million. The declining cost of pool construction, improved technology, and suburbanization all played important roles. But then, so did desegregation. As historian Jeff Wiltse argues in his 2007 book, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America:

    Although many whites abandoned desegregated public pools, most did not stop swimming. Instead, they built private pools, both club and residential, and swam in them …. Suburbanites organized private club pools rather than fund public pools because club pools enabled them to control the class and racial composition of swimmers, whereas public pools did not.

    Today, that complicated legacy persists across the United States. The public pools of mid-century—with their sandy beaches, manicured lawns, and well-tended facilities—are vanishingly rare. Those sorts of amenities are now generally found behind closed gates, funded by club fees or homeowners’ dues, and not by tax dollars. And they are open to those who can afford to live in such subdivisions, but not to their neighbors just down the road.

    Whatever took place in McKinney on Friday, it occurred against this backdrop of the privatization of once-public facilities, giving residents the expectation of control over who sunbathes or doggie-paddles alongside them. Even if some of the teens were residents, and others possessed valid guest passes, as some insisted they did, the presence of “multiple juveniles…who do not live in the area” clearly triggered alarm. Several adults at the pool reportedly placed calls to the police. And none of the adult residents shown in the video appeared to manifest concern that the police response had gone too far, nor that its violence was disproportionate to the alleged offense.

  425. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    GOP kingmaker Mickelson wants to bring back Jim Crow era voting laws.

    Their true “colors” are showing…..

  428. rq says

    L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department, just for fun.

    America’s Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail

    It was 9 o’clock in the morning at Cook County Jail, but in the subterranean holding cells where dozens await their turn before a judge, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Pre-bail processing here takes place entirely underground. A labyrinth of tunnels connects the jail’s buildings to one another and to the Cook County Criminal Court. Signs and directions are intentionally left off the smooth concrete corridors to hinder escape attempts. Even those who run the jail get lost down here from time to time, they told me.

    No natural light reaches the tunnels. Human voices echoed off the featureless walls, creating an omnipresent din. On this Monday, when those arrested over the weekend in Chicago and its suburbs filled the fenced cages, that din became a roar. Many inmates were standing, sitting, or milling around. But some—perhaps two or three per holding pen—were lying on the floor, asleep.

    If you can sleep through this, you’re fighting far greater demons than the commotion outside. And the doctors here want to know what they are.

    At Cook County Jail, an estimated one in three inmates has some form of mental illness. At least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from some type of mental illness—a population larger than the cities of Cleveland, New Orleans, or St. Louis—according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI estimates that between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives. […]

    What sort of crimes had these people been arrested for? One kid on the list had a tendency toward aggression, but officials emphasized that the overwhelming majority were “crimes of survival” such as retail theft (to find food or supplies) or breaking and entering (to find a place to sleep). For those with mental illness, charges of drug possession can often indicate attempts at self-medication. “Even the drugs of choice will connect to what the mental illness is,” Petacque-Montgomery told me. People with severe depression might use cocaine “to lift their mood.” Those who hear voices and have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder often turn to heroin to regulate their sleep. Marijuana use “is just constant for kids with ADD and depression,” she notes. “I’ll ask, ‘Can you eat or sleep without this?’ and they’ll say no.’” […]

    In most jurisdictions, the recently arrested are brought to local holding cells for fingerprinting and charges, then taken to the county jail for processing and a bond hearing. Cook County is no different—except for its mental-health screening. “What I did is, I put this new layer in between, so when they get dropped off before they go to the bond hearing, we interview them and we try to find some sort of alternatives for them to suggest to the judge,” Dart explained.

    How did the judiciary respond, I asked? He shrugged. “They haven’t.” Dart has spent most of his career as part of the criminal justice system in some way. He previously worked in the state attorney’s office as a prosecutor until 1991, when he spent 11 years in the Illinois state legislature. “I’m not invited to a lot of their parties, let’s put it that way,” he said about the judges, cracking a grin.

    Here it’s worth noting that a jail is not a prison. Every inmate I spoke with had been arrested or charged with a crime, but not necessarily tried and convicted for it. In the law’s eyes, they were still innocent until proven guilty. Jail officials told me that some of their cases would be likely dropped before reaching trial. The Cook County public defender’s office advised the inmates not to give me their last names or discuss details of their alleged crimes with me. Few of them listened. Because of the sensitive nature of these conversations—and because mental illness can carry a lifelong stigma, even if the person is not a threat to himself or others—I’ve omitted the inmates’ surnames throughout this story. [except Kalief died in jail] […]

    The United States does not have a national mental-health system, nor has it ever had one. Caring for the severely mentally ill has long been the responsibility of the states, starting with the first asylums and mental-health hospitals established in the mid-19th century. In 1854, the social reformer Dorothea Dix pressured Congress to set aside 10 million acres of public lands for mental-health facilities. President Franklin Pierce, who viewed it as an overreach of federal power, vetoed the final bill. It would be another nine decades before Congress would enact the first mental-health law. As the scarred veterans of European and Pacific battlefields returned home from World War II, the National Mental Health Act of 1946 established the National Institutes for Mental Health and provided research funding to states.

    The postwar era saw other changes in the way states addressed mental health. Foremost among these was the birth of psychopharmacology and the development of new drug treatments for mental illnesses. Chlorpromazine, best known in the U.S. under the brand name Thorazine, became the first widely adopted antipsychotic drug in 1955. Others soon followed, and they had an immediate impact on the therapeutic landscape. Although the effects varied from person to person, many patients with serious mental illnesses could now be reliably treated beyond the asylum and hospital walls for the first time.

    Against this backdrop, Congress passed the Mental Health Study Act in 1955. The law established a joint commission on mental health to evaluate the nation’s mental-health policy and propose reforms. Greer Williams, a prominent psychiatrist and writer, became the editor of the joint commission’s final report, which was published in December 1960. In its July 1961 issue, when The Atlantic included a special supplement titled “Psychiatry in American Life,” Williams contributed an article that detailed the commission’s findings. “One of the most revealing disclosures” of the report, he wrote, “is that comparatively few of 277 state hospitals — probably no more than 20 per cent — have actively participated in the modern therapeutic trend toward humane, healing hospitals and clinics of easy access and easy exit, instead of locked, barred, prisonlike depositories of alienated and rejected human beings.” The typical state hospital, he explained, “does a good job of keeping patients physically alive and mentally sick.”

    The solution, many activists and experts thought, would be to shift away from state-run mental hospitals altogether into a new model of mental-health treatment. Shaping this zeitgeist was a steady stream of depictions of the horrors of the asylum system by journalists and popular culture. Books like 1962’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with its graphic depictions of electroconvulsive therapy and unsympathetic portrayals of mental-health workers, reflected popular views of psychiatric care. […]

    Kennedy’s plan was to decentralize American mental health care. “We must move from the outmoded use of distant custodial institutions to the concept of community-centered agencies,” he told legislators. To replace the asylums, the president envisioned a national network of community-based mental health centers, equipped to provide “a coordinated range of timely diagnostic, health, educational, training, rehabilitation, employment, welfare, and legal protection services.”

    The Senate responded accordingly by passing the Community Mental Health Act, but Kennedy’s legislation met with resistance when it reached the House committee on interstate commerce. House Republicans and the American Medical Association opposed including funds for personnel in the bill. Committee members reduced the building construction provision to $238 million and eliminated all $427 million set aside for staffing in the final House version. The House and Senate later compromised on $329 million overall, but with no funds for personnel. “For bricks and mortar, maybe, but for the care of human beings, nothing,” Williams later complained in The Atlantic. The Community Mental Health Act was the last legislation Kennedy signed into law before his murder in Dallas.

    The act accelerated a process called “deinstitutionalization”—a national shift in mental-health treatment from state hospitals to community-based facilities. Between 1955 and 1998, the populations in state and county mental hospitals dropped from approximately 558,000 to fewer than 60,000. “The decline was even more dramatic if general population growth is taken into account,” wrote scholars Howard Goldman and Gerald Grob in their history of federal mental-health policy. “Had the proportion remained stable and the mix constant, mental hospitals would have had about 950,000 patients in 2000.”

    Other legislation contributed to the process. When Congress created Medicaid in 1965, it barred payments for people in “institutions of mental diseases” but allowed payments for community mental health centers. In the last year of his presidency, Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which provided grants directly to community mental health centers. The boost in funding was short-lived. In one of the first speeches of his presidency, Ronald Reagan complained that, through federal mandates, “a federal helping hand is quickly turning into a federal mailed fist.” His administration repealed the Mental Health Systems Act within its first year, converted direct funding into block grants for the states, and cut federal mental-health spending by one-third. No one picked up the slack.

    By the mid-1980s, it was apparent that something had gone wrong. “The policy that led to the release of most of the nation’s mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure,” declared The New York Times in 1984. “States proved more enthusiastic about emptying the old facilities than about providing new ones,” the Chicago Tribune noted in 1989. “Many patients went from straitjackets to steam grates.”

    Even then, it was arguably better than today. “We still had a semblance of a mental-health system in the 1980s and 1990s,” Dart told me. A study in 1990 found that 1 in 15 prisoners at Cook County Jail had some form of mental illness. Today, a conservative estimate is 1 in 3.

    Deinstitutionalization’s aftershocks are still being explored by academics, but most concede its successes were mixed at best. “Cutbacks in mental health funds, together with cuts in federal money for public housing and other services, led to streams of apparently deranged people living on the streets,” wrote political scientist Marie Gottschalk. Their visibility “overshadowed the fact that many mentally ill people made successful transitions to community life.” But those who didn’t ended up in the mental institution of last resort: America’s jails and prisons. […]

    The Great Recession accelerated the nation’s downward trend in mental-health spending. Between 2009 and 2012, America’s 50 state legislatures cut a total of nearly $4.5 billion in services for the mentally ill, even as patient intakes increased by nearly 10 percent during the height of the economic crisis. Until a few years ago, Chicago had 12 mental health clinics. In 2011, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first budget proposed closing six of them. The closures—city officials referred to them as “consolidations”—would save the city an estimated $3 million as it struggled to balance its budget.

    As mental-health advocates rallied, Dart publicly warned in editorials and interviews that many patients who lost their clinics would end up at his jail. But it didn’t work. The Chicago City Council passed Emanuel’s budget that November without dissent, 50 to 0. “People are still angry about it,” said Alexa James, the executive director of NAMI Greater Chicago. “There really wasn’t a hearing, [the clinics] just kind of closed, and people are very, very angry.” […]

    What comes next is unusual, and possibly unique. After the normal post-bail intake procedure is complete, inmates file through a series of concrete cubicles staffed by a battalion of employees from the Cook County Health and Hospitals System. About 600 of the county hospital system’s 6,000 employees work at Cook County Jail. If the inmate is eligible, county officials can sign up him or her for CountyCare, a health insurance program for low-income Cook County residents created through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. The assembly-line layout allows the county to process about 200 applications a day. Over 10,000 inmates have signed up so far.

    For inmates with mental illness, who might struggle to afford prescription drugs or pay for mental health care, the program has the potential to significantly improve their quality of life. But it also has its limits. “I get really nervous when people start talking about it like it’s a panacea,” said Marlena Jentz, the deputy director of public policy at the jail. “I think there’s a lot of really positive change around this, but there are a lot of next steps too,” she told me, citing needs like health literacy and access to housing in the community.

    A pervasive misconception is that violence and mental illness are closely linked. Dart and other jail officials repeatedly emphasized to me that the men I met were nonviolent, as were the vast majority of those they encountered overall. One of them, Pierre, had been charged with retail theft. Though he had no history of violence, the judge remanded him to the county’s custody on a $100,000 bond. “I can’t make a $100,000 bond,” Pierre told us pleadingly. “I couldn’t either,” Dart replied.

    Pierre told me he’d been living in an apartment provided by Thresholds, a local nonprofit, while surviving on disability checks. But Thresholds’ rules require eviction if he’s incarcerated for a certain length of time. “If I don’t get out of here by September 30,” Pierre repeatedly told me, “I’m going to lose my apartment. They’re going to put everything I own in the world out in the alley. I’ll only have what I walk out of here with.” His next court date was scheduled for October 1.

    And the article goes on, and on, and on. So many people, and so little opportunities to help.

    Did I say Kalief? Here is Kalief. TW for suicide. The Brief and Tragic Life of Kalief Browder

    We are in the midst of a debate around criminal justice right now, a timid one no doubt, but a debate nonetheless. In the midst of such debates it is customary for pundits, politicians, and writers like me to sally forth with numbers to demonstrate the breadth and width of the great American carceral state. The numbers are, indeed, bracing and are not hard to find. The fact that African Americans comprise some one in 200 of all known people in the world, and yet African American men comprise one in 12 of all known prisoners has always given me pause.

    Kalief Browder was one of those African American men. But in 2010 he was a boy of 16, sent to Riker’s Island for a crime he did not commit. As reported by the great Jennifer Gonnerman, Browder sat there for three years without a trial. He was repeatedly beaten by guards and inmates while in Rikers. He spent two years in solitary confinement—a euphemism for living under torture. On Saturday the effects of that torture were made manifest:

    That afternoon, at about 12:15 P.M., [Browder] went into another bedroom, pulled out the air conditioner, and pushed himself out through the hole in the wall, feet first, with a cord wrapped around his neck. His mother was the only other person home at the time. After she heard a loud thumping noise upstairs, she went upstairs to investigate, but couldn’t figure out what had happened. It wasn’t until she went outside to the backyard and looked up that she realized that her youngest child had hanged himself.

    The numbers which people like me bring forth to convey the problems of our justice system are decent tools. But what the numbers can’t convey is what the justice system does to the individual black body. Kalief Browder was an individual, which is to say he was a being with his own passions, his own particular joys, his own strange demons, his own flaws, his own eyes, his own mouth, his own original hands. His family had their own particular stories of him. His friends must remember him in their own original way. The senseless destruction of this individual must necessarily be laid at the feet of the citizens of New York, because it was done by our servants, and it was done in our name.

    There should be an accounting beyond numbers for these years, something that goes beyond the failures of state budgets, something that goes beyond the the insanity of our policy. Something that captures the grandmothers beaten on traffic islands, the daughters shoved face first into the ground, the son shot while playing, the man choked to death over cigarettes, or for producing his license, or for being mentally ill, or for playing cops and robbers, or for sport. This is more than mistaken policy. This is cruelty—the long war to save the blacks from themselves. Browder was not “the blacks.” He was his mother and father’s child—an individual. And yet for reasons as old as America, he was not treated like one.

    Urgent Call to Action: Call Baltimore DA and demand to drop all charges against #LarryLomax (443)9846000

    Even Black Joy Is a Crime

    Jesus Tyrone Christ! Black people can’t do shit.

    On a near daily basis we keep seeing examples of Black Americans being accosted, assaulted, arrested, and even murdered for simply ___________ while Black. Walking, playing, trying to make a living, crossing the street, riding public transportation, sleeping in their homes, the list goes on. Black people cannot even drop their kids off at school or attend an end-of-the-school-year pool party without upsetting scared White folks and feeling the wrath of America’s police force. And now add cheering and graduating with joy while Black to the list.

    High-school graduations are a cherished rite of passage that signal a milestone successfully reached. It points to the potential of a bright future, a stepping-stone in the fulfillment of the so-called “American Dream.” And the ceremonies are communal events; they represent a celebration of both an individual accomplishment and the collective contributions necessary to complete the last chapter of childhood. It’s not uncommon for graduation ceremonies to include cheering, shout-outs and hollers, whistles and other spontaneous expressions of pride and joy from family members when their graduate crosses the stage to receive their diploma. I attended a wealthy mostly-White boarding school where parents vociferously expressed their joy on graduation day: “Way to go, Tyler!” “You’ve done it, Fletcher!” “Go, Meg!”

    Graduations are a family victory.

    Especially if you’re Black. […]

    So yeah, a Black student graduating high school—any student from any high school—is still a big fucking beating-the-odds deal, especially in a society that’s constantly telling young people of color, through images, news stories, and statistics, that they suck at everything. Graduating is a statement to the doubters and haters, those who lament, without any facts on their side, how Black youth, their parents, and the broader community don’t value education.

    So WHY are Black family members in Mississippi Goddamn being charged with a criminal act for cheering their graduate’s shining moment? Is Black joy also supposed to be a dream deferred?

    When Lakaydra Walker graduated from Senatobia High School recently, her brother, Henry Walker, waved a towel as a relative shouted, “You did it, baby!” only to be promptly removed from the ceremony. And Lakaydra’s aunt, Ursula Miller, called her niece’s name out as she received her diploma.

    Shut up all that Black noise! Civilization is under attack!

    Outraged, Senatobia School Superintendent Jay Foster, who threatened to remove any of those cheering and celebrating “thugs” from the ceremony, went to police to demand charges be filed against the Walker family.

    “The goal was to allow all graduates to have the privilege of hearing their name called,” he said. So he sought the arrest of their family members. If it weren’t so outrageous and disgusting, we would have to laugh at the logic of arresting a family so that kids could celebrate this educational accomplishment.

    What’s next, the football-game-to-prison pipeline? Or mass arrests for excessive cheering at a basketball game. Not to worry: lacrosse, golf, field hockey and water polo are safe. […]

    Here you have young people that are doing the RIGHT thing: working hard, studying diligently, following the rules, and avoiding Mississippi’s school-to-prison pipeline, which is among America’s most devastating systems. According to Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Black kids in Meridian, Mississippi, were said have been “escorted from school for crying while being paddled” and for the crime “wearing the wrong color socks” they were given suspensions.

    In spite of living in the state with the highest rate of childhood poverty, a fact often used to demonize and dismiss, these students had come and done what they needed to do for 12 years. Mississippi, the state where State Representative Gene Alday (R-Walls) responded to calls for increased funding in face of persistent educational inequality with, “I don’t see any schools hurting. I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work.” Graduation day is a day to tell Alday and so many others: “We have made it in spite of YOU and the systemic traps of white supremacy.”

    Avoiding the traps of drugs, gangs, and premature death, Black kids from Mississippi to Oakland, from Ferguson to Baltimore are defying stereotypes and a society that routinely leaves them behind.

    Yet, for the Walker family the celebration was yet another reminder of second-class citizenship. Her family’s justifiable moment of jubilation is so problematic and disruptive that the law had to be brought in to control them. Their joy has become yet another moment to try to push them into America’s criminal injustice system. […]

    White supremacy doesn’t simply demand that Black people be seen as inferior, unworthy and inhuman. Rather, it is a system where Black people “have no rights.” As Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney proclaimed in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case in which an African-American slave sued for his freedom, America is a nation where Black people have no rights “which the White man was bound to respect.”

    White supremacy demands nonstop vigilance to strike down any and every demonstration, even the most benign sign, of humanity. Any and all indications that Black people have rights, that Black people exist requires a response of containment. When we have the AUDACITY to express our humanity, the racists can’t wait to slap us down.

    We dance. We sing. We shout. We holler. We make a joyful noise.

    The dangers and crime of Living While Black. […]

    We manage to achieve, to excel, to march across the stages of life, flip our tassels, grab our diplomas and march into futures that glimmer with promise and hope, and the racists are mad and want to steal our joy. Because joy is evidence of Black humanity. Our joy says that we refuse to be destroyed by racism and we reject its demands of compliance and subservience. White superiority is challenged by a Black joy that doesn’t require its approval, validation, definition, permission, or control.

    Black joy is self-affirmation and love, and we know that White racists interpret that kind of behavior as a step toward tyranny. And that’s why these Mississippi family members might have to go to jail. White supremacy requires us to hate and destroy ourselves, not cheer and bask in our successes. Because Black failure gives their lives definition, and shores up their delusional sense of racial superiority.

    In search of the illusory Black-Dad-Who-Isn’t-There: Black Dads Are Doing Best of All

    One of the most persistent statistical bludgeons of people who want to blame black people for any injustice or inequity they encounter is this: According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), in 2013 in nearly 72 percent of births to non-Hispanic black women, the mothers were unmarried.

    It has always seemed to me that embedded in the “If only black men would marry the women they have babies with…” rhetoric was a more insidious suggestion: that there is something fundamental, and intrinsic about black men that is flawed, that black fathers are pathologically prone to desertion of their offspring and therefore largely responsible for black community “dysfunction.”

    There is an astounding amount of mythology loaded into this stereotype, one that echoes a history of efforts to rob black masculinity of honor and fidelity.
    c
    Josh Levs points this out in his new book, “All In,” in a chapter titled “How Black Dads Are Doing Best of All (But There’s Still a Crisis).” One fact that Levs quickly establishes is that most black fathers in America live with their children: “There are about 2.5 million black fathers living with their children and about 1.7 million living apart from them.”
    Photo

    “So then,” you may ask, “how is it that 72 percent of black children are born to single mothers? How can both be true?”

    Good question. […]

    Mass incarceration has disproportionately ensnared young black men, sucking hundreds of thousands of marriage-age men out of the community.

    Another thing to consider is something that The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in 2013: “The drop in the birthrate for unmarried black women is mirrored by an even steeper drop among married black women. Indeed, whereas at one point married black women were having more kids than married white women, they are now having less.” This means that births to unmarried black women are disproportionately represented in the statistics.

    Now to the mythology of the black male dereliction as dads: While it is true that black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born, it is not true that black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect. In fact, a C.D.C. report issued in December 2013 found that black fathers were the most involved with their children daily, on a number of measures, of any other group of fathers — and in many cases, that was among fathers who didn’t live with their children, as well as those who did.

    There is no doubt that the 72 percent statistic is real and may even be worrisome, but it represents more than choice. It exists in a social context, one at odds with the corrosive mythology about black fathers.

    Here are two things to consider:

    First, there are a growing number of people who live together but don’t marry. Those mothers are still single, even though the child’s father may be in the home. And, as The Washington Post reported last year:

    “The share of unmarried couples who opted to have ‘shotgun cohabitations’ — moving in together after a pregnancy — surpassed ‘shotgun marriages’ for the first time during the last decade, according to a forthcoming paper from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

    Furthermore, a 2013 C.D.C. report found that black and Hispanic women are far more likely to experience a pregnancy during the first year of cohabitation than white and Asian women.

    Second, some of these men have children by more than one woman, but they can only live in one home at a time. This phenomenon means that a father can live with some but not all of his children. Levs calls these men “serial impregnators,” but I think something more than promiscuity and irresponsibility are at play here.

  429. rq says

    Well, that’s a long comment with lots of reading, and also that last part which is not blockquoted, SHOULD be blockquoted, because that sure as hell is an analysis too fine for my intelligence, and plus, it should have landed in the middle of the larger blockquote since it comes right after the ‘Good question.’ bit.

    South Carolina police officer in Walter Scott shooting indicted on murder charge

    The North Charleston, S.C., police officer who fatally shot Walter Scott as he fled a traffic stop this year was indicted by a grand jury Monday on a charge of murder.

    This indictment comes two months after Michael Slager was charged with murder for shooting and killing Scott, an event recorded by a bystander’s cellphone and shared widely on cable news and social media. Slager was arrested April 7 and fired from the North Charleston Police Department.

    Scarlett A. Wilson, the prosecutor for Charleston County, announced the indictment at a news conference Monday morning, but she said there still is no timetable for when the trial will occur.

    Information about the case was presented to the grand jury Monday, and the indictment was quickly returned, though Wilson would not comment on precisely how long the jurors deliberated.

    “It was all handled today,” she said Monday.

    What kind of murder, though?
    Grand jury indicts former cop on murder charge in Walter Scott shooting,

    Murder was the only charge presented to the grand jury to consider for an indictment, Wilson said. The charge carries a sentence of 30 years to life in prison without parole.

    A trial date has not yet been set.

    Despite outside pressure to remove Wilson from the case, the solicitor said she will not be stepping aside from what will be her first murder case against an officer, and is confident Slager will get a fair trial in Charleston County.

    Attorneys and the family of Scott spoke after the news conference, saying the indictment is only the first step. Attorney Chris Stewart said a civil suit will be filed in the next few months.

    Scott’s brother, Rodney, said the family is happy with the murder indictment.

    Yes, but what kind of murder? Or does it not matter at this point?

    Michael Slager, Cop Who Fatally Shot Walter Scott In South Carolina, Indicted For Murder

    A grand jury has indicted a former South Carolina police officer in the April shooting of an unarmed black man, the prosecutor announced on Monday.

    Former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager, 33, has been charged with murder in the death of Walter Scott, 50.

    “I think the people of the 9th circuit elected me to be accountable to them, and that’s what we intend to do,” Charleston County Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said during a news conference following the announcement of the indictment Monday. “They have to know they have someone prosecuting the case who is accountable to them.”

    “We’re going to patiently wait for the criminal trial in this case,” Chris Stewart, one of the attorneys for the Scott family, said in a brief press conference. “It’s just about keeping the faith. The community has done that. The family has done that, and we’re going to continue to do that until the resolution of the criminal and the civil case.”

    Stewart thanked the community and noted the family plans to file a civil suit in the next few months.

    “It is our belief that Officer Slager, with his history — as you have known — should have been reprimanded … before the entire situation with Mr. Scott,” Stewart added. “Right now we’re just digging and gaining more information.”

    Rodney, Scott’s younger brother, shared the family’s reaction to the indictment.

    “This morning, the grand jury made the decision to indict Mr. Slager for murder, and we’re very pleased and happy about that,” he said.

    I guess it doesn’t really matter, what kind of murder, ‘slong as it’s murder.

    American juvenile incarceration: destroying a generation to feed the prison system

    Wil Wheaton writes, “Today’s Fresh Air (MP3) is just heartbreaking. It’s an interview about the juvenile ‘justice’ system in America with Nell Bernstein, author of Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison, and how prison is just destroying young lives in the name of giving prison workers jobs. No. Seriously. It’s infuriating, and it dovetails perfectly with your review of Matt Taibbi’s new book.”

    Two links to audio at the link.

    Black Legal Group Demands Texas Cop Be Fired Over Pool Party Incident – right now he’s only suspended.

    The National Bar Association, the nation’s largest organization of black attorneys and judges, has called for the firing of a white Texas police officer who drew his gun and slammed a black teenaged girl to the ground while responding to a complaint at a pool party.

    A seven-minute video shows the officer, who has been identified as McKinney police corporal Eric Casebolt, grab a teenage girl by the arm and slam her to the ground. When two people approached Casebolt, he drew his gun to chase them away. He then forced the girl face down onto the grass, placed his knees on her back and handcuffed her, the video shows. She was detained temporarily before being released, according to police.

    The McKinney Police Department placed Casebolt on administrative leave and launched an investigation into his actions after reviewing the video published on YouTube on Saturday. The police said that Casebolt and two other officers responded to “a disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave.” Nine additional officers later responded to the call.

    “McKinney Police received several additional calls related to this incident advising that juveniles were now actively fighting,” police said in a statement.

    In a statement released on Monday, the National Bar Associated accused Casebolt of racial bias.

    “The National Bar Association is demanding a full investigation, and that based on the seven minute YouTube video standing alone is grounds to terminate Officer Casebolt. It is insufficient to place him on paid administrative leave, when it is obviously clear that this officer was not enforcing the law, but instead was enforcing his will and power and showing explicit bias towards these African American teenagers,” the statement reads.

    The bar association said that Casebolt was “engaging in aggressive, unprofessional, out of control behavior towards these African American teenagers.”

    “Officer Casebolt used profanity and aggressively threw a 14 year old girl in a bikini bathing suit to the ground, face-down,” the statement reads. “The officer at one point even pulls out his firearm on brandishes it at two male teens. When a small African American boy asks the officer for assistance locating his bag and attempts to explain that he was not involved the officer states that is not his problem and is extremely aggressive, rude, and dismissive.”

    Sorry, on leave. But with pay.

    The Counted stands at 490 right now.

  430. rq says

    ACLU calls on N.J. attorney general to investigate Summer Jam police response – so that’s getting out there, too.

    The head of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey said Monday an independent investigator should be appointed to determine if the use of tear gas, pepper spray and sound blasters on people outside MetLife Stadium on Sunday was appropriate.

    The executive director of the group, Udi Ofer, said the clash at the annual Summer Jam concert and response by State Police “raise serious questions about police practices” and the state Attorney General’s Office should commission a public report on the incident.

    “We are aware of reports of individuals throwing bottles at responding officers, but any time law enforcement deploy tear gas, sound cannons, armored personnel carriers and riot gear in a civilian context, civil liberties are put at risk and a closer look is required,” Ofer said. […]

    “Noise generators, pepper spray, and tear gas were used to disperse people who refused to clear the area outside of the main gate,” State Police said. More troopers were on hand for the event than last year, though the division did not release specific numbers.

    “A small group of highly disruptive people ruined this concert for many others,” State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes said. “They created a danger to ticket-holders, stadium employees, and troopers on the scene. Our troopers took the appropriate steps to restore order to what was a brief and volatile situation.”

    Brief! Volatile! Appropriate!

    So This Happened: Texas Teachers Hand Out “Ghetto” Award Certificates To 8th Graders. Teacher needs to go back to teacher’s college? They missed all the lessons on sensitivity.

    Awards season for students is usually a joyous occasion, but one Texas family was livid to find that their son received something called a “Ghetto Classroom Award.”

    Two teachers known as Mrs. Garner and Mr. Couch handed out certifies to a 14-year-old and a few other eighth graders at Sulphur Springs Middle School, according to MSN. The certificate read, “The 8th Annual Ghetto Classroom Awards,” insinuating that the less-than-funny comical gag has been going on for years.

    As it turns out, Mrs. Garner, who taught special education students in the Carrollton Farmers-Branch school district in Carrollton, Texas, gave out the award at her previous school for years without anyone noticing.

    The certificate was signed by the teachers, with the school principal’s signature being forged.

    Sulphur Springs Superintendent Michael Lamb says the principal was shocked to hear about the awards. Further investigation revealed the “The ‘Huh’ Award” was presented to around 50 students over the years. The certificate is given to those who use the word to show their confusion in the classroom.

    A statement was released on behalf of the principal and the school:

    “SSISD wants to apologize to anyone that was offended by this action,” the statement said.

    The 14-year-old student’s mother Jerrika Wilkins said the teen is upset over the award, which made him feel inferior in comparison to his classmates. Other parents say the use of the word “ghetto” was just as hurtful because of the negative connotation it presents to the African-American community.

    WARNING Heavily armed #McKinney residents plan to crash tonights anti police brutality protest. Be careful out there. I have yet to see how those protests went, but here’s hoping all is safe.

    White Cop Who Shot Unarmed Black Man Dead Not Getting Away With Murder Just Yet, that’s The Wonkette on Slager.

    This is something you don’t see every day. Or hardly ever. But on Monday, a grand jury indicted former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who shot an unarmed black man dead because “oops, I thought I was shooting my Taser instead,” for murder.

    We were plenty shocked in April when Slager was charged with the murder of Walter Scott, thanks in no small part to some nosy bystander capturing the whole incident on video, calling into question Slager’s initial claim that he had to shoot Walter Scott dead in self-defense because he feared for his life, whoops. (Can’t blame the officer for trying; that usually works!)

    The video, however, shows Slager firing eight bullets until Scott drops to the ground, then handcuffing Scott’s body — just as an extra precaution, we guess. Prosecutors in North Charleston, South Carolina, didn’t buy Slager’s story and charged him with murder. And, much to our shock and surprise, the grand jury didn’t buy the story either and says there is sufficient cause for Slager to stand trial. Improbable but true! […]

    Yes, we know Slager is innocent until proven guilty, although that video seems pretty damning, but the jury will decide just how damning it is. And while no charges, trial, or conviction will bring Scott back to life, we may see justice done for a black man killed by a white police officer, just this once.

    Who knows? Fuck all happened in the Rekia Boyd case.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes the Case For Reparations, audio interview.

    Ta Nehisi Coates is one of the most important voices in America today. He made the case for reparations last summer when he argued that it’s time for America to confront the impact of slavery, Jim Crow, and other discriminatory policies that have consistently denied African Americans opportunities afforded other Americans. He says until we admit to the debts accrued from years of racism, we can never be whole.

    Discrimination allowed early settlers to prosper on the backs of African slaves over 250 years ago, creating a wealth gap that continues to the present day, often through discriminatory policies adopted as America tried to regain its financial footing after World War II. Black people, including veterans, were denied education through the GI Bill, relegated to red-lined neighborhoods and predatory lenders, and forced to live under the doctrine of “separate but (un)equal.”

    Yes, we have a black president, black Attorney General and blacks fill more positions of power than ever before. But, when Ta-Nehisi Coates tells us that the Baltimore in the recent news isn’t much different than the Baltimore where he grew up, it’s time to talk about why.

    John spoke with Ta-Nehisi Coates last Thursday at Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford while Coates was in town to receive the 2015 Stowe Prize for writing to advance social justice.

  431. rq says

    Just, you know, an example of police response, then we move on to some photos of protest in McKinney.
    This is what INTIMIDATION LOOKS LIKE. Loading & Cocking guns at us at U City Council meeting. @johnchasnoff @KWRose

    Now McKinney:
    It’s like a cruel joke that the first big protest in every city has someone who wanes on about voting for 10 minutes.

    And the street medics are here. McKinney.
    The McKinney Pool. Temporarily Closed. For treatment, the sign said. While that may be an unintentional matter of the sign just saying that, the context makes that a pretty unfortunate choice of words.
    McKinney. Protest. Lookit that crowd.
    McKinney feels like one of those neighborhoods folks move to so they never have to be around “those black people.”
    And yes, the McKinney mounted patrol is here.

    mtc

  432. rq says

    haha This is a continuation of previous comment but previous comment is in moderation so HAHA but there’s not much context to get, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
    And the Nation of Islam has arrived. McKinney. The New Black Panthers came, too.
    Counter-protest to the counter-protestors. McKinney. I like this.
    Protest. McKinney.
    Y’all, the McKinney Police have barricades everywhere. And they’re out here, ready.
    Bruhs. McKinney.
    I’ve seen so many people here in McKinney who I’ve seen march in Ferguson. And Baltimore. And Milwaukee. And DC.

    mtc

  433. rq says

    Last few things on McKinney, with the exception of some random things popping up in later tabs.
    McKinney Police Department. Protest.
    Protest. McKinney.
    This is great. The cops were completely out of line. #BlackLivesMatter #McKinneyTX #McKinneyPolice #McKinneyPoolParty
    THE #McKINNEY VIDEO EXISTS because they kid who didn’t stop recording happens to be the one in the blue shirt. Well done, young person. Very well done.
    I share many of these thoughts on #McKinney – a discussion of how unwanted angry violent male physical contact will impact the young girl (who happened to be more than half-naked at the time) going forward.

    Speaking of her, 15-Year-Old Tackled by Police in McKinney Details the Brutality She Endured

    The 15-year-old girl seen being held down by a police officer in McKinney, TX shares her side of what happened that day in an interview with FOX 4 News – Dallas-Fort Worth. She was an invited guest at the pool party, and not involved in the fight which police officers responded to.

    “He grabbed me and he twisted my arm on the back of my back and he shoved me in the grass. He started pulling the back of my braids. And I was telling him he could get off me because my back was hurting really bad,” she tells reporters.

    Video at the link; honestly, I admire her courage in not letting the event scare her into silence. Also, I ‘admire’ the woman who supports the police but doesn’t want her face shown. Are you ashamed of your opinion, ma’am?

  434. rq says

    New Ferguson police chief tells blatant and disturbing lies throughout recent interview

    In Ferguson, Missouri, the much-maligned police department is under new management … kind of. The interim chief is Al Eickhoff, a seasoned veteran of St. Louis area law enforcement. Brought in to replace the former chief, Tom Jackson, after a scathing DOJ report detailed rampant racism and discrimination within the department, the new chief, in so many disturbing ways, is more of the same old crap.

    Giving his first in-depth interview with Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times, Eickhoff almost immediately slipped off into his own peculiar world of half-truths, strangeness, and outright lies. Either the new chief actually believes the mess he said in this interview, which is disturbing, or he is lying and knows it, which is also disturbing. Below, line by line, we’ll address the quotes and thoughts that stand out the most.

    Lie #1. “We got a lot of negative notoriety and it all stemmed from Michael Brown’s body having to [lie] on the parking lot for 4.5 hours. The reason he was there for so long was because of hostile fire against our officers. We could not get to Michael Brown’s body.”

    Truth: Every single video from August 9 shows that police had full and complete access to Brown’s body from the moment he fell on the ground until the moment he was taken away. Zero evidence whatsoever exists of any “hostile fire” against officers. It appears the chief means gunshots against the officers that day and that is a complete fabrication. No matter what, police and other law enforcement officials moved freely in and out of that crime scene non stop. Here are several images which show just how much space the police truly had.

    Lie #2: “I don’t think other people have paid protesters flying to their city.”

    Truth: This is a multi-layered lie. First and foremost, 99 percent of protestors in Ferguson and in every city in America are local. Secondly, the chief is clearly watching Glenn Beck, who suggested that people, including myself and DeRay McKesson, are being paid by George Soros. We aren’t. It’s a fake conservative conspiracy theory and it’s sad to see the chief promoting it.

    Lie #3: “Right now when you talk to people outside of our area, a lot of people believe Ferguson is a racist police department. Unfortunately, I can’t go into the [Department of Justice] report. I would have a field day with the DOJ report.”

    Truth: The Department of Justice uncovered indisputable evidence of several tiers of racism, ranging from the ugliest racist emails imaginable to actual police practices of racism. The most egregious emails, seen here, did not come from some new random new recruits, but from the seasoned veteran captain and sergeant, as well as the clerk of courts. They are indisputably racist.

    Lie #4: “But what I do tell them is do not believe everything in the DOJ report because the people doing the investigations are not policemen.”

    Truth: First off, the overwhelming majority of the information in the Ferguson report comes directly from the Ferguson Police Department itself. It wasn’t a novel, but a collection of reports and data and interviews of actual employees. Secondly, dozens of seasoned law enforcement officers and Department of Justice employees gathered the intelligence and compiled it in the report. They are imminently respectable. The notion that it can’t be believed because they didn’t author it is just strange.

    Finally—and this was just ugly—Hennessy-Fiske asked the chief, “Of the department’s 47 officers, four are African American, one is Latino, one Asian and three women. Do you plan to hire more minorities?”

    In response, he said, “We are looking to hire more minorities. But one thing I’m adamant about is that they meet certain standards and pass certain tests, background checks.”

    Excuse me? Why even go there? Of course everybody has to pass tests and background checks. This much is obvious. But the chief implies something incredibly outrageous, which is that either African Americans can’t pass the tests or people expect him to give black or other minority candidates a pass of some kind. Nonsense.

    Man pepper-sprayed by Baltimore police in viral video to appear in court – that’s Larry Lomax!

    A Baltimore man who was pepper-sprayed by Baltimore police during a curfew standoff in West Baltimore last month is set to appear in a Baltimore courtroom Tuesday on charges including inciting a riot.

    Video of the incident went viral online, and Baltimore activists have called on social media for Larry Lomax’s supporters to attend his trial to show their disapproval of the charges against him.

    Larry Lomax, 23, of the 600 block of Fallsway is charged with inciting a riot and second-degree assault and disorderly conduct in a May 2 incident. (Handout photo courtesy Baltimore Police Department)

    Lomax, 23, also is charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct in the May 2 incident, in which police allege he “walked quickly” toward a police lieutenant “with his fists balled up tight in an aggressive manner yelling obscenities at the officers and daring them to arrest him.”

    Mmmkay, before I quote anymore, please re-read those charges against him. Disorderly conduct? Maybe, but second-degree assault? And inciting a riot? … ‘Kay, onwards:

    “He is an innocent man who was clearly treated in a disparate fashion from other protesters,” Finegar said. “The treatment of Mr. Lomax by the Baltimore City police was a shocking use of force that was unnecessary.”

    The incident, which occurred shortly after a 10 p.m. citywide curfew had gone into effect, was at Pennsylvania and North avenues, the center of looting and rioting after the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a severe spinal injury while in police custody.

    According to a statement of probable cause for Lomax’s arrest, police had warned from a Foxtrot helicopter that anyone in the area after curfew would be arrested.

    Police described Lomax as 6 feet tall, 220 pounds and wearing a shirt that read “[Expletive] Police.” According to the statement, the lieutenant perceived Lomax’s approach “as a threat to his bodily safety and that Mr. Lomax wanted to engage in a fist fight.”

    The lieutenant “discharged one blast” of pepper spray into Lomax’s face and Lomax “stopped aggressing,” according to the statement. A sergeant “then placed Mr. Lomax on the ground and into hand cuffs,” the statement says.

    Video of the incident shows the sergeant yanked Lomax backward to the ground. It then shows officers dragging Lomax from the street to the sidewalk.

    Meanwhile, Lomax’s behavior “incited the crowd causing multiple other arrests,” according to the statement.

    Eh, I prefer to see it as police behaviour inciting the rests of the crowd, because there’s no way you can describe what happened to Lomax as being ‘placed on the ground and into hand cuffs’. No. Way.
    Unless, of course, you’re the police, obv.
    Screwed up, this system is.

    The ‘Invisible’ White Man Holding the Camera in McKinney. Years and years ago I heard a joke about visible minorities and about how the darker your skin, the more visible a minority you are, making white people nigh on invisible. I guess it was true, after all.

    The most telling detail about this weekend’s viral video from McKinney, Texas, is the part you can’t see: the race of the man behind the camera, the one who’s holding the phone.

    Brandon Brooks, the man who took the video, casually walks around from place to place filming Officer Eric Casebolt performing a tuck-and-roll, as though dodging imaginary gunfire, before grabbing a 15-year-old girl in a bikini, shoving her face into the dirt, and pulling a gun on bystanders.

    None of that too-forceful police work—like being forced to sit on his hands, being shoved to the grass on his face, having a gun brandished at him—happened to the guy holding the camera. Brooks says Casebolt “didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”

    That’s one of the definitions of “privilege.” Sometimes it means being visible when it’s time to hand out awards or make the movie. And sometimes it means suddenly becoming invisible when the shit hits the fan.

    The “bystanders” at a protest I attended in Cleveland two weeks ago seemed perfectly calm and certain they weren’t about to suddenly be targeted by cops, forced face-down onto the ground and be taken to jail to wait 48 hours before hearing from a lawyer. But that’s exactly what happened to 71 protesters marching in objection to the acquittal of Officer Michael Brelo, who is a free man after firing 49 shots at two unarmed people.

    One of the bystanders in Cleveland even called out “Thank you, officers!” as men in riot gear marched past him. It mirrors the people who are now putting up signs at the pool in McKinney thanking police officers. The ever-ethical journalists at Breitbart wasted no time smearing the victims by pointing out they used black slang on their social media accounts, which apparently is evidence they were acting unlawfully.

    Privilege means being invisible when the police sense trouble. It means feeling like the bullets and batons will never be used against you. It means feeling safe. […]

    Privilege means getting arrested is a matter of choice.

    You can get arrested if you stand up and confront cops who are arresting the protesters—or the 14-year-old partygoers—next to you. But, otherwise, you can wander around as you please, observing events as a “bystander” at your leisure.

    Privilege means being presumed not dangerous until proven harmful, not innocent until proven guilty, and not shoved down to the ground and restrained, in Casebolt’s words, “until we get this figured out.”

    We like to give speeches full of high rhetoric about our nation being one of freedom and equality, a place where everyone is judged only on the content of their character, a place where the vicious racial caste system has long been defeated and buried.

    In the heat of the moment, we know that this is a fiction. In the heat of the moment, the truth comes out.

    Cleveland Leaders Bypass Prosecutors to Seek Charge in Tamir Rice Case

    Community leaders in Cleveland, distrustful of the criminal justice system, said Monday that they would not wait for prosecutors to decide whether to file charges against the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year. Instead, they will invoke a seldom-used Ohio law and go directly to a judge to request murder charges against the officers.

    The highly unusual move is the latest sign that some African-Americans in Cleveland and around the country have lost confidence in a system that they see as too quick to side with police officers accused of using excessive force against blacks.

    The investigation into Tamir’s shooting was handed to the county prosecutor last week, but local leaders are skeptical because of how similar cases have ended. In New York, a grand jury did not indict in the death of Eric Garner, who had been put in a chokehold by a police officer. State and federal authorities said there was no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Last month, prosecutors said a white police officer in Madison, Wis., would not be charged for killing an unarmed 19-year-old man.

    “The writing is on the wall,” said a lawyer for Tamir’s family, Walter Madison, who worked with the community leaders as they planned to seek charges. “If you look at every other instance, it ends up unfavorable to the families.”

    The community leaders said they intended to file their request on Tuesday morning in municipal court. One of them provided The New York Times with copies of six affidavits they planned to file, which outline the crimes they say were committed.

    Ohio is one of a handful of states that allow residents to request an arrest without approval from the police or prosecutors. It is difficult to know how the case will play out because there is little precedent for a citizen to request an arrest in such a contentious, high-profile case.

    Mr. Madison said that he knew of no instance in which an Ohio judge had ordered the arrest of a police officer based on a citizen complaint, but that most previous complaints had been frivolous.

    Shooting deaths by officers over the past year have prompted the most significant national discussion on policing since the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. The debate has highlighted, among other things, the differences in how prosecutors handle cases involving investigations of police officers. […]

    The Rev. Jawanza K. Colvin, who signed affidavits seeking charges of murder and manslaughter, said: “We have the video, and having witnessed it, you can see that it took two seconds for the officers to shoot a 12-year-old boy who showed no malicious intent or aggressive behavior. There is certainly reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed.”

    The planned filing comes as Cleveland tries to move past what the Justice Department recently said was a pattern of police abuse and unconstitutional behavior. The city agreed to put in place new training and civilian oversight to head off a civil rights lawsuit.

    Rhonda Y. Williams, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said she planned to sign the affidavit. “Let’s get it into the courts and get it before the people, and let’s get what is happening in the investigation out there to the community,” she said. “And let’s give the defendants their rights to defend themselves, and let’s have a criminal justice system that works.”

    While the decisions not to charge police officers have drawn wide notice, prosecutors in other cases have pursued indictments in use-of-force cases. In Albuquerque in January, prosecutors accused officers of murder for shooting and killing a mentally ill homeless man. Prosecutors in Baltimore indicted six officers last month on charges ranging in severity from reckless endangerment to murder in the death of Freddie Gray.

    On Monday, a former police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was indicted on a murder charge in connection with the April death of Walter L. Scott, who was shot in the back while running from an officer.

    And Timothy J. McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, who is considering the Tamir Rice case, recently went to trial against Michael Brelo, a white Cleveland police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants, both of whom were black. Mr. Brelo was acquitted of manslaughter last month.

    Go, Cleveland leaders, go!

    Those Texas stats I discussed earlier… Some tats on police shootings in Texas.

    This is a small intro: Scalia’s perfect capital-punishment case falls apart

    A little over two decades ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was dismissive of then-Justice Harry Blackmun’s concerns about the death penalty. In fact, Scalia had a case study in mind that demonstrated exactly why the system of capital punishment has value.

    As regular readers may recall, Scalia specifically pointed to a convicted killer named Henry Lee McCollum as an obvious example of a man who deserved to be put to death. “For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat,” Scalia wrote in a 1994 ruling. “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”

    For Scalia, McCollum was the perfect example – a murderer whose actions were so heinous that his crimes stood as a testament to the merit of capital punishment itself.

    Yesterday, McCollum was pardoned. Scalia’s perfect example of a man who deserved to be killed by the state was innocent. North Carolina’s News & Observer reported:

    Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday pardoned two half-brothers who were exonerated of murder after spending three decades in prison.

    The governor took nine months to make the decision, saying he thoroughly reviewed the pardons sought by Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Both men are intellectually disabled.

    If this story sounds at all familiar, it was last fall when a judge ordered the men released. The confessions appeared to have been coerced 30 years ago and new DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been overlooked at the time.

    As recently as 2010, the North Carolina Republican Party used a McCollum photo on campaign fliers to attack a Democratic candidate as “soft on crime.”

    McCollum hadn’t done anything wrong.

    The pardon is a welcome development, though the News & Observer added that the middle-aged men, after having spent most of their lives behind bars – and on death row – for a crime they didn’t commit, are struggling.

    [T]he men have been living with their sister, who has struggled to pay rent and utilities on her home in Fayetteville. The Center for Death Penalty Litigation established a fund to help them survive.

    Each man now qualifies for $50,000 for each year they were imprisoned, up to a maximum of $750,000. They needed a gubernatorial pardon in order to collect the compensation.

    As best as I can tell, Scalia has not yet commented.

    As intro to yet another black man released from jail after spending years inside – because it turns out he was innocent after all.

  435. rq says

    And here he is. Louisiana, Free Albert Woodfox.

    Albert has spent the last 43 years in solitary confinement. Despite having his conviction overturned three times, he remains in solitary – apparently through a campaign of vengeance from state officials.

    Albert has a bail hearing on 9 March. Ask state officials not to appeal his bail request and to give him a long overdue chance at justice.

    Well, there is some good news! US prisoner set to be released after four decades in solitary confinement. Four decades and then some.

    A federal court has ordered the release of the longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner in the US, who has been in isolation almost without pause for 43 years.

    Albert Woodfox, the only remaining imprisoned member of a group of prisoners know as the Angola Three, has been in solitary since 18 April 1972 after a prison riot that resulted in the death of a guard.

    A ruling by the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit in November gave the 68-year-old his greatest hope of release when it overturned his conviction, but he was charged again at state level in February.

    On Monday a district court ordered his immediate release and barred the state from holding a second retrial.

    The court said it had found at least five factors in Woodfox’s favour, including his age and poor health and his limited ability to present a defence at a third trial in the light of the unavailability of witnesses.

    It also cited its “lack of confidence in the state to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr Woodfox by spending over 40 years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over 40 years ago”.

    Supporters of Woodfox are remaining cautious for now in the face of a possible appeal by the state of Louisiana.

    Aaron Sadler, the communications director for the Louisiana Department of Justice, reportedly said that the district court order “arbitrarily sets aside jury decisions” based on “faulty procedural issues”.

    “With today’s order, the court would see fit to set free a twice-convicted murderer who is awaiting trial again for the brutal slaying of corrections officer Brent Miller,” Sadler said.

    Woodfox was convicted of the murder that year of a guard in Angola prison, Louisiana, where he was serving time for armed robbery. He has always protested his innocence, insisting that the Angola Three were victims of a political vendetta because of their then membership in the Black Panther party.

    Herman Wallace, another member of the Angola Three, was released in October 2013, when in the terminal stages of liver cancer and at the end of a bitter struggle with the Louisiana authorities. He died two days later.

    Robert King, the third member of the Angola Three, was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary.

    #McKinney Cop… Let us guess…He is showing his deep respect & Honor of Native People.

    K, this link keeps popping up but my computer won’t open it (keeps timing out?), a crime blog re: Casebolt and McKinney and ‘no racial factors’ in his actions. Not Racially Motivated.

    Share this far and wide. This is Friday in Salinas, CA as police unload on unarmed, mentally ill Jose Valasco.

    Family rejoices after release of death row inmate convicted of killing officer

    A convicted cop killer is off death row and out of prison.

    “Everything happens for a reason but I’m good. My family alright. If they’re alright, I’m alright,” said Alfred Dwayne Brown when he walked out of the Harris County Monday night a free man.

    Brown, who spent the past decade on death row, was potentially facing a new trial for killing veteran Houston police officer Charles Clark in 2003.

    But on Monday, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, accompanied by Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, announced she does not have enough evidence to retry Brown for capital murder.

    Brown was convicted in 2005 of killing Officer Clark during a robbery at a check cashing place. A store clerk, Alfredia Jones, also was killed.

    Brown has always said he wasn’t at the scene. In 2013, a phone record was found in a police investigator’s home garage. That led to the court’s granting a new trial, and now, Anderson said there is simply not enough evidence.

    “He got a new trial,” said Anderson. “We re-interviewed all the witnesses. We looked at all the evidence, and we came up short. I don’t know how else to say it. We can’t prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

    Brown was released on Monday at around 7:30pm.

    “I went in an innocent man and I came out an innocent man,” said Brown wearing a green polo shirt and jeans that his family brought him.

    He said he holds no bitterness towards the police officers and prosecutors who worked on his case.

    “They were doing what they thought was right, even though it was wrong. I cant blame them for that,” said Brown.

    “My heart goes out to the family of Officer Clark and Alfredia Jones, whose losses and grief cannot be comprehended,” said DA Devon Anderson Monday. “I can only assure them that their loved ones will never be forgotten and our pursuit of justice for those responsible will never cease.”

    Another man, Elijah Joubert, also is on death row for the killings.

    Brown doesn’t know if he’ll stay in Houston. He wants to spend time with his family, including a nearly 15-year-old daughter who was just 2 when he was convicted.

  436. rq says

    Okay, I’m sharing this, because I saw it, and I had to laugh out loud. ‘There’s this fella throwin’ gang signs down at the opera house’ #SeanToon911 Because can you imagine the gang message got across via an entire symphony? That’s like 90 minutes of gang signs… Sorry. Maybe it’s not that funny, but I laughed a lot.

    Eric Casebolt: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know. Can it be he has a history of violence? And is demonstrating a pattern of behaviour?

    2. He Was Accused of Racial Bias & Pulling Down a Black Man’s Pants in a Federal Lawsuit

    Federal court documents show that Casebolt and other officers were sued in 2008 in federal court for racial profiling, harassment, failure to render aid and sexual assault.

    Albert E. Brown Jr. accused Casebolt of reaching into his “private area” and pulling his pants “down below ankles” during the traffic stop.

    Brown was parked on the wrong side of a road in McKinney, according to the civil complaint. Casebolt told Brown he was going to write him a ticket for the traffic offense, but then said he saw two marijuana seeds and an open container in the car. Brown said Casebolt remarked about the “white girls” who were with him, made comments about him and his clothes, and then grabbed his private are and pulled his pants down.

    Brown also claimed in the lawsuit that another officer, Lee Keith, slammed his head into the hood of the car repeatedly. He said Keith held him while Casebolt pulled his pants down. Another officer, who is not named in the lawsuit, allegedly spread his legs while one of the officers shined a flashlight in his anus.

    Brown was arrested on charges of marijuana possession and attempting to take a weapon from an officer.

    The civil case was dismissed by a federal judge in 2009 because the criminal charges against Brown were still pending. The judge said in his decision that the lawsuit could be re-filed if he was exonerated. The charges were eventually dismissed, but the civil case was never refiled by Brown.

    More facts about him, like he’s a navy veteran and has experience in all kinds of use of force and is a supervisor and also a union member etc. But that there #2? Yup. Bingo.

    #PeoplesMonday at the 46 precinct in #Bronx #NYC telling the #NYPD about themselves! #BlackLivesMatter
    #PeoplesMonday still going in the #Bronx despite #NYPD trying to push them on sidewalk! #NYC #BlackLivesMatter

  437. rq says

    And here is the latest statement from the McKinney FOP. If you really want to read it. Have not examined all materials (video, etc.) surrounding the incident, but can say without a doubt no racially motivated policing at the McKinney PD – use of profanity may occur in high stress situations. Details are being inaccurately broadcast, it was a diverse group of people, vandalism and active fighting were reported.
    Blah blah investigation conducted blah blah.

    Best #McKinney comment ever. “They didn’t want 20 happy black kids, they got 800 angry ones.”

    The enemy is the state: how the US justice system started a civil war

    The images are compelling, true, but they don’t compel due to any great variety. On the contrary, the experienced viewer will detect a certain dispiriting sameness almost from the outset. The only aspect that truly changes is the accompanying data, though this is mostly irrelevant detail.

    A boy (relevant detail: 12 years old) stands in a park’s playground, until a police car pulls up and an officer immediately – within two seconds – shoots and kills him. A man slowly exits his car at a gas station. A state trooper asks to see his licence, and after the man turns and reaches into his car to retrieve it, the trooper shoots him multiple times at close range; the shooting victim wonders aloud, “What did I do, sir?” A burly undercover officer delivers a vicious right cross flush to the face of the thin, handcuffed woman who just extended her foot toward him. His follow-up kick misses.

    An overweight man in a chokehold – whose face we’ve just seen forcefully being ground into the pavement despite his protestations that he can’t breathe – now lies limp on that sidewalk surrounded by officers who seem more concerned with bystander proximity than any fatal medical emergency. Filmed from a helicopter, a horse thief (of all things) is Tasered into prone immobility then beaten severely by eight officers; one of them starts things off with a kick to the man’s groin before another gets a running start, as if fearful of missing out, to contribute his own kick to the man’s midsection.

    A woman surrounded by police at a precinct while being processed for a public-drunkenness arrest is suddenly thrown down face first after protesting her treatment. Now unconscious, her eviscerated face lies in a pool of her own blood. A man pitifully jogs away from a police officer who reacts by calmly taking aim then killing the man with multiple shots to the back.

    What these images, and many more like them, seem to share is a decidedly warlike timbre – but if so, this is a very one-sided civil war. And a disquietingly disproportionate number of the fallen on the losing side are African American or Latino. Being a New York City public defender, as I’ve been for many years, means dutifully watching the latest footage whenever it emerges. The force of such imagery is undeniable – but it ultimately only does what footage can do. Its viewings are visceral events and as such they disturb, startle and horrify; but in truth they also blend together, and maybe even begin to desensitise. The power of a seemingly unambiguous video can direct a society’s somewhat sustained attention, but in its overwhelming specificity and fundamental superficiality, it is a medium poorly suited to impelling deep thought and well-reasoned conclusions. For that we generally turn to explanatory stories, but here more of that depressing, almost predictive, sameness often emerges. The narratives that are desperately shaped to compete with this nascent species of images may be doomed to fail, but at least they can adhere to an accepted formula.

    First comes the smear campaign, in which any misdeed or criminal past, no matter how minor, is pored over with revelatory glee. Then we will be told that the officer involved feared not just for his safety, but for his very life. The harmless object in the victim’s hand? It looked like a gun. It looked like a gun – to someone very familiar with guns. The story will also report lots of furtive and aggressive movements, of violent resistance to arrest. In many cases, police reports are filled out – under penalty of perjury – attesting to these facts; but those facts are then flatly contradicted by what everyone can see with their own eyes. Officers are caught on tape manipulating evidence or rehearsing improvised fictions. The familiarity feels as if it can’t be coincidental, but is more like the product of selections from a playbook – one that undoubtedly proved more effective before smartphones and CCTV became so ubiquitous. And finally, there is the most salient sameness of all: like a prolific movie studio specialising in one particular genre, the greatest police brutality videos – in number and quality – are produced in the US.

    Maybe American police brutality feels especially noxious now because it seems less the work of unhinged rogues and more like something systemic. Consider the evidence provided by a new Guardian project, The Counted, which this week found that black Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to be unarmed when killed during encounters with police, with Hispanic and Latino people similarly victimised. It also found that the number of ethnic minority people killed by police is far out of kilter with their proportion of the population. Consider Baltimore, and Ferguson, and many other examples besides.

    It’s a subject that no one in my line of work can escape. Being a public defender entails not just watching the videos, it means being obliged to pick up where they leave off, to see what can be done. It also means getting roped into a lot of discussions about crime and punishment, and whatever happens to be at the forefront of those arenas at the moment, in the same way that being a novelist makes people think you must have an opinion on their favourite author. The difference is that my opinions on criminal justice rarely offend anyone because – unlike my literary ones, which tend to belligerence – they have a palpably defeated quality. In fact, this is a not uncommon difference I’ve noticed between civilian and public-defender reactions to unmistakable police misconduct: shock and outrage by the civilian, a kind of jaundiced weariness from the public defender. The reason is that shock and outrage rely partially on surprise, and I’ll here presume to speak for the vast majority of big-city public defenders in the US and say that when US police act savagely and indefensibly, it’s not all that surprising to us.

    This is not to say that the civilian shock is somehow inappropriate. It seems genuine. It could, at least theoretically, spur change. The problem is that the shock is insufficient to that task, and also emblematic of the deeper problem: ignorance. One could even quibble with the under-informed sensibility that is offended by an isolated example of the powerful abusing the weak, when an honest global flag would probably feature a clenched fist distorting a passive face. For once, the old refrain of “this is supposed to be America” can seem apt – when a country that never tires of touting its opportunity and freedom can simultaneously produce what looks a hell of a lot like state-sponsored subjugation.

    Please read the rest at the link.

    “Keep running your mouth…”: The Policing of Black Children by Mark Anthony Neal

    As a practice I rarely share video footage of the on-going assaults on Black humanity in the United States. Such footage seems a diversion to me; simply the ocular confirmation of the always already known, the always already seen; body cameras ain’t nothing but a cliche of power. More to the point, our seeming addiction to the sharing of such footage often takes away from the building that is necessary to move towards some semblance of freedom, whether we define it as the freedom to or the freedom from; neither have been consistently available to Black bodies in this country.

    Admittedly I was stunned by the footage that emerged from McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas-Forth-Worth and a city regularly cited as one of the fastest growing in the United States. Apparently it is also a city in which the very sight of Black Youth illicit a level of panic, that necessitates the emergence of law enforcement as a temporary occupying force and as agents of forced removal.

    What we see in that video is not anything new; Black children have long been criminalized for being children and acting accordingly. White youth are not immune to acting stupid, but rarely do their acts of stupidity have them sitting on well manicured lawns wearing plastic bracelets awaiting their introduction to the criminal justice system. Too many Black children are denied the opportunity to be children, in a society in which Black adults are rendered as animals–something less than human–and Black children are treated as adults. Creating spaces for my daughters to be children has been one of the most important things that my wife and I have done as parents.

    Yet what what tore at my spirit was not simply what I saw, but what I heard: “Keep running your mouth…” a provocation from one of those said law enforcement officers, directed at a 14-year-old Black girl, whose only crime was being a Black girl who had the critical capacity to interpret her circumstances and those of her peers, and raise legitimate concerns about the absurdity of those circumstances. I have known many Black girls who would have acted the same way; I am helping to raise two of them.

    The footage that ensues after that initial provocation is chilling; a grown-ass man, tosses a 14-year-old girl like she was the ragdoll she was likely still playing with three years earlier. The officer–too respectful of a term in my mind–then proceeds to slam the girl’s face into the grass while placing his knee on her back; he likely outweighs her by 70 pounds. Too be sure we’d be hard-pressed to think of an example of 13 or 14-year-old White girl would be treated in such manner.

    The 14-year-old Black girl, of course, posed no threat to the officer’s safety, but she was to be made an explicit example of his power, which she challenged, because she was willing to speak her mind; “keeping running your mouth…(and see what will happen).”

    The exchange and subsequent violence resonated with me, sot simply because I’m the parent of Black girls, but because I have spent the better part the the current school year, advocating on behalf of my youngest daughter, who like the young girl in the video is unafraid to read a situation and speak the truth of the moment. Like the teachers who have chastised my daughter for “talking back” or “getting in the face” of her peers, I can easily imagine that officer viewing my daughter as a threat to his sense of power. This is about more than law enforcement practices, but the ways our children are sanctioned, punished and policed within institutions empowered to regulate them.

    The difficulty of this moment is weighing an appropriate response to my daughters, given the punitive reactions to their ability to articulate critical intellectual sensibilities about the world they live in.

    It is their right as children — as humans — to speak as children do; it’s my job to protect that right.

    And the victim-smearing goes on. Interviewing Mark Fuhrman, Fox’s Megyn Kelly says assaulted McKinney girl ‘no saint either’

    Fox’s Megyn Kelly, interviewing racist cop Mark Fuhrman, somehow watched the same video that we’ve all watched, of a 14-year-old girl in a two-piece swimsuit being manhandled, grabbed by her braids, thrown to the ground, and then inappropriately mounted by McKinney cop Eric Casebolt, and had the nerve to conclude that “the girl was no saint either.”

    Really? What law did she break? (None)

    What was she charged with? (Nothing)

    What did she do to cause such fear in this officer that he felt the need to manhandle and assault her in front of everyone? (Zilch)

    Did she have drugs on her? (Nope)

    A weapon? (Nah)

    To attempt to put her, an innocent 14-year-old girl having fun at a pool party, on the same moral low ground as Officer Eric Casebolt is absolutely despicable and a sad part of a trend in which conservatives feel the need to demean victims of police brutality.

    We must stand up for this young girl, and for all victims of police brutality, and make sure that they do not suffer needless attacks on their character after already suffering egregious assaults on their bodies.

    Now let’s look at Dallas, via petition:
    Support a DOJ Investigation of the Dallas Police Department

    After years of demonstrations and calls for meaningful police reform, on November 18, 2014 Dallas Communities Organizing for Change (DCOC) hand delivered a Department of Justice Complaint against the Dallas Police Department, to your office in Washington, D.C.

    The complaint, based on ten years of public data on officer involved shootings by the Dallas Police, details the ongoing pattern and practice of excessive force against minority communities. The data contained in the report is verified by data released by Dallas Police to their website in November 2014.

    The federal complaint makes a compelling argument that the Department of Justice must conduct an investigation of Dallas Police in order to protect Black and Hispanic individuals from civil rights violations, and save lives of unnecessary shooting victims.

    Congresswoman Johnson, you refused to support police reform organizers calls for justice, and have been surprisingly silent on the matter publicly. We are therefore re-issuing our request that you stand side by side with your constituents as they call for sweeping police reform, and publicly support a Department of Justice investigation of the Dallas Police.

    Fighting for racial justice and an end to discriminatory policing is as much an issue in 2015, as it was in the 1960’s. We need leadership that is willing to do what it takes to save the lives of those most at risk, in day to day interactions with law enforcement.

    They only need a few more signatures.

  438. rq says

    NYPD chief Bratton says hiring black officers is difficult: ‘So many have spent time in jail’ – I WONDER WHY THAT IS???

    Hiring more non-white officers is difficult because so many would-be recruits have criminal records, the New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said.

    “We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them,” Bratton said in an interview with the Guardian.

    Police departments, responding to widespread protests against several high-profile police killings of black men, are boosting efforts to recruit more non-white officers. But budget restrictions, strained relations between police and minority communities and, according to Bratton, a history of indiscriminate policing tactics that disproportionately target black and Latino men complicate the department’s goal of racial parity.

    Bratton blamed the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in “stop, question and frisk” incidents that caught many young men of color in the net by resulting in them being given a summons for a minor misdemeanor. As a result, Bratton said, the “population pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been”.

    The application process to join the NYPD includes, among other things, a complete criminal background check.

    Convicted felons are automatically disqualified from the NYPD applicant pool, as well as anyone guilty of a domestic violence charge or who has been dishonorably discharged from the military.

    Summonses, however, do not automatically disqualify a candidate, though they are taken into account during the application process. For example, a summons for disorderly conduct would not preclude a candidate from being accepted into the force, but repeated convictions for an offense that demonstrates “disrespect for the law” could result in disqualification.

    The controversial stop-and-frisk policy was struck down in 2013 by a federal judge, who called the practice a “policy of indirect racial profiling”. Judge Shira A Scheindlin found that the program led officers to routinely stop “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white”.

    But critics say Bratton – who helped shrink the widespread use of stop-and-frisk -is partly, if not ultimately, responsible for the relative paucity of eligible non-white recruits.

    “It is a net that he set out for them,” said Rochelle Bilal, vice-chair of the National Black Police Association and a former Philadelphia police officer. “If [Bratton] didn’t stop people for nothing, he might have a bigger pool to hire from.”

    Despite his repudiation of stop-and-frisk, Bratton still believes broken windows policing – a crime-fighting strategy of enforcing low-level crimes to stop offenders from committing more serious ones in the future – is indispensable to keeping the city safe.

    “We will continue our focus on crime and disorder,” Bratton told the Guardian in an interview on May 20, for a wide-ranging, two-part feature on the NYPD. “I make no apologies for doing that.” […]

    Ensnaring young people – often black and Latino men – in the criminal justice system for seemingly innocuous crimes is not a winning strategy for attracting officers of color to the police force, Gangi said.

    “We’re certain the disfavor and the antagonism in the black community toward the police is a principal factor in why so few black men want to become police officers,” he said.

    Departments have been making gradual progress in reducing racial disparity in the force. An analysis by the Associated Press following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, found that racial diversity was improving, with the gap between black police officers and the communities where they serve narrowing over the last few decades.

    The analysis, based on census data and 2007 federal figures, found that 23% of New York’s population is black compared with 16% of the NYPD.

    The city last year announced that police officers would stop arresting people in possession of small amounts of marijuana, which Bratton said he welcomed as it would divert more resources to reducing violent crime. The move was expected to curb tens of thousands of low-level arrests for pot possession, which the mayor said affected young people’s chances of getting a job, good housing or even a student loan.

    Black defendants were 15% more likely than white defendants to be imprisoned for misdemeanor offenses and drug offenses, and 14% more likely than their white counterparts to be imprisoned for felony drug offenses, according to a July 2014 study, published by the Vera Institute of Justice of prosecutions handled by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

    Overall, black defendants were 5% more likely to be sentenced to time in prison than white defendants facing a similar charge, the study found.

    Black and white witnesses agree: McKinney pool party fight started when white mother slapped a black teen. Wait… she slapped a black teen? And…

    Now, two of the most important witnesses in this case have come forward to clear the air.

    Tatiana Rose, who hosted the community pool party with her siblings, says that the weekend confrontation was sparked by angry white neighbors. Rose, who is 19, took to YouTube to tell her side of the story.

    Rose says the cookout at the Craig Ranch housing community was a public event she and her sisters held for their young friends from the neighborhood. Unfortunately, a group of white neighbors from Craig Ranch began cursing at the party attendees, telling them to “return to their Section 8 housing” and hurling racial slurs at the children.

    The leader of the angry group, identified as a mother named Kate, began cursing at Roses’s young white friend, presumably for associating with black people. “So then they started verbally abusing her, saying that she needs to do better for herself, cursing at her, and I’m saying, no that’s wrong; she’s 14, you should not say things like that to a 14-year-old,” said Rose.

    Rose says that’s when Kate walked up to her and smacked her in the face. […]

    While the adults may be debating what happened last weekend, the children in attendance seem to be on the same page, regardless of race.

    Parents, activists, and local pastors showed up at McKinney PD Headquarters Monday, demanding that the officer be thrown off the force. He remains on administrative leave.

    See, that’s what I find encouraging – the children are all on the same page, and it’s the adults maintaining some kind of division. So maybe there’s some small hope yet.
    Several videos at that link, by the way.

    Didn’t the McKinney, Texas, police officer know he was being recorded? Would it be better if he’d acted the same way but there was no evidecne of it? Or if he was a sleeper-racist in the force and nobody knew about it except through vague complaints that somehow never get dealt with?

    Social-science research and folk wisdom agree that being watched can also change behavior. When people know they’re being recorded, they tend to clean up their acts, steal less, act nicer.

    For police, whose own departments increasingly record their every move, “cameras have a natural tempering effect,” said Greg Seidel, who spent 25 years with the Petersburg Police Bureau in Virginia and now trains police on tactics and ethics. “Knowing that everything you say and do can be up for public inspection will make everybody more cautious.”

    Yet YouTube is chockablock with recordings of video-monitored workers doing the wrong thing — in fast-food places, factories and nursing homes as well as patrol cars. Few would argue that Cpl. Eric Casebolt of the McKinney police was particularly tempered or cautious in his response to a call about disruptive teens in the suburb 40 miles north of Dallas.

    Casebolt, a 10-year veteran who once received a Patrolman of the Year award and now has been placed on administrative leave from his job, is seen in the video repeatedly cursing at teenagers, pulling the hair of the girl he threw to the ground, and cuffing teens who calmly protested that they’d just arrived to attend the party.

    At least two teens within a few feet of Casebolt held up smartphones as he threw the girl to the sidewalk. Brandon Brooks, a teen whose video of the incident had more than 7.2 million views on YouTube by Monday evening, felt compelled to post the footage because, he wrote, “this kind of force is uncalled for especially on children and innocent bystanders.”

    Brooks, who is white, told BuzzFeed that the officer “didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.” Some police experts said Casebolt may not have noticed he was being recorded.

    “You can get in that place — I’ve been there — where you just don’t see the cameras, where you have tunnel vision,” said Jim Bueermann, a former officer and police chief who is now president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit group that seeks to improve policing. “If you believe you’re in danger, the adrenaline, the stress of the moment take control. And then your actions will be on the Web and starting down that viral path before you can even tell your sergeant what happened.” […]

    Videos that go viral are by definition aberrations; they represent not the usual interactions between police and citizens but the unexpected, sometimes unacceptable moments. Yet many police departments do nothing to prepare officers for being recorded. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said its 18,000 employees receive no training on what to do when citizens pull out their smartphones.

    In Baltimore, Lt. Victor Gearhart, a shift commander in the city’s southern police district, reminds officers every day that residents have the right to aim a camera at them.

    “I tell the officer, ‘You have to stay in control at all times,’ ” said Gearhart, a 33-year veteran. Yet Gearhart said he is under no illusion that even good policing would make for comforting video. “There’s no way to make violence look pretty,” he said.

    For example, most people don’t realize how hard it is to handcuff a person who doesn’t want to be handcuffed. At the police academy, he said, an instructor told two of the largest cadets to handcuff the smallest. They failed. “If we really wanted to cuff him,” Gearhart said, “we were going to have to really hurt him.”

    When police faced off against demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesters responded to the harsh tactics of city police by chanting, “The whole world is watching!” In those pre-digital days, “watching” meant network TV news cameras relaying scenes of bloodied antiwar protesters to a shocked national audience.

    Now, no chants are needed. Videos of wayward police behavior are common enough and have had such a corrosive effect on public opinion that officer morale is sinking, police leaders said.

    “Some cops are going to decide, ‘It’s just not worth it — I’m going to do something else,’ ” Bueermann said. For now, he said, the way to repair morale is to “set up community advisory groups and teach them what officers really go through. Police departments have to open up and let the community see that we have to do this together.” […]

    But even good officers — like people in any line of work — can look bad when details of their workday are isolated in a video clip. Reporters’ reputations are hardly enhanced by viewers’ ability to watch the bedlam and aggression of many news conferences. Few surgeons would want the public to witness the harsh banter common in operating rooms. And many teachers would quickly bleach the humor out of their classrooms if video of the proceedings were fed to anxious parents.

    “Very few officer-citizen contacts involve the delivery of good news,” said Seidel, the police trainer. “You’re usually asking people to do something they don’t want to do.”

    Video doesn’t guarantee that officers will make the right decision, but it is the best enhancement of training to come along in years, Seidel said. He said he is “jealous of all the officers entering the force now, because they’ll be able to review their entire body of work and learn how to deal with dynamic situations.”

    But learning those lessons, Seidel added, can be hard.

    “Emotional maturity is the most important thing an officer can have, yet being good with people who are emotionally upset is difficult to measure,” he said. “It’s not like counting push-ups or timing a distance run.”

    Please learn to control your emotions, police officers. Better yet, learn how to not be racist shits even when under pressure.

    Missouri whiffed on a ‘Ferguson agenda,’ other states stepped up to the plate, so now they can’t be trailblazers anymore.

    After the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray at the hands of police officers spurred demands for public policy changes, some state legislatures answered the call. Legislatures of all political stripes passed bills aimed at strengthening police accountability.

    “Most of the comments and actions I’ve seen from legislators have been really balanced and focused,” said Rich Williams, who follows criminal justice issues for the National Conference on State Legislatures.

    But one state where dozens of law enforcement-related bills foundered was Missouri, where Brown’s death sparked international protests and press coverage. While lawmakers here passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s municipal courts system, many other bills inspired by the unrest got lost in the shuffle.

    The inability to pass seemingly straightforward measures like changing the state’s use of force law left lawmakers and activists frustrated and angry.

    “It didn’t happen in their backyard, so it didn’t matter to them,” said Rasheen Aldridge, an activist and member of the Ferguson Commission. “But it’s sad that other states – it didn’t happen in their backyard like it happened here in Ferguson. But they actually took action and wanted to make change.”

    More at the link, incl. on which states have done better in their legislation, and the frustration experienced in Missouri.

    Clergy from Ferguson/STL are at the Vatican this week. The Pope requested them. Yesterday @pastortraci was asked about #McKinney. Global.

    Cleveland police union head blasts group’s plan to seek charges in Tamir Rice shooting. Can police unions just not be a thing anymore? Not in this manifestation, at least? A union, yes, but… not this horrible truth-denying, aggressive, partisan machine.

    The head of the police union that represents Cleveland police blasted community leaders’ plans to bypass prosecutors and seek arrest warrants for the officers involved in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

    Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association called the move a dangerous and selfish attempt to “hijack rule of law.”

    “It is very sad how miserable the lives of these self appointed activists, civil rights leaders, and clergy must be,” Loomis said. “I can’t imagine being so very consumed with anger and hatred.” […]

    While officials remained uncertain how the rarely invoked legal move would proceed, Loomis said it could set a dangerous precedent that could compromise the integrity of the judicial system.

    “Trying to coerce public officials into filing a criminal charge under direct or indirect threat of mob rule is a very dangerous game,” he said.

    Loehmann and Garmback responded to a 911 call from a man who said that he saw someone pointing a gun at people. The dispatcher did not tell Loehmann and Garmback that the caller said the gun could be fake.

    As Garmback drove his police cruiser beside a gazebo where Tamir was sitting, surveillance video shows the boy stand up and slowly walk toward the car. Loomis said that Tamir reached for his waistband as Loehmann jumped from the car. The officer shot the boy within seconds.

    Tamir’s gun turned out to be airsoft-style pellet gun.

    Loomis said Tuesday’s filings will not change the facts of the investigation, and said he didn’t expect the move to be the group’s last.

    “This mob mentality of ‘you must charge or else’ will quickly turn in to ‘you must convict or else,'” Loomis said.

    I hate that talk of dangerous precedents and compromising the integrity of the judicial system… Especially since the integrity of the judicial system is being compromised by police officers (or at least, the aspects of the system that let them off with no consequences for violence unnecessary) – though I do think some precedents should be set. Perhaps more officers would be deterred from committing violence, from pulling that weapon, into thinking twice before acting so aggressively.

    Pardon the run-on commentary, it’s that kind of evening.

  439. rq says

    BTW, parents from Craig Ranch told me tonight that MOST of the children there, LIVED in Craig Ranch. So #McKinney shows its true racism.
    Hoping white adults are taking note of the #WhiteFolkWork being done by CHILDREN in #McKinney. #BlackLivesMatter

    The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams “reports” from McKinney, Texas, in a bikini and body armor

    “This week’s incident has taught black people here something valuable,” Williams said. “When you go to a pool party, even in your own neighborhood that you live in, you have to know pool etiquette, which is no running, no splashing, no talking back, and, if at all possible, get your ass even further to the ground than it already is.”

    She added, “But either way, this incident is progress … It’s progress because a cop pulled a gun on a group of black kids, and nobody is dead.”

    Sad, but… true?

    RT @MaxDPD: The @DallasPD is currently investigating a death in custody. #HappeningNow

    Bronx man shocked with Taser by cops, dies: sources

    A 51-year-old Bronx man armed with scissors and possibly high on drugs died shortly after police used a Taser on him Monday morning, police sources said.

    The incident unfolded about 8:15 a.m. when police responded to a 911 call from a woman who had apparently locked herself in a room with a child in a shelter on Loring Place.

    The caller said she was fearful because her boyfriend, Mario Ocasio, was high on drugs, possibly synthetic marijuana, and acting violently, sources said.

    The superintendent of the building also called 911 about the boyfriend, an ex-con who had served nearly two decades behind bars for the attempted murder of a police officer.

    When police arrived, officers spotted Ocasio holding scissors and ordered him to drop them.

    “He had the scissors in his hand,” a police official said. “He refused police officers’ orders to drop the weapon.”

    After about a half-hour a patrol supervisor zapped Ocasio with a Taser and he dropped the scissors.

    Police then handcuffed him and an EMS ambulance crew injected him with a sedative, Versad, and with Narcon, which is typically used to reverse the effects of heroin, sources said. Ocasio has a history of heroin use, sources said.

    As the suspect was being loaded into the ambulance, he went into cardiac arrest. At the request of EMS, cops removed the man’s handcuffs.

    EMS then took Ocasio to North Central Bronx Hospital, where he died about 9:50 a.m. No police officers were in the ambulance during the ride to the hospital.

    Can tasers not be called ‘less lethal’ methods, now?

    Here are the people in Cleveland who are asking for arrests warrants on the 2 Police Officers. #TamirRice

  440. rq says

    Who Gets To Hang Out At The Pool? – Hey, it’s summer. I presume this will be a subject for the summer and the heat. Among others, of course.

    Jeff Wiltse, the author of the book Contested Waters, told NPR in 2007 that the early 20th century saw a boom in public swimming pools, which were originally intended for bathing and hygiene. These new municipal pools were enormously popular, but they were separated by gender over fears of sexual impropriety. And like so many other public resources, these new pools were concentrated in white neighborhoods.

    This story brings up a decades-old American drama around race and swimming pools.

    “There has always been fear, in terms of using swimming pools, about being exposed to the dirt and the disease of other swimmers,” Wiltse said. “And back during the 1920s and 1930s, and … continuing on even further up from there, there were racist assumptions that black Americans were dirtier than whites, that they were more likely to be infected by communicable diseases.” (There’s a famous story about the time Sammy Davis Jr. swam in a whites-only pool in Las Vegas, prompting the manager to immediately drain it afterward.)

    But those big public pools eventually became mixed-gender pools, unleashing even deeper-seated fears about what might happen if black men and white women went swimming together. “Whites in many cases literally beat blacks out of the water at gender-integrated pools because they would not permit black men to interact with white women at such intimate public spaces,” Wiltse writes. “Thus, municipal pools in the North continued to be intensely contested after 1920, but the lines of social division shifted from class and gender to race.”

    Campaigns by civil rights groups like the NAACP to integrate public pools often turned very, very ugly. “Groups for and against segregation threw rocks and tomatoes at one another, swung bats and fists, and even stabbed and shot at each other,” Wiltse wrote.

    Even after Brown v. Board of Education ostensibly desegregated America’s schools in 1955, a federal judge sided with Baltimore’s pro-segregation argument that pools “were more sensitive than schools.” (That decision was later overturned.)

    But what happened in Baltimore next was instructive for what would happen more broadly throughout the country: White folks stopped using public swimming facilities altogether, instead opting to join private swimming clubs or for pools in their backyards. As The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum writes, the popularity of private pools and members-only pool clubs exploded in the postwar years:

    “Before 1950, Americans went swimming as often as they went to the movies, but they did so in public pools. There were relatively few club pools, and private pools were markers of extraordinary wealth. Over the next half-century, though, the number of private in-ground pools increased from roughly 2,500 to more than four million. The declining cost of pool construction, improved technology, and suburbanization all played important roles. But then, so did desegregation.”

    Appelbaum points to Marshall, Texas, where 95 percent of local residents voted in 1957 to have the city sell off its recreational facilities; the pool’s new private owners reopened it as a whites-only space.

    It was during one of these fights that the famous photograph at the top of this post was taken. It shows James Brock, a motel manager in St. Augustine, Fla., pouring muriatic acid into a pool filled with black kids who were participating in a protest against whites-only pools. J.T. Johnson and Al Lingo, two of those protesters, talked with StoryCorps last year about that moment.

    ” ‘Everybody was kind of caught off guard,’ J.T. says.

    ” ‘The girls, they were most frightened, and we moved to the center of the pool,’ Al says.

    ” ‘I tried to calm the gang down. I knew that there was too much water for that acid to do anything,’ J.T. says. ‘When they drug us out in bathing suits and they carried us out to the jail, they wouldn’t feed me because they said I didn’t have on any clothes. I said, “Well, that’s the way you locked me up!” ‘ “

    Wiltse theorized that the disproportionate number of black Americans who can’t swim and are more likely to drown is in part due to this historical lack of access to regular places to swim. Once white folks fled to the suburbs and built their own pools, he explains, public pools fell into disrepair and began closing. “As a result of that pattern of discrimination, swimming did not really become a significant part of … black culture,” he told NPR’s Michel Martin back in 2007. Because swimming never took root in black communities, he said, fixing swimming pools was not much of a priority when black politicians began winning elective office in the 1960s and 1970s.

    So it’s definitely a historical issue.

    JUST IN: Protests in #McKinney gain strength as people of all colors march against police brutality.

    I want to share these tweets by @FeministaJones re: #McKinney pt.1
    I want to share these tweets by @FeministaJones re: #McKinney pt.2
    Please read the images attached at both of those, it adds a much-needed feminist perspective to the racial issues – most significantly, there’s the idea that white feminists are too silent on the issue that a black girl was assaulted by an officer.

    Jon Stewart Blasts ‘A**hole’ Texas Officer For Pool Party Gone Bad

    The approach of summer means it’s time for pool parties, but as Jon Stewart noted on Monday night’s “Daily Show,” not every pool party means sun and fun.

    During a pool party in McKinney, Texas, a cop pulled a gun, then handcuffed and arrested a group of teenagers. The incident resulted in the cop being placed on leave while authorities investigate his actions.

    At one point, Cpl. Eric Casebolt tells a girl who is sitting on the ground to “get your ass on the ground.”

    “He’s telling her to get her ass on the ground, and I believe it is literally on the ground,” Stewart said. “Not only is he being an asshole, he’s redundant.”

    For some perspective, Stewart turned to “Senior Texas Aquatics Correspondent” Jessica Williams, who noted that the whole incident really represents progress.

    “A cop pulled a gun on a group of black kids and nobody is dead,” Williams said.

    Check out Stewart’s take on the pool party incident in the clip above… and see his conversation with Williams below.

    Why We Are At The Vatican

    This week, we join a delegation of PICO National Network clergy and lay leaders who will engage in a week of discussion and reflection with key Vatican leaders and advisors of Pope Francis. Without a doubt, this global religious leader has made a universal impact on the moral conscience of nations across the world. His honest words sit at the moral centers of humanity urging us all to care for and embrace the poor and marginalized around us.

    Through a friendship and ministerial partnership, forged in the crucible of the Ferguson uprising, we have traveled to many communities, joining a chorus of clergy leaders and faith-based networks, prophetically calling the systems of racial oppression to account. We are taking that same message we’ve spread in the United States to leaders at the Vatican. The voices leading the Black Lives Matter movement that call out to us from the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Miami, Detroit and New Orleans is calling out to the largest religious institution in the world for a response.

    We are going to invite the Holy Father, head of the largest Christian denomination to join us in this holy endeavor: Affirming the dignity and image of God for vulnerable and marginalized people of color who are experiencing the effects of sinful principalities and powers through the evils of mass incarceration and state sponsored violence.

    This week we are carrying with us the stories of wailing mothers, angry youth, terrorized fathers, exploited women, marginalized families and vulnerable communities. We are naming the sins of racial oppression made concrete through economic exploitation. We want to make visible the impact looting has in our neighborhoods by global financial institutions. We want to elevate the searing of our souls and minds through psychological and physical violence at the hands of political leaders and law enforcement. We want to welcome Pope Francis’ voice into the clarion call, affirming black, brown and all the lives of the marginalized matter, by calling us all to see in one another’s faces, our shared reflection of the Divine. We want to strengthen the public resolve and voice of the Roman Catholic Church to stand boldly and united against the forces of institutionalized oppression and systemic racism which effaces the Image of God in all of us.

    Our delegation comes from many Christian denominations: Catholic, Pentecostal, UCC, Baptist, Methodist, and non-denominational. We are male and female. We are black, white and brown. We stand in a long tradition of prophetic preaching, organizing and justice ministry. This tradition has helped to inform one of the many theological influences of many Catholics known as liberation theology. This idea that Jesus is the ultimate and greatest liberator is not a tangential dogma for us. Nor is it a peripheral practice of Christian faith. We believe the work of justice is the result of faithful discipleship after the ways of Jesus.

    If it brings more international awareness, more power to them. But I wouldn’t rely on the church for too much – unless, of course, it’s something heavily PR-positive and (most likely) short-term.

  441. rq says

    Watts Uprising, August 1965 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lafdhs/sets/72157626384666764/with/7803435764/ … , with photos.

    Police Criminals and the Brutalization of Black Girls – yep, that’s Sikivu Hutchinson!

    The videotaped assault and sexual harassment of 15 year-old Dajerria Becton by a rampaging white police officer after a pool party in McKinney, Texas makes it clear that it continues to be open season on black women and girls. In the video officer Eric Casebolt grabs, straddles and violently restrains Becton while she is lying face down on the ground in a bikini. Ignoring her cries of pain and anxiety, he sadistically sits on her back while handcuffing her. Casebolt then pulls a gun on a few young people who attempt to intervene. Some of the good white citizens of McKinney have reportedly praised Casebolt’s thuggery.

    The assault of Becton is an enraging reminder of the particular brand of sexual terrorism black women routinely experienced in the Jim Crow South at the hands of white law enforcement and ordinary white citizens. In her important book, At the Dark End of the Street, Danielle McGuire chronicles how institutionalized sexual violence informed black women’s civil and human rights resistance. Even as they were eclipsed in the mainstream civil rights movement by charismatic black male leaders, black women activists like Ida B. Wells, Recy Taylor, Claudette Colvin and Endesha Mae Holland drew on their experiences with sexual terrorism to galvanize black women organizers around the nexus of gender, race and class apartheid.

    The McKinney incident underscores how even within the context of “recreation,” “normative” gender boundaries that automatically “feminize” young white women do not exist for young black women. Little black girls can never occupy the space of carefree, feminine innocence that little white girls expect as their birthright. They can never rely on the damsel in distress image to “rescue” them from American-as-apple pie state violence. According to the African American Policy Forum, black girls are suspended six times more than white girls and routinely vilified as aggressive menaces in school classrooms. It goes without saying that a black male police officer captured on video brutalizing and sitting on a bikini-clad teenage white girl would have been lynched before he returned to his precinct. It is tacitly understood that the scantily clad bodies of teenage white girls are sacrosanct cultural commodities; publicly off limits to law enforcement, privately available for the consumption of white heterosexist patriarchy. Within the public domain these are the bodies that must be protected at all costs—from potential violation by predator white men and from the imagined, ever present “threat” of violent encroachment by men of color.

    Socialized to see black women as chattel, thuggish police officers play on misogynist white supremacist stereotypes to justify their criminality under the color of law. After months of community agitation, last summer’s heinous videotaped beating of Marlene Pinnock, a middle age African American homeless woman, by a white California Highway Patrol officer led to his firing. Nonetheless L.A.’s black female district attorney has not seen fit to file criminal charges against him. And the recent conviction of white female LAPD officer Mary O’Callaghan for assault—rather than involuntary manslaughter—in the death of 35 year-old Alesia Thomas is an anemic substitute for justice.

    The McKinney police thug has been suspended from duty but there should be a national push for prosecution. As with police beatings and murders of men of color, there is no special dispensation for black women victims of state violence, no “weaker sex” clause that mitigates the brutalization of black women’s bodies as hypersexualized policed space. For black girls in the hallowed idyllic spaces that enshrine the privileges of white youth, summer is always over.

    Yes.

    Yearbook Recalled For Referring To Minority Students As ‘Trash Collators Of Tomorrow’

    A high school yearbook is being recalled after school administrators realized a a racist prank was printed.

    Berkeley High School administrators recalled the 2015 yearbook last week because of a passage referring to students in a predominately black and Latino college prep program as “trash collators of tomorrow.” The Northern California school’s Black Student Union tweeted an image of the text and objected to stereotyping minorities as blue-collar workers.

    The text was supposed to read “innovators of tomorrow,” principal Kristin Glenchur said in an email apologizing to the student body, according to the Daily Californian. Yearbook distribution was halted. Copies that are returned will be given back to students with a sticker covering the offensive text.

    The yearbook passage is littered with editing mistakes, so it’s unclear how closely school administrators reviewed it before publication. Glenchur did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.

    Students in the college prep program, Academy of Medicine and Public Service, or AMPS, explained in a statement to BuzzFeed News why they took offense.

    “We hear outsiders ask, ‘What’s wrong with being a trash collector, it’s an honest job,'” the statement read. “The occupation was not offensive, but naming it in connection with AMPS was a malicious attempt to attack students who fight so hard to prove themselves. And this act is consistent reminder that no matter how much we achieve, we will still be reminded of the color of our skin.”

    Get this. Police arrested Larry Lomax FOR ASSAULT and jailed him for 22 days. They just dropped the assault charge.

    Motel manager pouring acid in the water when black people swam in his pool, 1964. There’s that photo again. Almost exactly its aniversary, in fact.

    This famous photograph by Horace Cort shows a group of white and black integrationists in the former Monson Motor Lodge swimming pool on June 18, 1964. The photo was connected to the St. Augustine Movement, named for the town in Florida where it took place. Lots of peaceful protests and demonstrations were responded to with violence, which lead to more and more complicated protests.

    On June 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr was arrested for trespassing at the Monson Motor Lodge after being asked to leave from its segregated restaurant. This (and other things) helped spurn on a group of protesters, black and white, to jump into the pool as a strategically planned event to end segregation at motel pools. The pool at this motel was designated “white only.” Whites who paid for motel rooms invited blacks to join them in the motel pool as their guests. This swim-in was planned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and two associates. The motel manager, Jimmy Brock, in an effort to break up the party, poured a bottle of muriatic acid into the pool, hoping the swimmers would become scared and leave. One swimmer, who knew that the ratio of acid to pool water was so great that the acid was no longer a threat, drank some of the pool water to calm the other swimmers’ fears.

    Muriatic acid is undiluted hydrochloric acid and is used in the cleaning of masonry surfaces such as pools. But what people heard was the word “acid.” It did not scare the swimmers, though it seems like it was effective in making the protesters at least nervous — the amount of acid to the amount of water being so small it was mostly safe—and so a cop jumped in to arrest people.

    Many people from that time remember Brock as more the victim in the incident. One moment of temper led to an unwanted legacy. “Jimmy kind of caught the brunt of it. He was a nice guy.” said Eddy Mussallem, a fellow hotelier and longtime friend. “They had to pick a motel, so they picked Jimmy’s motel. I always told him he did a foolish thing.” Brock found himself pressured by civil rights groups and militant whites fighting integration. On 2007, aged 85, Jimmy Brock died at his St. Augustine home.

    The motel and pool were demolished in March 2003, despite five years of protests, thus eliminating one of the nation’s important landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement. A Hilton Hotel was built on the site.

    Notice who gets to be the Real Victim here, again?

  442. rq says

    How deep does this rabbit-hole go? Ga. Woman Charged with Murder, Held Without Bond after Taking Abortion Pill

    A Georgia woman is facing a murder charge after prematurely delivering a five-month fetus after she took an abortion pill, WALB reports.

    Kenlissa Jones has been charged with malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug, and is currently being held at the Dougherty County Jail, without a bond, the news station reports.

    According to WALB, over the weekend, the 23-year-old took an “abortion pill” – Cytotec – that she purchased online from a source in Canada and delivered her fetus in the car en route to the hospital

    Her family was reportedly shocked, not having known that the mother, who has a child under two years of age, was pregnant.

    “At that point we didn’t even know she was pregnant,” her brother Rico Riggins told the news station. “And so my first real reaction was like, why she keeping it away from us.”

    “Once she took those pills, from the way I’m understanding it, she was in a world of hurt for a while,” Riggins said.

    The child, reportedly a boy, was delivered alive, but died half-an-hour after arriving at the hospital, according to the news report.

    “We lost what would have been a nephew for me. And everything. And then my sister,” the brother said, saying that Jones’ mother and grandmother are also grieving. We’re coping the best we can. We’re hoping we get a lot of prayers…I don’t want anyone to be mad or upset with my family. At the end of the day they are doing the best we can.”

    Riggins and his wife have reportedly been granted guardianship of Jones’ son while her case is ongoing.

    The news station notes that Georgia law does not permit abortions after the first trimester unless it is performed in a licensed medical facility.

    I can only wonder at how alone she felt to have taken that pill so far along. What else she was going through. Whether it was truly a free choice or something she felt necessary… And now, charged with murder.
    But fucking cops who kill a 12-year-old child on site can’t be charged – or at least, it takes ages and ages for anything to happen. Etc.

    NOW Demands Answers and Action in McKinney, Texas

    We can only look with revulsion on the images from McKinney, Tex., of a white police officer pushing a 15-year old Black girl in a bathing suit face-down on the ground and placing a knee on her back. Today, we are shocked, angered, and deeply worried for the well being of this young woman. Tomorrow, we need answers, and action.

    If the girl had been white, would she have received the same treatment from the white police officers on the scene?

    Would the white police officer involved have even considered pulling a white teenage girl by the hair while screaming “ON YOUR FACE!” and then sitting on top of her while she cries, “call my mother”?

    Would the white police officers have responded to a similar incident involving unarmed white teenagers at a community pool by an outrageous use of violence and intimidation: brandishing weapons, placing the teens in handcuffs, and verbally and physically abusing them?

    Placing the officer on administrative leave is an insufficient response, particularly in light of the fact that this police department has a history of racial tension. NOW calls for the immediate firing of the police officer who committed the abuse, and immediate leave without pay for the officers who abetted him. In addition, NOW calls on the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately launch a full-scale investigation into the conduct of the McKinney, Texas police department. We can no longer tolerate the racial injustice that seems to have become a hallmark of too many police departments across our nation. Black girls’ lives matter.

  444. carlie says

    “It is very sad how miserable the lives of these self appointed activists, civil rights leaders, and clergy must be,”

    (From the head of the Cleveland police union at 438)

    Yes. One’s life does tend to be miserable when your child can be gunned down by a cop for no reason, and not only is there is no justice for it, but people in power actively call you terrible for desiring it.

  446. rq says

    Casebolt resigning means he’s pretty much free to go and be a cop somewhere else, it’s not a mark on his record or anything like that.
    Absolutely disgusting.
    Now if they charge him, he’ll just be all ‘Yeah but that was when I was a cop and I’m not right now anymore so really I’m different’ and then that will be taken into account and voila no charges and no conviction and then he’ll join another PD and… it goes on.

  447. says

    The discussion of public swimming pools (and the lack thereof) is a classic example of the way that America’s infrastructure in general has been chronically hamstrung by racism. From public pools to public transit to public healthcare, the reason the U.S. doesn’t have it pretty much boils down to racism, because apparently a huge portion of white America would rather live in squalor themselves than see a single dime go to anything that might, in any way, benefit a black person.

    Tony! 408

    White people are twice as able to afford food as their black and hispanic peers, poll shows.

    And that article doesn’t even mention actual food availability. Food deserts
    are also disproportionately concentrated in less white neighborhoods.
    From the WaPo Article rq posted @438

    “You can get in that place — I’ve been there — where you just don’t see the cameras, where you have tunnel vision,” said Jim Bueermann, a former officer and police chief who is now president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit group that seeks to improve policing. “If you believe you’re in danger, the adrenaline, the stress of the moment take control.

    Because, of course, it’s totally fucking reasonable for a burly, armed military veteran to be utterly terrified of a teenager in swimwear, to the point that he loses control of his actions. Nothing at all questionable there.

  448. rq says

    Once again: police work is NOT getting more dangerous

    We’re continuing to see stories alleging that police work is getting increasingly dangerous. I suspect we’ll see even more of this as the search for accused Pennsylvania cop killer Eric Frein continues, and then again as the year winds down. December usually brings a slew of stories about police officers killed over the last 12 months, and this year, unfortunately, we’ll see an increase in that figure over last year.

    But as I’ve written at length (and generally in vain), it’s important to include context when reporting these figures. Policing has been getting safer for 20 years. In terms of raw number of deaths, 2013 was the safest year for cops since World War II. If we look at the rate of deaths, 2013 was the safest year for police in well over a century. At the current pace, we can expect to see a 17 percent increase in on the job law enforcement fatalities this year over last year. That would put the total number of police officers who die on the job this year at 117, making 2014 the second safest year for cops in terms of raw fatalities since 1959. It would also put 2014 as the safest year for fatality rates in over a century. You’re more likely to be murdered simply by living in about half of the largest cities in America than you are while working as a police officer.

    Over at the Freeman, Daniel Bier has put together a couple graphs to illustrate all of this, using data from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the FBI, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

    So why is policing getting safer? The drop in police fatalities is a trend that mirrors the more general fall in violent crime across the country over the same period. It seems likely that whatever caused one trend also caused the other, and criminologists are still arguing over what caused the crime drop. This is usually the part where advocates for more aggressive, militarized policing argue that what they advocate must be working. But that seems unlikely. Surveys have shown that 65 to 80 percent of SWAT raids are to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes. And drug crimes are the one class of crimes that haven’t dropped dramatically since the mid-1990s. Some have argued that better body armor for cops had something to do with it. There does seem to be some evidence for that. On the one hand, assaults on police officers are dropping too. (See Bier’s graph on that here.) So it isn’t just that cops and their gear are doing a better job deflecting attacks, it’s that fewer people are attacking cops in the first place. On the other hand, the drop in assaults isn’t nearly as steep as the drop in fatalities. So it seems safe to say that while attacks on cops are in decline, something seems to be protecting more cops from death and injury when assaults do happen. Body armor seems like a likely candidate.

    Generally, though we’re just becoming a less violent society, though we also seem to have hard time accepting it. The point here is not to diminish the deaths of those officers who have been killed on the job. But some media outlets, police leaders, and law enforcement organizations continue to push the false narrative that policing is getting more dangerous, that cops are working in the equivalent of war zones, and so on. As I pointed out a couple of posts earlier this week, this almost certainly affects how police officers approach their jobs, and the way they interact with people day to day. A police officer who understands that his job is relatively safe and that America is getting safer is less likely to see threats were none exist, or to turn to lethal force when it isn’t merited. A cop who is constantly told that his job is dangerous and that every interaction with a citizen could be his last will naturally be more likely to reach for his weapon when it isn’t necessary.

    These figures also affect public policy debates on issues like police militarization, police cameras, citizens recording cops, gun control, sentencing, drug laws, and a host of other criminal justice matters. These aren’t my positions, but it very well could be that we do need more police militarization, more gun control, longer prison sentences, and tougher drug laws. But we should be having those discussions based on reality-based understanding of the dangers of police work, not a narrative driven by fear and anecdotes.

    I understand it’s a slightly older article, but dangit it makes sense!

    Taye Diggs “Bringing a Little Chocolate” to Broadway

    As previously announced, actor Taye Diggs is returning to Broadway in the title role of Hedwig and the Angry Inch beginning July 22. He recently sat down with HuffPost Live to discuss race in the theatre and stepping into the iconic role of Hedwig, the transgender rockstar. Diggs’ casting represents a major step forward in colorblind casting in the theatre world, a trend that hopefully continues.

    LAPD dragged well-known activist Evan Bunch inside after his arrest sparked disruption at #EzellFord mtg

    McKinney officer resigns due to actions in pool party video, Fox picks up the story.

    Reminder that white supremacy tries to convince us that we don’t have the right be happy/successful from an early age – check. out. those. pictures. From school workbooks. Where ‘white’ is cast as positive/beautiful and ‘black (or dark)’ is cast as negative/ugly. Maybe they’re outdated. Someone please tell me so.

    #donttakeitdown SILENCING = DEATH. STOP SILENCING BLACK LIVES On censoring student art.

  449. rq says

    #DontTakeItDown, those artworks again.

    Oakland police identify man killed in officer involved shooting, the man oh-so-gently woken by the police before being shot to death.

    The Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County coroner’s office have identified the person killed in an officer involved shooting Saturday morning.

    That man has been identified as 30-year-old Demouria Hogg of Hayward.

    Around 7:27 a.m, the Oakland Police Department got a call from the city’s fire department about an unresponsive driver on the Lakeshore off ramp of the westbound Highway 580. The fire department told police communications that the driver may have had a firearm in his vehicle.

    Two uniformed officers responded to the scene and used a loud-speaker to try to communicate with the driver to have him safely surrender. Police said that the driver was not responsive.

    While continuing to give directions via the PA system, officers approached the vehicle and used a metal pipe to break the passenger side glass in an attempt to establish communication with the driver.

    At that time, officers were able to confirm that a firearm was inside the vehicle.

    Police said that after the side glass was broken, the driver responded. According to the Oakland Police Department, a confrontation occurred. During that, one of the officers deployed his taser, and the other discharged a firearm, hitting Hogg.

    Paramedics were waiting nearby. They took Hogg to the hospital, where he later died as a result of his injury.

    Someone broke his goddamn car window and they’re surprised a confrontation occurred. Fuck me.

    Here’s a good news! Mississippi District Won’t Pursue Charges Over Cheers at a High School Graduation. YAY!!! So sad this was a thing in the first place.

    Chastened by accusations of overreach and questions of racism, the Mississippi authorities have abandoned plans to prosecute three people who defied this city’s superintendent of schools and cheered during a high school graduation.

    The decision to drop the misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace, which carried potential jail terms of up to six months and fines of up to $500, came on Monday, one day before the defendants were to appear in Tate County Justice Court to answer for their conduct during the May 21 graduation for Senatobia High School.

    “Our purpose in filing the complaints was not to place a hardship of any kind on the individual who disrupted the ceremony, but to protect the rights of the class of 2015 and future S.H.S. graduating classes,” the schools superintendent, Jay Foster, said in a handwritten filing in one of the cases. “Therefore, at this time, we respectfully withdraw the complaint against this individual.”

    And so on Tuesday afternoon, just two shackled defendants appeared in court, one accused of drug offenses and another who pleaded guilty to drunken driving. The graduation episode was not mentioned in open court, and chatter about it was confined to the hallway.

    Mr. Foster initially chose to press charges after several people interrupted the ceremony, held on the campus of a local community college, despite his request for quiet. According to an affidavit, one woman was being prosecuted because she had been “yelling and clapping inside the building after an announcement had been made for all to hold their applause and celebrating until after the end of the ceremony.”

    Although Mr. Foster had wide support here for his decision, reaction beyond this northwest Mississippi community of about 8,000 people was swift and generally negative. Senatobia, less than an hour’s drive south of Memphis, was buffeted by criticism, especially online, for what many condemned as a draconian approach to keeping order.

    “Citizens should be able to enjoy the right of free speech, especially at a congratulatory event like a high school graduation,” Charles Irvin, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said last week. He called Mr. Foster’s decision “an unnecessary criminal response to these kinds of actions.”

    Some critics said Mr. Foster, who is white, had sought the charges because the two adult defendants are black, an accusation he rejected in interviews after the arrest warrants became public.

    Mr. Foster did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, and one of those who had been charged, Henry T. Walker, could not be reached. The clerk of court declined to identify another defendant, a juvenile.

    A lawyer for the third defendant, Ursula Miller, said he welcomed the decision to end the prosecution because “it was going to be very difficult for them to garner a conviction.”

    “You don’t yell fire in a crowded theater,” said the lawyer, Joseph D. Neyman Jr. “That said, you are entitled to clap.”

    Mr. Neyman said Ms. Miller could decide to sue the school district. She told a Memphis television station that Mr. Foster should have continued to pursue the charges.

    “You wanted a battle with me,” Ms. Miller said in an interview seen on the station, WHBQ-TV. “You said you were going to make an example out of me, so let’s do it.”

    Actually,… considering that attitude, I’m almost sad this isn’t going forward. :D But no, best for everyone.

    Ferguson hires interim city manager accused of misleading his previous city council. Much classy! So integrity!

    Ferguson has filled two high-profile vacancies created by an extremely critical Department of Justice report: city manager and municipal judge.

    At a meeting Tuesday, the City Council hired Ed Beasley as interim city manager and Donald McCullin, a former St. Louis City Circuit Court judge, as municipal court judge.

    Ed Beasley managed Glendale, Ariz., a town with a population of 226,000 residents northwest of Phoenix, from 2002 to 2012.

    He left a year before an external audit of the city was published that found Beasley and his employees had purposely misled the City Council about the soaring expenses associated with an early retirement program that was created to help solve a budget shortfall.

    The 2013 audit also faulted Beasley, 57, for payments to two high-level executives, stating that the payments were not in the “best interest” of the city. Beasley, the audit said, allowed a human resources director to work remotely after she moved to Mississippi, paying her a compensation package of $140,000.

    Beasley also allowed former Assistant City Manager Art Lynch to cash out of the early retirement program even though he had missed the deadline, the audit said. The day after the assistant city manager retired, Glendale hired him as a consultant, paying him $930,000 over a three-year period. Both those moves cost the city about $500,000, according the audit.

    “Ed Beasley has serious problems,” resident Nick Kasoff told the council. “I just believe that somebody who is tainted in such a serious way is the wrong person to lead the city of Ferguson.”

    Mayor James Knowles III said that the council was well aware of the audit, but he believed it was mostly politically motivated.

    “Anytime you go be a city manager in a community, we realize that there is going to be critics,” Knowles said. “Reviewing the events of what happened in Glendale, reviewing the issues related, reviewing what was really a very long and excellent career, we felt that Mr. Beasley was an excellent choice for the city.”

    After the meeting, Beasley posed with the City Council and briefly answered questions. “I know the audit is on some folks’ minds,” Beasley said. “That occurred after I had left the city. I have worked for 27 years in the profession, 17 years for the city, never had a bad review.”

    Beasley will be the fourth city manager of Ferguson, a city of about 21,000 residents, since March — when the Justice Department published a report that described a pattern of abuses by the city’s police department and municipal court.

    Well, he has a chance to do well. I hope he takes it.

    Part II: Bad cops bounce from city to city. Okay. Casebolt? In McKinney? He’ll be starting this song-and-dance.

    It is a two-step dance. First, a department lets a problem officer go without completing a formal investigation that might cost him his police certificate. Then another department, eager to find an already-trained recruit at a bargain wage, hires him without asking too many questions.

    Most often, a Post-Dispatch investigation discovered, these officers end up in the poorest and most crime-ridden communities.

    “There is a group that works their way up and a group that works their way down, ” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said. “And the ones working their way down, unfortunately, we tend to see in concentration at the same departments. That affects dramatically the level of service provided.”

    The muni shuffle is a symptom of a system that doesn’t always hold police officers to high standards. But not every officer in trouble has to do the shuffle. Some departments just give them chance after chance.

    On paper, Missouri’s system for flushing out bad cops is among the nation’s best. In practice, it’s bogged down.

    Illinois takes away police credentials from officers convicted of felonies or certain misdemeanors, or found to have lied on the witness stand in a murder trial. State officials do little to investigate misconduct. [….]

    Officials are broadly aware of the muni shuffle.

    “The less professional departments with problems tend to have a revolving door,” Normandy Police Chief John Connolly said.

    But the practice is impossible to quantify. Smaller departments hardly brag about taking on other agencies’ discards. Misconduct is seldom reported to the state. Department personnel records are not public.

    Post-Dispatch reporters documented at least a dozen examples of officers who repeatedly shifted among departments and at some point ended up in difficult circumstances that drew public attention. Most were accused of behavior the public would not expect from a profession generally held to higher standards.

    Among them are:

    • Craig T. Inman, who records show was fired from the Waterloo Police Department in 1999 for omitting more than a dozen traffic violations from his employment application. The omission came to light after Inman initiated two high-speed pursuits in two years that resulted in the deaths of four people. Inman is now an officer in Jennings.

    • James Fitzgibbon, who kept his job as a Pine Lawn detective after he was convicted in October of making harassing phone calls to a driver after a road rage incident in March. Since Fitzgibbon began his police career in 1986, he also has patrolled streets in Glendale, Country Club Hills, Jefferson County and Wellston. Fitzgibbon declined comment.

    • Marvin Shannon, who was charged with misdemeanor assault after police said he cut a student with a knife at Riverview Middle School, where he worked as a security guard. Shannon has worked at eight departments on both sides of the river despite a string of criminal charges and a felony conviction for failing to pay child support. His license is still valid, although he is no longer working in law enforcement.

    • Officer J.D. Patton, who was fired from two police agencies in Washington County, Ill., both times after fellow officers arrested him for various offenses, including DUI and fighting at a local bar. According to court records, Patton has misdemeanor convictions for the DUI and for providing alcohol to minors. He remains certified in Illinois and was recently given a temporary full-time police position in Washington Park.

    • Roy White, who, according to police records, shot and killed an unarmed man during a traffic stop in 1989 while he was working for the St. Louis police. The city fired him for violating policies, saying that he should have taken cover or called for backup. After his termination, he continued to work in law enforcement. He is now a part-time sergeant in Hillsdale.

    THE STATES’ ROLE

    Missouri’s policy for disciplining police is among the most progressive in the nation, experts say, because an officer doesn’t have to commit a crime to lose his license.

    Ideally, the Peace Officer Standards and Training program investigates reports of misdeeds and gets copies of completed disciplinary reports when a police department fires someone.

    In reality, the system relies on a single investigator to keep track of the state’s 17,000 officers. He has nearly 90 active cases at any given time.

    Missouri authorities say the state needs more money to support its net for catching problem cops. And police departments often stop short of finishing internal investigations when an officer quits or is fired, leaving nothing to report to the state.

    Charles Jackson, director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said any chief who blatantly avoids his duty to report problem officers can be disciplined, and even lose his police license. Neither has ever happened, Jackson said.

    He and other state officials say they need better cooperation from police departments and individual members.

    “I hope that other officers would have enough integrity and pride in what they do to want bad officers out,” he said. “There comes a point where you can’t keep silent. You have to step forward because it affects everyone.”

    While Missouri’s state overseers get overwhelmed, Illinois largely doesn’t bother. Cops lose their certification upon conviction of a felony or certain misdemeanors, leaving investigations of misconduct to individual departments.

    With about 38,000 full-time officers and 3,800 part-time officers, Illinois has booted 45 convicted officers in the past three years.

    Recently, Illinois lawmakers amended the law to allow for the decertification of police officers accused of lying in murder investigations, even if they aren’t convicted of perjury. State officials must support the allegation in a hearing before the Labor Relations Board.

    Criminal conviction “is too high a standard,” complained Terry Schramm, whose wife and daughter were killed in April 1999 when a 14-year-old driver fleeing Waterloo Officer Inman caused a head-on crash while trying to pass other drivers on Illinois Route 3. “It lets too many people slip through the cracks who have cost somebody their life or caused a personal injury. There’s a whole history here, and history repeats itself.” […]

    East St. Louis Officer Brett Rodgers got suspended eight times during his five years on the force.

    The city paid $550,000 to a man who lost an eye after Rodgers and another officer beat him during a traffic stop in 1996. But Rodgers stayed on the force until 1999, when he was arrested for shooting a security guard in the leg at an East St. Louis nightclub.

    Rodgers was off duty — and drunk — at the time. As a result, he was convicted the next year of aggravated battery with a firearm and armed violence and is now serving a sentence of eight years in prison.

    Anthony Nicholson, who had lost the eye, said he wasn’t surprised when he heard Rodgers had been arrested.

    “This guy never should have been on the force,” said Nicholson, 51, who moved to Belleville from East St. Louis. “He went around and Rambo’d and terrorized East St. Louis. They kept giving him warnings, but they didn’t do nothing about it.”

    The only good news about the McKinney pool party is the white kids’ response to racism

    In the story of the Texas pool party, where a police officer was caught on tape manhandling and pointing a gun at young black teenagers, there’s a lot to be concerned and outraged about. But there’s also one tiny thing to celebrate: the actions of two white kids.

    Just 14 and 15 years old, they wasted no time speaking on the record about the racist comments made by adults that they said set off the incident, and recording the discriminatory treatment they said they witnessed.

    Sadly, when it comes to public opinion about the event, it’s likely that these accounts have more weight coming from the white kids than from the black kids who have offered similar stories, but whom many media consumers might see as potential criminals and untrustworthy reporters of what happened.

    Their stories shaped the early media narrative of the event, and their sense of responsibility to memorialize what happened should be seen as an example. Many American adults could learn something from their brave decisions to acknowledge rather than avoid or explain away the injustice they saw, but also to make sure the rest of us understood. [..]

    Stone’s choice to speak about the racist comments she witnessed, and Brooks’s decision to post his recording and analysis on YouTube and give an interview about what he observed, represents an unusual commitment to honesty about racism and discrimination — topics many white adults don’t see through the same lens.

    For example, a November 2014 Pew poll revealed that nearly half of white Americans thought race got too much attention in the discussion surrounding 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. When asked about confidence in police to not use excessive force on suspects, 36 percent of white respondents expressed a great deal of confidence, compared with 18 percent of black respondents.

    And in October 2014, the Washington Post reported on an analysis of years of polling by Harvard University professor Michael I. Norton, who found that 56 percent of black people but only 16 percent of white people said they believed there was “a lot” of discrimination in America. White people were more likely than not to say they thought anti-white discrimination had become a bigger problem than bias against blacks.

    When you consider the well-documented social, economic, and political injustices against black people that have been committed both with and without the backing of the legal system, this looks like willful ignorance, and it can be infuriating. […]

    Outside of the context of American racism, what the kids did wouldn’t really be a big deal: they saw that other kids their age were being wronged, and they told the truth about what happened. But against the backdrop of a society in which many adults both perpetuate racism and go to great lengths to deny it, their reactions stood out.

    Brooks, who got out his phone to record the incident, even recognized and admitted that he was benefiting from his race by being able to loiter around without being antagonized or arrested. Meanwhile, Stone, 14, told a reporter about the racist comments that she said started the whole event, adding essential context to what had previously been characterized as just “a fight.”

    In this way, Stone and Brooks weren’t just standing up for the black kids at the pool; they were also, hopefully, setting an example — and maybe, if we’re really optimistic about their generation — predicting the future.

  450. rq says

    On essaie encore.
    Not everybody came to The Q for Game 3. There’s a “No Justice, No Peace” protest rally. Bless ’em.

    White House weighs in on Texas pool party controversy – it is now a controversy!

    The White House weighed in Tuesday on a controversial incident at a Texas community pool where a police officer pointed his gun at two black teens and wrestled a girl to the ground.

    White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the video showing officer Eric Casebolt pointing the gun and pushing a 14-year-old girl in a swimsuit to the ground has “a detrimental impact” on police-community relations.

    Earnest said putting Casebolt on leave during the investigation into the pool party incident was “the prudent thing” to do.

    Earnest said President Obama was aware of the news coverage of the incident and its aftermath.

    Police Chief says Casebolt resigned through his attorney and did not issue an apology. @NBCDFW I do take issue with that lack of an apology. Even a notpology at this stage would be something.

    Former St. Louis Circuit Court judge to become Ferguson municipal judge – it feels like they’re recycling all the same old people, too.

    The city council is expected to vote Tuesday night to appoint a former St. Louis Circuit Court judge as the city’s new municipal court judge.

    Donald McCullin, 74, told a reporter he was unavailable for an interview Tuesday, but acknowledged he would be attending the city council meeting in which he was to be considered for the position.

    Should he be selected, he may not be in the position for long, as Missouri law limits the age of municipal judges to 75. McCullin may have about 10 months on the job.

    The appointment follows the departure of Judge Ronald J. Brockmeyer, who resigned March 9 in the aftermath of a Department of Justice report that depicted his court as functioning mainly as a revenue generator for the city and the police department as a collection agency. Brockmeyer said then that he stepped down because his family had received death threats.

    The Missouri Supreme Court then appointed Judge Roy L. Richter of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, to oversee Ferguson’s court caseload. It’s unclear when McCullin will assume the duties of the city’s municipal court should he be appointed, as the ruling stated that the transfer of cases to Richter will continue “until further order.”

    The late Governor Mel Carnahan appointed McCullin as a circuit judge of the 22nd Judicial Circuit in September 1999. His primary duties were civil and criminal trials. McCullin retired in April 2011.

    He worked as director of compliance for Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. for the 11 years preceding his judgeship, according to a Post-Dispatch profile of him published in 1999. He ensured the company obeyed anti-discrimination laws and handled discrimination complaints.

    Before then, McCullin practiced law with Wayman Smith, a friend from his Soldan High School days.

    Black Lives Matter activists occupy sidewalk in front of L.A. mayor’s house

    Activists in Los Angeles calling for police reform are taking their demands close to home. They’ve camped out in front of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house for two nights now and say they have no plans on leaving until he addresses their demands.

    About a dozen demonstrators with the local chapter of Black Lives Matter gathered in front of the mayor’s home at 6 a.m. Sunday, days after the L.A. Times leaked reports that the Los Angeles Police Department and its watchdog group found two officers to be justified in killing Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old black man who lived in South Los Angeles, last summer.

    Ford was shot and killed just days after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. in August last year. It was a tense month already, but when reports surfaced that Ford had mental-health issues, there were protests. His autopsy report wasn’t released until December, raising even more suspicion in the community.

    “We believe in no more normal business as usual,” said Jasmine Richards, one of the organizers of the protest, in front of the mayor’s house.

    The Black Lives Matter demonstrators are calling on the mayor to fire LAPD chief Charlie Beck and to compensate families who have been “victimized” by the LAPD.

    An altar with Ford’s picture surrounded by candles was placed directly in front of the entrance to the mayor’s home. Photos of Ford are stapled on trees that lined the mayor’s residential block.

    The mayor’s mansion sits in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. The Windsor Square neighborhood, as it’s known to locals, is directly south of Hollywood. Neighbors are wealthy entertainment industry elites and business owners.

    The protesters say that’s exactly why they chose to protest in front of the mayor’s home.

    “We come to the mayor’s house where he’s comfortable,” said Richards, who founded the local Pasadena chapter of Black Lives Matter. She said making the mayor uncomfortable would ensure he’s aware of the groups demands.

    “They’re all these rich white people gawking at us like we’re ornaments on a tree,” said Richards.

    “They see all these black and brown faces and they get a little bit intimidated, they get a little bit antsy. The mayor went out of his way to go through the back [of his house], so that says our presence actually made him uncomfortable, that’s the point of this,” said Richards.

    The L.A. Times reported department investigators found evidence indicating Ford was shot after he fought for control of one officer’s gun.

    The Black Lives Matter protestors don’t buy that and question why Ford was approached in the first place. In a lawsuit against the department, Ford’s parents allege the two officers who stopped Ford were aware he faced mental-health issues.

    An LAPD spokesperson told Fusion the department would not comment on demands from Black Lives Matter until the official findings are announced at a meeting of the Police Commission, the mayor appointed board that oversees the LAPD, on Tuesday.

    The mayor says he’s confident the commission has acted fairly.

    “Trust and transparency are the foundation of the relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and people it serves,” Mayor Garcetti said in a statement sent to Fusion. “I have confidence that the Police Commission will conduct an impartial and fair-minded review of the investigations conducted by both the LAPD and the independent Inspector General.”

    Richards says she’s ready to camp out as long as she needs to.

    “One thing about Black Lives Matter is that we’re an organization where everything is in the air. We go with our feelings and our hearts, so depending on that judgement tomorrow, we gotta just wait and see,” said Richards.

    “Me personally, I’ll stay out here.”

    #Breaking: One officer acted within policy in #EzellFord shooting, the other did not, according to Police Commission. So… I guess everything’s alright, then?

  451. rq says

    Aww yiss. That just took about forever to go through.

    McKinney “Pool Party” police officer Eric Casebolt resigns after video of teen abuse goes viral, just BoingBoing on that.

    Police Commission decision on #EzellFord may be announced pretty soon. #LAPD command staff returning to meeting room.
    The LA protestors have been powerfully applying pressure to the Police Commission over the past week. They’re incredible.

    The Internal Affairs investigation has ended given that Casebolt is no longer an employee, notes the McKinney Police Chief. Yah, see… given that he was a supervisor, passing on his knowledge and attitudes, umm… I don’t think that’s how it should end.
    The McKinney Mayor also noted that there should be training for the community on “how to interact with officers,” too. Uh-huh.

    1. McKinney, Texas, Time Magazine’s #1 place to live in 2014. Going to take a dive, those ratings. Maybe.

  452. rq says

    McKinney Officer Resigns Amid Pool Party Investigation

    “As the chief of police, I want to say to our community that the actions of Casebolt, as seen on the video, of the disturbance at the community pool, are indefensible,” said Chief Greg Conley, during a news conference Tuesday afternoon. “Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support these actions. He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”

    As Casebolt and two officers first responded to the scene, teens were said to be running from the area as officers tried to gain control of the situation.

    “Our citizens called us to a fight in progress and a general disturbance at the community pool. We responded. I do not condone the actions of those individuals who violated the rules of the community, showed disrespect to the security person on scene and to the officers who responded,” Conley said. “However, we as a department are held to a high standard … as we do our jobs. I support the fine men and women of the McKinney Police Department, who day in and day out, do an outstanding job on behalf of all of our citizens.”

    Nine additional officers were called to the scene and Conley said the disruption was eventually brought under control.

    “I have 12 officers on the scene and 11 of them performed according to their training. They did an excellent job,” Conley said.

    Video showing the incident sparked national scrutiny of Casebolt’s actions; meanwhile, the officer was placed on administrative leave while the police department investigated.

    Casebolt resigned Tuesday, without issuing a statement or apology, Conley said. His resignation effectively ends the investigation by the McKinney Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division.

    I’d just like to turn your attention to the place where he says he had 12 officers on the scene. But I guess better safe than sorry, huh. As it were.

    “He was wearing a orange shirt – must be escaped from prison!” #SeanToon911 Not as funny as the conductor, but not bad.

    How do you spin #McKinney? 1. Defend the “majority” of #police. 2. Attack the credibility of #protesters. 3. Repeat. See photos.

    A story that should make one’s blood boil, that’s Mano Singham weighing in.

    Ferguson’s mayor addresses recall effort, interim city manager appointed

    An effort to recall Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III failed in Ferguson Tuesday in what still turned out to be a day that marked the biggest changes in Ferguson since the Mike Brown shooting in August.

    The first big change: a new municipal judge to re-establish trust in a city court system which, along with the Ferguson Police Department, was blasted by the U.S. Department of Justice for disproportionately slapping African-Americans with charges and fines for minor offenses.

    The city council passed a resolution naming Judge Donald McCullin to the post.

    McCullin is a former St. Louis City Circuit Court judge, appointed by former Governor Mel Carnahan.

    He said arrest warrants would be a last resort.

    “I know appearance in court is never a pleasant experience. But I can promise you that you will be treated fairly and you will be treated with respect,” he said.

    Citizens panels led the selection process and made a wise choice, Knowles III said.

    The city council also selected a new interim city manager to a 3-6 month term.

    Ed Beasley assumed the post after a successful 17 year run in Glendale, Arizona.

    He has since come under fire there. An audit has revealed financial irregularities during his tenure.

    He said he felt “called” to service in Ferguson; that everything he’d learned in 27 years total of as a city manager led him here.

    “That’s the thing that calls me. When I was asked to come, I have 4 kids. My wife…we contemplated. We just thought it’s a calling to not only show the people what you care about, but also the nation,” Beasley said.

    Bolstered by news a recall effort had fallen 806 signatures short Tuesday, Knowles III felt very much like part of the team to move Ferguson forward.

    Still, he said he’d gotten the message from an effort that still garnered more than 1,000 valid signatures seeking his ouster.

    “Even if they’re short, the fact that 1,000 people signed a petition to recall me, does give me an opportunity to say here’s a thousand people, which we know there are many people who are frustrated, angry and feel disaffected, now I have a list to work from. I intend to and hope to able to bridge that gap, starting with those signatures,” Knowles III said.

    His term expires in 2017.

    ‘Kay. A few notes on those signatures in a moment more, but did he just say he would use that submitted list to approach people who probably don’t want to be approached? As they are signing a petition to have him removed…? And… he’s now able to identify individuals? That’s… kind of scary.

    Woman says she was maced by officer even though she complied with his request

    Witnesses said an officer went too far when a woman was maced in the University City Loop Friday night.

    It all happened around 10:30 p.m. outside a popular restaurant. RNesha Baldwin says she and her friends were outside waiting for their group to finishing paying their bill from dinner when police told them they were blocking the sidewalk.

    “I said I’m standing exactly where you were standing, I’m not doing anything illegal and he said you have to keep moving,” said Baldwin.

    Baldwin is the daughter of a police officer and says her upbringing taught her to comply with police request.

    “I had to walk between the police officers and so when I walked between them he told me I was under arrest,” she explained.

    One of the University City police officers then sprayed her with mace.

    Capt. Michael Ransom with the University City Police Department said Baldwin moved towards the officers. He wouldn’t speak on camera but in a statement wrote, “due to the threatening movement, she was placed under arrest for peace disturbance.”

    The whole incident was caught on camera. While others in the group began shout at police, Baldwin asserts she complied with the officer’s order.

    “At the end of the day I should be able to wait for my friends but whatever he asked me to do, I did,” she explained.

    Ransom said his officers acted in accordance with their policies and that there is an ordinance that prohibits blocking the sidewalk.

    “I have no idea because there were so many people down there, so many kids teenagers families down there, I have no idea why they kind of targeted us,” said Baldwin.

  453. rq says

    Ferguson mayor recall petition lacks required signatures – about 800, they say.

    A petition to recall the mayor of Ferguson lacks the required number of valid signatures, according to the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners.

    A group called Ground Level Support delivered the petition to recall Mayor James Knowles on May 28th, saying they had 400 more than the 1,800 signatures required. All signatures must be from Ferguson residents who were registered to vote during the last mayoral election.

    The St. Louis County Board of Education Commissioners began verifying the signatures’ validity the day the petition was turned in. Tuesday, the board announced the required number of valid signatures was not met. It says of the 2,133 signatures submitted, only 1,008 were valid.

    The reasons for being invalidated include:

    19 were blank lines
    65 had no address
    65 had no signature
    562 were not registered in St. Louis County
    366 were registered in St. Louis County, but not in Ferguson
    18 had the wrong signature (they were not close to the signature in the voter database)
    30 signatures were duplicates

    According to the Ferguson city charter, the city clerk must provide notice to the petitioners. They then have two days to file an intent to file an amended petition with additional signatures. From there, the additional signatures must be filed within 10 days.

    Knowles has said he has no intention of stepping down and he is confident he would win a recall based on the results of the most recent city council election, in which no “protester backed” candidates won seats.

    “My focus, and I’d hope the community’s, is bringing everyone together and moving us forward,” Knowles said. “A divisive recall election, is not going to bring anybody together.”

    He shared his concern about how many people signed the petition, and said it will not be ignored.
    “We know there [are] many people in this community who are frustrated, angry and feel disaffected,” he said. “And now I have a list to work from, and I intend to and hope to be able to bridge that gap, starting with that list of those valid signatures.”

    Ground Level Support does not hide that it has had financial support from outside Ferguson and Knowles says other mayors around the St. Louis region have already offered to write him checks to help finance a recall election campaign.

    A few comments:
    If someone is a resident, but isn’t on official records yet (whatever list was used), they could be declared invalid.
    If someone’s name wasn’t quite legible and the list-checker didn’t want to give the benefit of the doubt, they could be declared invalid.
    And then the official narrative becomes, “They didn’t have enough support” when they’ve had plenty of it.
    Those who don’t follow the #Ferguson day-to-day may not realize how much contempt Mayor Knowles has for protesters. He’s unaccountable.
    And, I suspect, believes he’s unassailable. He refuses to step down and knows ~30% of the community (the white side of town) supports him.

  454. rq says

    So there was this Georgia woman charged with murder for ending pregnancy with pill (Toronto Star) that turned into this: Kenlissia Jones, Georgia woman, won’t face murder charge after taking abortion pill, though the reason doesn’t cheer me:

    Abortion-rights advocates and opponents of abortion alike had said they were stunned by the murder charge. Georgia has prohibited the prosecution of women for feticide or for performing illegal abortions in cases involving their own pregnancies. After reviewing the law, Edwards said he reached the same conclusion.

    “Georgia law presently does not permit prosecution of Ms. Jones for any alleged acts related to the end of her pregnancy,” the prosecutor’s statement said. He planned a news conference later Wednesday afternoon.

    It just wasn’t in the law, is all… if it were, I doubt she’d be free.

    Other stuff from the CBC:
    McKinney, Texas protests follow video of officer drawing gun on black teens. That article does state that the majority of children showing up to the pool did not live in the area.

    Ezell Ford improperly stopped before fatal shooting by LAPD, review finds

    The Los Angeles Police Commission found that an officer wrongly approached and stopped a 25-year-old black man last year ultimately leading to the fatal close-range shooting and therefore violated department policy, according to a report released late Tuesday.

    The commission voted unanimously during a closed session meeting Tuesday, finding that Officer Sharlton Wampler was unjustified in the August shooting of Ezell Ford but Officer Antonio Villegas was justified.

    The commission found that the Wampler violated policy in every aspect they examined, from the way he made contact with Ford to the drawing of his weapon and the use of lethal and nonlethal force. Villegas was found in violation in only one area — an earlier drawing of a gun before the final use of deadly force.

    Their analysis, released hours later, demonstrated the first application on an updated use of force policy, tweaked last year to better mirror language in a California Supreme Court decision.

    It requires reviewers to examine whether problematic decisions or actions by officers ultimately caused the confrontations that ended in the use of deadly force.

    The commission looked at the “totality” of circumstances, not just the moment deadly force was used, and it found that “deficient tactics used by (Wampler) and the legally inappropriate detention of (Ford) led to the subsequent altercation, rendered the use of deadly force unreasonable and out of policy.”

    LAPD Chief Charlie Beck had recommended the officers’ actions be ruled justified and said in a statement late Tuesday, “I respect the process and the decision made.”

    Wampler and Villegas had been assigned to nonfield administrative duties before the decision. It was unclear whether that will now change.

    Ford’s mother, Tritobia Ford, had pleaded to commissioners amid hours of sometimes tense public comment to find the officers’ actions improper.
    […]

    The commission’s finding means the case now goes to the Police Department’s internal affairs group. The group’s findings, which will likely take months, will then be forwarded to Beck, who determines what discipline the officers would face. Any decision on criminal charges would come from the district attorney.

    So there may yet be more legal action in the shooting of Ezell Ford, though it seems the police department is doing quite a lot to deter that.
    Surprise, surprise.

    And via qwints in PZ’s McKinney thread, McKinney Cop’s Lawyer Says He’s Sorry For Pool Party Response

    The Texas police officer captured on video using force on teenagers at a wild pool party apologized Wednesday, saying through his lawyer that his nerves were frayed after responding to two suicide calls.

    The apology came a day after the officer, Eric Casebolt, resigned from the McKinney Police Department. He remains in seclusion away from home after receiving death threats, his lawyer and union representative said at a news conference.

    “He recognizes that his emotions got the best of him and that the prior suicide calls put him in an emotional place that he would have preferred not to have been in when he responded to this call,” his lawyer, Jane Bushkin, said.
    […]

    “Eric regrets that his conduct portrayed him and his department in a negative light. He never intended to mistreat anyone but was only reacting to a situation and the challenges it presented.”

    Melanfant and Bushkin said Casebolt resigned in order to help the community heal faster.

    Later on Wednesday, the 15-year-old girl’s lawyer held a news conference in which she said her client’s treatment by Casebolt was “inappropriate, excessive and without cause,” and could be the basis of a civil rights lawsuit.

    The girl, Dajerria Becton, was not trespassing at the party and did nothing wrong, her lawyer, Hannah Stroud, said. But as she tried to get to her phone to call her aunt, Casebolt thrust her to the ground and handcuffed her, Stroud said.

    Becton did not suffer any physical injuries but is having a hard time sleeping and eating, Stroud said.

    “I’m sure she probably just wished she wasn’t at the pool party, but she doesn’t think there was much she could have done to avoid the situation.”

    Stroud said she appreciated Casebolt’s apology, but didn’t think the stress of prior calls was an excuse.

    “I’m a great believer in personal responsibility and personal culpability,” Stroud said. “Each of us has stress in our lives…so using that as an excuse or what sounded like a defense, it didn’t bother me, but I wondered if it belittled the apology.”

    And no, he wasn’t targeting minorities. He says. (Probably not intentionally, but intent, magic, racist consequences…)

  455. rq says

    Little Rock police slam non-violent blind man to the street. Guess his race.

    Yes, even a blind black man is not safe from police brutality.

    Meet Eric Wilson:

    Wilson left his job at Lighthouse for the Blind. He missed his bus so he started to walk home along 65th St.

    Around that time, LRPD says they got a call about someone fitting Wilson’s description who was running away from or chasing someone and who appeared to be afraid.

    “Hey, come over here and talk to me,” the officer can be heard saying on dash camera video.

    Wilson is legally blind and says he only sees shadows. He says he didn’t know who was calling him.

    “I could have possibly been getting robbed,” Wilson said. “I didn’t know what was about to happen.”

    Yet, Wilson complied and did everything the police asked him to do, as you will see in the newly released video below. The police though, in their report, claimed that Wilson pulled away violently and they were afraid he was going to hit them with the handcuffs.

    Really? You thought a blind man was going to go Bruce Lee on you with a pair of handcuffs?

    Then, seeing something stick out of his pants pocket, police were afraid he had a gun. It was a device that reads the time to blind people.

    Welcome to America.

    Here’s some more cops who freaked out – Police ID man and officers in fatal shooting

    An officer had pulled over a driver for an unrelated traffic stop at Merle Hay Road and Aurora Avenue at 10:07 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Sgt. Jason Halifax of Des Moines police and police report. A few minutes later, another car pulled up alongside so close that the officer couldn’t open the car door.

    The driver of the other vehicle got out and danced around, Halifax said, before getting back in his car at 10:17 p.m. and driving south on Merle Hay.

    Police followed. The pursuit was low-speed, about the speed limit, and lasted about two minutes.

    At Urbandale Avenue, about a mile south, the driver did a U-turn and stopped abruptly, Halifax said. A police officer swerved to miss the car, stopping in front of the vehicle, as another police vehicle pulled up.

    Halifax said the driver of the other car got out and moved toward the police car that had just arrived. The officer in that vehicle opened fire and shot the driver in the torso. The man was declared dead at a hospital.

    Halifax said he didn’t know whether the driver had been armed. No weapon was recovered at the scene. Police weren’t immediately sure whether the man had a weapon at the hospital.

    It doesn’t seem as if they tried talking to him at all. He danced, he left – they followed, he stopped (if the chase was low-speed, perhaps he’d only realized the cops were following him and was going to address them?), they shot him. Such a simple story.

    Sometimes, Rand Paul says thoughtful things, but I wonder if it’s a stopped-clock type of thing. Rand Paul to Baltimore Republicans: ‘Understand the Anger of People’

    It was a familiar story, a regular part of his stump speech, but Rand Paul paused before he told it.

    “I’ve been telling this story for about a year and a half, two years now,” the Kentucky senator and presidential candidate told Baltimore County Republicans, who had filled a reception hall west of the city. “It makes me sad. I thought about not telling the story again. But I think this young man’s memory should help us to try to change things. He died this weekend. He committed suicide. His name was Kalief Browder. He was a 16-year-old teenager from the Bronx. He was arrested, accused of a crime, and sent to Rikers.”

    As hundreds of Republicans listened—voters, donors, elected officials—Paul retold the Browder story that had become infamous after a profile in the New Yorker. It was more gruesome than the version he usually told, because he was building to something.

    “Are we going to let you be raped and murdered and pillaged before you’ve been convicted?” Paul asked. “He wasn’t even convicted! So when I see people angry and upset, I’m not here to excuse violence in the cities, but I see people angry. I see where some of the anger is coming from.”

    Six weeks earlier, some black neighborhoods of Baltimore had exploded in violence and protest over the killing, while in police custody, of a man named Freddie Gray. The setting for Paul’s speech was just a short drive from the scene, but it couldn’t have looked further away. The Lincoln and Reagan Dinner that brought them there sprawled across two lush ballrooms that typically hosted weddings. Before Paul spoke, Republicans sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then recited the Pledge of Allegiance, then listened to a special, twangy patriotic song written by a local conservative.

    From the same stage, Paul told Baltimore-area Republicans to consider why Baltimore erupted and why so many black Americans mistrusted the justice system.

    “I went to Ferguson,” Paul said. “I said, set up voter registration tables, and register everybody that’s unhappy to vote. There is a constructive way of doing this. I didn’t grow up poor—I grew up middle class, or upper middle class. This is me learning about learning how other people have to deal with life. And this young man, 16 years old, imagine how his classmates feel about American justice. Imagine how his parents feel. Until we’ve walked in someone else’s shoes, we shouldn’t say we can’t understand the anger of people.”

    Paul did not go into great detail about the riots, and did not mention Freddie Gray by name. But he did not repeat his initial reaction to the riots, from a radio interview with Laura Ingraham. He did not joke about zooming past the city on a train, or say anything about the breakdown of families. Instead, he suggested that Democrats were collecting votes from people they’d marginalized with tough-on-crime policies.

    “The Democrats have utterly failed our inner cities, and utterly failed the poor,” said Paul. “Don’t let them tell us it wasn’t them. A lot of these policies came from Bill Clinton. In Ferguson, for every 100 black women, there are 60 black men. That’s because 40 are incarcerated. Am I saying they did nothing wrong and it’s all racism? No. What I am telling you is that white kids don’t get the same justice… the arrests in Baltimore are 15 to one black to white for marijuana arrests.”

    These were not applause lines, but nor did they fall flat. In conversations with Bloomberg, many of the Republicans in the room shared Paul’s reaction to Baltimore, and rejected the idea that more police or harsher laws were the way to prevent future uprisings.

    “I don’t think more police is the answer,” said Delegate Chris West. “I don’t think more money is the answer. I think the answer is more jobs, and if we don’t have good transportation from that area we need good transportation. I heard a story, this past winter, of a lady who wanted to work at the casino, and there was only one bus a day. That’s not right.” […]

    From the stage, the only mention of the April riots came from Al Mendelsohn, the chair of the Baltimore County Republican Party. Even then, he only briefly credited Republican Governor Larry Hogan for leading during the unrest while Baltimore’s (Democratic) mayor seemed to be letting property fall victim to rioters.

    Paul didn’t go there. He talked about the railroading of Richard Jewell, the man became a suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing investigation, to demonstrate that bad policing could affect anyone.

    “I’m not saying it’s racism,” he said, describing the reasons why black men were so disproportionately arrested and jailed. “Many officials are black, so it’s not racism. But something’s wrong with the war on drugs that we decide to lock people up for 5, 10, 15 years.”

    Well, he has a lot of good ideas, but to suggest that voting – and voting only, it seems – is the way to solve these things, well… And then he ends on that glorious ‘it’s so racist it’s not racism’ note. Hit ’em all, Rand Paul!

    America’s war on Black girls: Why McKinney police violence isn’t about “one bad apple”

    In just over two months, we will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that ravaged communities along the Gulf Coast. This tragedy was made infinitely worse not only by decades of governmental neglect and far-ranging poverty, but also by the fact that so many Black people could not swim.

    That nearly 60 percent of Black people cannot swim is directly attributable to decades of segregated pool facilities in this country. While that problem ostensibly went away with the desegregation efforts of the mid-20th century, de facto segregation of pool facilities persists to this day, because community pools are now largely private amenities in suburban neighborhoods that many Black youth don’t have access to.

    This is the backdrop of the troubling and traumatizing incident that occurred in McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, over the weekend, when 19-year-old Tatiana Rose threw a pool party and invited several friends to use the community pool in her neighborhood. Many of those friends were Black, and many of those Black friends also live in the neighborhood. At some point, as Tatiana says in a video interview, two white adult women began yelling at her and her friends to “go back where they came from,” “back to section 8 housing,” and calling them “black fuckers.” When a 14-year-old girl responded, the women further ridiculed her, prompting Tatiana to tell the adults that the girl was 14 and their comments were inappropriate. According to Tatiana’s account, the white women then approached her; one “hit her in the face” and the other began participating in the attack.

    According to reports, multiple calls came into police. At least one call came from either Tatiana, her mother (who was present) or her friends, reporting that these white women had attacked the partygoers. Other calls came in from residents who reported that many Black children who were unauthorized to be there were there and fighting. Apparently, the party got larger and some children jumped over the fence to get to the party. […]

    Among more well-meaning interlocutors are those who keep pointing out that David Casebolt is a bad apple. “He has been suspended,” they say. What we know for sure is that a suspension is not a clear indicator that charges, the loss of a job, or a criminal conviction are forthcoming.

    Moreover, people continue to deploy the “one bad apple spoils a bunch” analogy as though the predicate of the sentence is of no consequence. Spoils. The analogy is less about the singular bad apple and more about its multiplicative bad effects on those it keeps company with. I agree that David Casebolt was particularly out of control. I agree that the other officers saw that and got him to stop waving his gun. They did not keep him from kneeling on top of the girl or berating and intimidating the other youth. This means that in a scenario where multiple children were being unfairly treated, the presence of multiple officers did not offer them substantial protection in the face one officer becoming entirely rogue.

    Those officers did not demand that their colleague take a breather while they got the situation under control. They let him go on and on, half-cocked and ridiculous. The material impact of that was a bunch of children feeling unsafe and traumatized by those sworn to protect them. […]

    Few white people have stood up and called out the white adult women who harassed a fellow neighbor having a pool party with her friends, and with her mother’s permission. But many white people have watched the video and concluded that the officer’s treatment of the 14-year-old girl was justified. The gender dynamics in this moment are interesting. There is no universe in which a police officer would drag a young white girl in a two-piece bathing suit by her hair, demand she put her face on the ground, and then kneel for several minutes on top of her adolescent body. If such a thing occurred, it would elicit massive moral outrage on the part of white people (and Black people, too).

    But Black girls are never deemed feminine enough for their sexual and adolescent vulnerability to register for white people. They are frequently viewed as aggressors by both police and regular citizens alike, even for doing very adolescent things like mouthing off to those in authority. This is the reason why education scholars suggest that Black girls are suspended from school six times as often as white girls, because even simple adolescent forms of testing boundaries are perceived as far more aggressive based on race.

    And let me be clear: Citizens have the right to “mouth off” to police. We have the right to question how we are being treated, why we are being arrested, why we are even being approached. Far too many police deploy accusations of disturbing the peace or obstructing justice to quiet citizens who question them within legal bounds. As long as we don’t threaten or enact physical harm on police officers, we can “mouth off” all we want. We don’t have to be polite to police officers, and they clearly have very little interest in being polite to us. And for those who keep demanding that we act civilly, the point is, “incivility” is not a crime.

    If it were, half of America’s police forces would be behind bars.

    Moreover, the violent incivility of the white women who harassed and physically assaulted these teenagers who had every right to be there escapes notice. White women have been some of the worst perpetrators of racial aggression and racial indignity in this country, but their aggressions frequently escape notice, precisely because white womanhood and the need to protect it animates the core of so much white supremacist aggression toward Black people. The domestic sphere, much to the chagrin of my fellow feminists, has long been considered the sacred domain of white women. Many a Black man was lynched in service of protecting white women’s domestic sanctity and sexual virtue. Meanwhile, white women have been emboldened by such a system for centuries to police, demean and humiliate Black people, and Black women in particular, within domestic spaces.

    But you won’t see white feminists contextualizing or calling out this long history of white female bullying of Black women with less social, political or economic power than them. They leave that work to Black feminists. Meanwhile, I hope that Black men begin to understand that they don’t have a monopoly on being violently mistreated by police. Black girls are brutalized, too.

    And to continue to tell Black people — as many white folks and respectable black folk on the social media threads I participated in have said — that if these children “would have just done what the officers said, none of this would have happened,” is to be deeply invested in exercises of racial ignorance. Proper behavior has never, ever protected Black people from police.

    I;d also like to highlight this paragraph:

    Most of these children came to a pool party with an invite, got harassed and physically assaulted by white residents who didn’t want them to be there, and then mistreated by the police. The ones who didn’t have an invite came because perhaps it was a rare opportunity to get in a clean, safe swimming pool in the heat of a Texas summer. Good policing could have dealt with this matter sans violence and without incident.

    I hear Texas gets pretty durned hot.

    Please understand that these kinds of things are closely related. Trust is vital to effective policing. The actions of police officers are what doesn’t let the community trust them enough to assist in solving crimes (or at least passing on important information).

    Charges Dropped Against Guests Who Cheered High School Graduation (UPDATE), HuffPo getting in on the good news.

    On Monday, superintendent Jay Foster withdrew all charges against those who cheered at the graduation, the New York Times reports. Foster wrote in a court filing that, “Our purpose in filing the complaints was not to place a hardship of any kind on the individual who disrupted the ceremony, but to protect the rights of the class of 2015 and future S.H.S. graduating classes.”

    Basically that’s the extent of the article, the rest is the original about being charged.

  456. rq says

    Michelle Obama Delivers Emotional Commencement Address At Chicago High School

    “I know the struggles many of you face, how you walk the long way home to avoid the gangs; how you fight to concentrate on your schoolwork when there’s too much noise at home; how you keep it together when your family’s having a hard time making ends meet. But more importantly, I know the strength of this community.”

    Those were the words spoken by first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday to the graduates of King College Prep High School in Chicago’s South Side.

    Obama grew up near the school, and during her emotional commencement address, she said she wanted to share “the real story” about the South Side, a story about resilience and courage in the face of adversity.

    She also honored Hadiya Pendleton, a student of King College Prep who was shot dead two years ago at the age of 15.

    “I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives,” Obama told the students. “Maybe you’ve lost someone you love, someone you desperately wish could be here with you tonight. And I know that many of you are thinking about Hadiya right now and feeling the hole that she’s left in your hearts.”

    […]

    Using the teen’s life and legacy as an example, Obama then urged the graduating class to not be defined by the violence and economic hardship they may have endured, but by the success they’ve achieved in spite of it.

    “I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived,” Obama said, adding: “If Hadiya’s friends and family could survive their heartbreak and pain, if they could found organizations to honor her unfulfilled dreams, if they could inspire folks across this country to wear orange to protest gun violence, then I know you all can live your life with the same determination and joy that Hadiya lived her life. I know you all can dig deep and keep on fighting to fulfill your own dreams.”

    According to the Chicago Tribune, all of King College Prep’s 177 graduates have been accepted to college.

    “You embody all of the courage and love, all of the hunger and hope that have always defined these communities — our communities,” Obama said in the conclusion of her speech. “And I am so proud of you all, and I stay inspired because of you, and I can’t wait to see everything you all achieve in the years ahead.”

    The First Lady chose to speak at King College Prep after the school won a video contest promoting student applications for college financial aid, The Associated Press reported. The school’s winning video featured a spoof of the ABC show “Scandal.” On Tuesday, Obama brought a surprise video for the students in which the show’s cast members congratulated the graduates.

    This Teen’s Devastatingly Beautiful Prom Dress Is Her Own Design. Yes, this is our fashion break.

    Meet Kyemah McEntyre, who designed her utterly stunning prom dress herself.

    McEntyre wrote on her Instagram that she takes inspiration from cultures around the world. “You have to understand who you are because if you leave that space open, you leave your identity in the hands of society. Don’t let anyone define you.” she wrote.

    “This is for always being labeled as, ‘ugly’ or ‘angry’. Thank God, stereotypes are just opinions,” she wrote in another post.

    Of course, she was voted prom queen.

    The dress is gorgeous. And she is gorgeous in it.

    Conservative radio host compares pool party teens to ‘jungle animals’. But this America is post-racial!!!

    “You’ve got a ready-made crowd of people who don’t have day jobs that are ready to storm the streets and threaten the cops,” Berry said on his eponymous show on Houston’s KTRH, which is an iHeartRadio network station. “Let me suggest that for the people who end up getting in fights with the cops: Shut your mouth!” NBC News cannot be certain the audio was not edited.

    “Let me ask you, how many among you would put on a badge and a police uniform today?” he added. “How many of you would put on a badge, police uniform and be the first to respond — by yourself — to a crowd of teenagers, amped up — watch ‘em! Man, they’re screaming! ‘Get outta here! Who are you?! You don’t know what you! You go! You get! Who are you?! You can’t do that! No man, we gon’ get you! You bet!’ I mean you’re talking about, like, jungle animals. I mean this is wild, crazy, out of control.”

    On his Monday broadcast, Berry also defended the “probably white” people who called police to the scene at the pool party, saying they were “scared to death” because “there’s a bunch of black people and they’re out on the streets and they’re fightin’ and carryin’ on and they’re playing that music from Jay-Z.”

    Well, in his case, I blame country music.

    Study: Women with Natural Hair Have Low Self-Esteem – because a black woman with natural hair is the way to illustrate this point. And it’s an article from March.

    Chicago zoo employee fired for complaining of serving ‘rude ass white people’ *sigh*

    Complaining about “these rude ass white people” got her fired.

    A young black employee at a Chicago zoo was fired after she took to Facebook to complain about customers at a concession stand whom she referred to as “rude ass white people,” a spokeswoman for the Brookfield Zoo told the Daily News.

    The employee named Shana “Poohpooh” Latrice posted a picture of herself in uniform on her Facebook page Monday, which has since been deactivated. In her caption, she wrote “Wassup y’all? At work serving these rude ass white people.”

    But unfortunately for the frustrated employee the post was shared multiple times on social media and is making the rounds across the Internet.

    The zoo began getting an onslaught of complaints from angry customers, some of whom threatened not to come back, prompting the animal facility to respond.

    Zoo spokeswoman Sondra Katzen said Latrice, who worked at a refreshment stand for the company’s Guest Services Department, was terminated Tuesday morning. She did not know how long she had been employed at Brookfield.

    On Tuesday morning the Brookfield Zoo released a statement on its Facebook page calling her action’s unacceptable.

    “This employee’s statements in social media are in violation of our policies and do not reflect our institution’s values,” the statement read. “We have zero tolerance for these kinds of divisive behaviors.”

    I’m just wondering if they worried about employee well-being enough to ask her what prompted the post in the first place, since it seems to be a first-time kind of occurrence. But it doesn’t look like they care.

    Sources on the ground say McKinney police dept is getting angry, n-word filled phone calls for not “standing up for” Eric Casebolt. And they’ve also been getting death threats for Casebolt. Can’t be easy for anyone answering the phone right now.

  457. rq says

    McKinney officer regrets pool incident but viewed teens as ‘possible suspects’

    She said that when the initial report of a disturbance at the pool came in it was billed as a possible trespassing and Casebolt had not wanted to attend a simple-sounding incident, “given what he had just been through”. Then it was upgraded to a potential assault and Casebolt felt it was his duty to respond, she said.

    Bishkin said that Casebolt viewed the teenagers leaving the pool as potential assault suspects who were fleeing. She insisted that “he was not targeting minorities” and that he also detained a white female.

    “With all that happened that day he allowed his emotions to get the better of him. Eric regrets that his conduct portrayed him and his department in a negative light,” said Bishkin. “He apologises to all who were offended … the prior suicide calls put him in an emotional place that he would have preferred not to be in.”

    Casebolt resigned from the McKinney police department on Tuesday. The corporal had been placed on administrative leave in the wake of the incident. Bishkin said that he is staying in an undisclosed location because he fears for his safety and that of his family after a number of threats were called into the police department.

    Video footage posted on YouTube by a bystander showed the 10-year department veteran shouting, swearing and being physically aggressive towards young people after police were called to a private community pool in an affluent Dallas suburb on Friday night following reports of a fight and anti-social behaviour. […]

    At a news conference outside McKinney police headquarters earlier on Wednesday, local African American civil rights activists said that the resignation was not enough and that Casebolt should face an assault charge. “We want this officer charged, that’s the bottom line,” said Dominique Alexander of the Next Generation Action Network. “I spoke to Miss Becton and she doesn’t want anything less than this officer being charged.”

    Alexander said that protests would continue until that happens.

    Becton’s lawyer, Hannah Stroud, told a separate news conference that stress was no excuse for Casebolt’s actions and “the manner in which Ms Becton was treated was excessive, inappropriate and without cause” and a civil rights violation. Stroud said she is uncertain whether her client will take legal action and declined to speculate as to whether race was a factor in the confrontation. She added that Becton was finding it hard to eat and sleep and had hardly left her home since the encounter with the officer.

    McKinney police chief Greg Conley told reporters on Tuesday that Casebolt’s behaviour was “indefensible” and “out of control” and that the other 11 officers who attended the call had performed in line with their training.

    “Our policies, our training and our practice do not support his actions,” Conley said. He did not rule out criminal charges for Casebolt, who is under investigation but retains his pension and benefits and, in theory at least, is free to find a job as a police officer elsewhere.

    Casebolt was accused of racial profiling in a 2008 civil rights lawsuit issued by a man he arrested for drug possession at a traffic stop. His accuser withdrew the suit and Casebolt denied wrongdoing.

    A multi-racial prayer vigil took place outside the pool in the Craig Ranch subdivision on Tuesday night, a day after about 500 protestors marched from an elementary school to the pool. […]

    Meanwhile, it was revealed on Wednesday that the man who initially called 911 to complain about the party and who has defended the controversial police response is a convicted felon who spent time in prison for torturing animals.

    It’s Texas.

    and in case you didn’t see the latest re: Tracey Carver-Allbritton #McKinney

    The Debt – a tribute to Kalief Browder.

    Kalief Browder’s death wasn’t a suicide.

    Two years in solitary confinement will destroy any man. It will crumble the soul from the outside in, until all that’s left is the raw nerve of pain. A cruel, but all-too-usual punishment, in an all-too-usually cruel system. An instrument of torture in a corrupt and topsy-turvy world of torture, a world where prison beds are projected and reserved for Black boys and girls at the first sign of distress. It is a system of punishment, designed with the end goal of brutal efficiency: of creating prisons out of the fabrics of our own lives.

    Mr. Browder entered that torture chamber at 16, the age when white peers are given the most precious luxuries of chances to fail, learn, and grow. Sent to Rikers, an island of pain operating in spite of numerous documented violations of the basic tenets of humanity, he spent three years enduring recorded beatings by guards and inmates, long periods of solitary confinement, and failed suicide attempts. His stay had been extended simply because his family could not afford bail.

    The charge that sent him to that bastion of brutality? An alleged theft of a backpack.

    That charge was dropped.

    Two years after Browder was finally released from Rikers, he completed the deed that he’d tried before in prison. So ended five years of unspeakable pain, inflicted by the hands of a thoroughly corrupt, brutal, and inadequate policing, prosecution, and prison complex that manages to somehow still be referred to as the American Justice System–without irony. That system killed him. That system gave him his noose and told him to jump. It ruined a child. It ruined a family and a community. It added his name to the litany of names of Black girls and boys and women and men that we recite like names from a prayer book as we march and cry out. That list has become our own perverse Deuteronomy, a canon of the numbers of those crushed under the boot heel of white supremacy. His name and the names on that list are America’s blood debt, as is the red stain on the conscience of all of us who watched but did not cry out.

    The phrase we use now, still endeavoring to convince the world of our humanity, is “Stop Killing Us.” This is adequate to a point. The phrase invokes the thousands (502 at the time of this writing), who die yearly, directly at the hands of violent police. But does it fully evoke images of the thousands and thousands more who are beaten and harassed by those police, of the millions more who fear for their lives every time they see blue lights, of those languishing behind bars for lifetimes for using marijuana, of the innocents in prison now being stripped of their humanity? Does it capture those who can no longer bear the pain of this world and choose to end their time here–a population represented by skyrocketing suicide rates among Black youth? Does it impress upon the powers and principalities the psychological damage that teenagers in a Texas suburb must face now that they truly realize that there is no one to call to protect them from the police?

    The fact of the matter is that there is not one of us in America’s Black permanent underclass that is not damaged or won’t become so in due time, not one of us that will live a full life without the scars of brutality. Our cry is to “Stop Killing Us,” yes, but death comes not only to the body. To stop simultaneous cultural degradation and exile. To stop marginalizing us to the polluted edges of cities. To stop pulling the safety nets out from under us. To stop using the police as mercenary occupying forces in our neighborhood, to stop replacing every single social service occupation with patrolmen. To stop imprisoning us, to stop beating and bullying us. To stop shooting us with our hands up. To stop fashioning our nooses before we are even given our names.

    Kalief Browder’s death was not a suicide. It was a critical failure of humanity. We owed him then, and we owe him now, only now the debt can never be repaid.

    Shaun King on Riker’s: 400 people have been imprisoned at Riker’s Island for at least two years without being convicted – how the hell is that even legal?

    This past weekend, Kalief Browder, having served three brutal years imprisoned at Riker’s Island, took his own life. Beaten and starved and placed in solitary confinement for over two years, the 16-year-old Browder who went into prison for a crime he did not commit was not the same young man who was unceremoniously released without being convicted 1,000 hard days later.

    As New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and presidential candidate Rand Paul offered their condolences to Browder’s family, the truth about what is happening at Riker’s Island is so ugly that it is hard to believe. Browder was not that one guy who got lost in the system. Far from it.

    Currently, at Riker’s Island, at least 400 people have been imprisoned for over two years without being convicted. Half a dozen people have actually been waiting for over six years inside of Riker’s without being convicted of a crime. A staggering 1,500 inmates have waited at least a whole year—some imprisoned for crimes that wouldn’t even have sentences for this long if they actually were convicted. […]

    What must it do to a man’s psyche to wait and wait and wait for a chance at justice, only to languish in a notorious prison overrun with abuse? Sadly, we know what it did to Browder. For the next man, the effect may be equally debilitating, but be expressed in an altogether different way.

    It’s called the “justice system,” but those two words don’t really seem to belong in the same sentence. It is a system, yes, but what brother Kalief Browder experienced, and what the 1,500 inmates in this prison alone who have waited years for a chance to have a fair trial have experienced, is not justice.

    Call it what it really is—the injustice system, the New Jim Crow, modern slavery—but don’t call it justice and don’t call it an accident. This system was built on purpose and it is a very real emergency for those men and women who are being held without trial for years on end. Everything in New York City should stop so that these people, these citizens of our land, can have some semblance of justice—if that’s even possible. Pardons may even be called for.

    Whatever the case, the new plan of Mayor De Blasio to fix the problems of Riker’s Island over the next 10 years simply isn’t good enough or fast enough for those who are suffering right now as you read these words.

    Re: a police shooting oversight committee, as presented by Antonio French: .@AntonioFrench: problems in #ferguson existed before Aug, can’t take calm for granted now. Wants police shooting oversight comm. @ksdknews

    Judge upholds firing of Chicago cop in offensive photo. But it was just a joke, right?

    A white, clouted Chicago Police officer deserved to be fired for appearing in an offensive photograph, holding a black man like a hunting trophy, a Cook County Judge has ruled.

    Judge Thomas R. Allen on Wednesday upheld the previous decision of the Chicago Police Board to fire Officer Tim McDermott.

    Calling the case “straightforward” and saying it revolved entirely around what even McDermott’s lawyer admitted was “a horribly offensive” photo, he cited Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of obscenity.

    “I know it when I see it,” Allen said of the shocking photo during his 30-minute ruling.

    Believed to have been taken inside a West Side police station sometime between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo shows McDermott and another former Chicago cop, Jerome Finnigan, holding a rifle and crouching over an unidentified black man who is wearing deer antlers.

    Though the photo was taken over a decade ago, it was only finally passed to Chicago Police by the FBI in 2013, following Finnigan’s conviction for a series of unrelated offenses relating to home invasions and the kidnappings of drug dealers.

    The Chicago Police Board narrowly voted in August by five votes to four to dismiss McDermott, who told them, “I am embarrassed by my participation in this photograph. I made a mistake as a young, impressionable police officer who was trying to fit in.”

  458. rq says

    Speaking of Rikers, Prison guards arrested in connection to beating death of Rikers Island inmate. Top-notch quality place to be.

    Two New York City corrections officers were arrested Wednesday morning in relation to the fatal beating of an inmate at Rikers Island, according to the federal authorities.

    Brian Coll and Byron Taylor were arrested for their role in the December 2012 death of Ronald Spear, whose death was ruled a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to his head sustained after a brutal beating.

    “As I have said before, Rikers inmates, although walled off from the rest of society, are not walled off from the protections of our Constitution,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara during a press briefing Wednesday.

    Spear was a 52-year-old man with kidney disease who was on dialysis and walked with a cane. He was awaiting trial at the time of the beating.

    Spear was arguing with Coll about his medical treatment when a fight broke out at the prison, according to the complaint. The two men began punching each other in the face, and when Spear fell, Coll repeatedly kicked him in the head while he was restrained by Taylor.

    After Coll stopped kicking Spear, the prisoner lay on the floor moaning in pain, the complaint said, citing witnesses to the beating. Coll apparently kneeled down, picked up Spear’s head, held his face close to his own and said “that’s what you get for fucking with me” before dropping his head to the floor.

    Both officers also allegedly lied to authorities and a federal grand jury about how the events unfolded.

    Case documents available at the link.

    Just some stuff with neat art on it.

    #BreakTheCurfew #oakland
    Holding 14th and Broadway chanting No Cop Zone, They Know Better. #SayHerName #BreaktheCurfew

    Teacher deleted post regarding #McKinneyPolice in which she said she “was almost to the point of wanting” segregation. You can read the post, and you gotta love that closing sentence, ‘yeah, this is my horrid opinion and I know it’s horrid, and I know you’re all going to bash me for it, look at me I’m a marrrrtyyyyrrrrr…’ Why do people with horrendous views, who know they are horrendous, still keep posting things like that? Are they secretly hoping to become superheroes or something? They’re so controversial and subversive? Eh.

    Bikers Jailed After Waco Shootout Say Court System Failed Them. You know what’s sad? Not the fact that they are right (which they are) but the Grand Ear of Listening that they get on account of not being black. That same court system has been failing black folk for decades, but nobody does shit. So now we have to listen to the whining of some bikers?

    “They just collectively labeled everybody there as a vicious gang member,” Mr. Clendennen, a Baylor University graduate who owns a landscaping business in the Waco area, said on Monday, days after his release from jail. “They arrested us because of what we were wearing and where we were at. Because I was wearing a certain color vest, automatically in their eyes I was guilty. So much for innocent until proven guilty.” […]

    What is clear is that some of the men and women caught up in the largest mass arrest of bikers in recent decades believe the justice system broke down in Waco and officials delayed and mishandled their cases. The authorities have defended their response but have declined to discuss the details of individual cases or when there would be an accounting of how the nine people were killed. […]
    Police officials say there is no doubt that the gathering attracted many armed, dangerous gang members. The officials recovered more than 300 weapons in and around the restaurant, including more than 100 handguns and an AK-47 assault rifle, and some of them were so well hidden that investigators only found them with metal detectors.

    “We don’t have a reaction to the opinion of people who we believe we have probable cause to arrest,” said Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton, a spokesman for the Waco Police Department. “It’s commonplace for arrestees to complain about being arrested. Our investigation is ongoing and continuing, and the justice system is working in the way that it should.” […]

    And they said judicial officials had been slow to hear the cases, forcing defendants to remain in jail for weeks while waiting for bond-reduction hearings, routine proceedings that are typically heard within seven to 10 days of an arrest.

    More than three weeks after their arrest, dozens of the 177 bikers remain in jail, many of them unable to afford even a small percentage of their $1 million bonds to get out of jail. As of Saturday, 75 had been released.

    Paul Looney, a lawyer for three of those arrested, said that two of them — a couple, William and Morgan Jane English — were close enough to the shooting to only hear it, but that they had seen, and done, nothing illegal.

    “They had barely gotten onto the property,” Mr. Looney said. “In this country, we have constitutional protections against that kind of a sweep. It’s the most un-American activity I’ve seen on American soil.”

    I suppose the fact that the system has been broken for a while, and the cruel irony of this situation, never even crosses their minds. But complain away, maybe something will happen this time.

  459. rq says

    Civil Rights Leaders: Officer Must Be Charged , youtube video.

    Civil rights leaders in Texas reacted to the resignation of Officer Eric Casebolt, criticizing the police department for allowing him to resign with benefits, and saying he should be charged for last week’s incident at a community pool. (June 10)

    How Prisons Kick Inmates Off Facebook, which, you know, might seem like a small thing, but it’s a link to the outside world that’s probably supremely important to most in the justice system.

    It takes a little bit of work to get off Facebook. To suspend your profile, you have to walk through some settings pages and submit a form explaining why you’re de-activating. And if you want to permanently delete a profile, you have to submit a different form, then wait several days.

    But for at least four years, the Facebook accounts of incarcerated Americans had a fast track to suspension.

    Since at least 2011, prison officials who wanted to suspend an inmate’s profile could submit a request to Facebook through its “Inmate Account Takedown Request” page. The company would then suspend the account—immediately, often with “no questions asked,” reports Dave Maass, an investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who first wrote about the page.

    This relationship could get cozier than a web form, too. In an email correspondence first published by the EFF, a California corrections officer asked a Facebook employee to “please remove these [attached] profiles” of currently incarcerated inmates.

    “Thank you for providing me with this information. I apologize for the delay in getting these profiles taken down,” a Facebook employee replied. “I have located and removed all five accounts from the site. I apologize again!”
    This fast-and-loose suspension regime has now changed. Or, at least it appears that way: Last week, Facebook announced measures that will create a higher threshold for removing inmates’ accounts. The company now requests much more information from corrections officers about an inmate’s account, and it also requires officers to demonstrate that inmates have violated law or prison policy in the first place. This was never something it asked about in its previous form.

    This is a big change. As Maass points out, suspending an inmate’s account is a kind of state censorship: A government agency asks Facebook, “hey, can you make this speech go away?” and Facebook says “sure,” without seeing if the inmate was threatening someone or otherwise violating its terms of service. A Facebook spokesman said questions about its role in what critics say is censorship would be better posed to lawmakers. […]

    It wasn’t always this way. Back in 2006, he said, Myspace was the social network of choice for both inmates and corrections officials. “It had just taken over, it was the most visited site on the Internet,” Maass said.

    There was a campaign in Texas to take down the pages of prisoners on death row. This was before the rise of smartphones, so inmates operated their pages through a proxy family member or friend, with whom they communicated by letter. Myspace stood firm that inmates shouldn’t lose their accounts just because they were inmates.

    “Unless you violate the terms of service or break the law, we don’t step in the middle of free expression,” a Myspace spokesman told USA Today at the time. “There’s a lot on our site we don’t approve of in terms of taste or ideas, but it’s not our role to be censors.”

    All state’s attorneys are political, Marilyn Mosby just more so, and she’s not afraid to show it.

    Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore and the woman who very publicly brought charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, has been accused of — how shall I put this? — being political. There’s a flash. Defense lawyers for the accused officers say Mosby ought to recuse herself because of a political relationship with Billy Murphy, the attorney for the Gray family, and because she’s married to a city councilman who represents the district where Gray’s arrest took place.

    Defense lawyers for police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody have called for Marilyn Mosby to step down as prosecutor, citing an email calling for increased police activity. (Baltimore Sun video)

    Now they want her to recuse herself because — take cover! incoming irony! — it was Mosby’s office that had asked police to target the West Baltimore corner where Gray’s ultimately fatal encounter with police started April 12. One of Mosby’s division chiefs made that request about three weeks earlier, according to a defense motion.

    Even that last claim by the defense smells of small-town politics, with the suggestion that the state’s attorney might have asked for enhanced police efforts in a troublesome drug area in her husband’s council district. (As if Councilman Nick Mosby couldn’t get more cops on the corner on his own?)

    Lawyers gotta lawyer. A judge gets to decide if any of those motions have legal merit.

    Meanwhile, the rest of us can look at her behavior since May 1 — the outdoor spectacle when she shouted out the charges against the Freddie Gray 6; her decision to appear on stage with Prince and serve with her husband as honorary ringmaster of the UniverSoul Circus; the interview with Vogue — and see a person who clearly covets the limelight.

    Marilyn Mosby is certainly a politician, more so in style than any state’s attorney in memory. […]

    Look, I don’t like politics in criminal justice, but I’m a realist and understand that politics infests just about everything. However, when it comes to the courts, I favor keeping politics to a minimum.

    I don’t think circuit judges should run for election. Ditto sheriffs. Ditto clerks of the court and Orphans’ Court judges. Ditto state’s attorney. For state’s attorney, I prefer a nominating system, with a committee reviewing candidates and sending recommendations to the governor. We should not have prosecutors who have had to raise campaign donations and make promises.

    But that’s not the system we have. In Maryland, we have a completely political system, where any member of the bar with two years’ residency in the relevant jurisdiction can run for state’s attorney. They campaign and schmooze, they ask for donations and votes. They’re all politicians — just some more than others.

    And I get the feeling that it’s a subtly unpositive review of Mosby. I just hope she gets those officers to trial.

    Police Commission: Ezell Ford’s Shooting Death Violated LAPD Policy, and yet the PD was trying to have it declared justified.

    Although Los Angeles Police Officer Sharlton Wampler claims that he was in a life-and-death scuffle for his service weapon with Ezell Ford, the Los Angeles Police Commission rejected Police Chief Charlie Beck’s conclusions that the ultimately fatal shooting of the young man was justified. The commission also suggested that Wampler’s actions caused the deadly encounter, the Los Angeles Times reports.

    Last summer Wampler insisted that he was fearful that Ford, who was mentally ill, would grab his weapon, so Wampler pulled out a backup gun from under his uniform and fired one fatal shot into the young man’s back.

    The Police Commission is arguing that Wampler’s use of deadly force violated Los Angeles Police Department policy—even though he “may have been in a fight for his life,” according to the Times—because he had no reason to stop and detain the young man to begin with. His further handling of the confrontation was so faulty that it led to the fatal shooting.

    “The decision marked a significant departure for the commission, which for decades has looked only at whether an officer faced a threat at the moment deadly force was used,” according to the Times. The commission came to its ruling based on “the totality of the circumstances, and not just the moment in which the force was used,” the news site notes. This is the first time the commission has made a ruling based on a change in policy on shootings last year, which encourages the panel to look at the broader picture rather than an isolated incident.

    Wampler’s partner, Antonio Villegas, was found less culpable by the commission. Although it did not agree with Villegas’ decision to draw his gun early on in the encounter, the panel ruled that he was in the right to fire at Ford in an attempt to protect his partner.

    The commission has officially ruled on the issue, the Times notes, but it is still up to the police chief to decide whether there will be any disciplinary actions taken against the two officers. Beck’s decision will not be made public because it is protected by privacy rights under state law.

    “I respect the process and the decision made in this matter,” Beck said in a statement, according to the report.

    MLK’s legacy was hijacked. He’s no longer a man, but the idea of a “perfect, acceptable activist” sanctioned by White People.

    Mayor Rawlings-Blake loses longtime Democratic party fundraiser. Uh-oh!

    Black People Are Feared. Black Teachers Are Threats.

    I for one will have your backs.

    Black members of Teach For America (TFA) know the real reasons conservatives and progressives alike attack them. Black folk aren’t supposed to seek justice on our own terms. Black teachers, especially from Teach For America, aren’t supposed to protest in the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore or McKinney, Texas. But whether in school or in the streets that surround them, black corps members of TFA are teaching the rest of us where a great education and the pursuit of justice should take you.

    Let’s be clear. Black people are certainly feared. But being young, gifted and black and committed to social justice makes you a threat.

    The latest person to target their fear of black uprightness is conservative columnist Michelle Malkin who all but brands Teach For America as an incubator for terrorists because the teacher organization had the audacity to back some of their own who see a need for justice beyond a classroom. […]

    Malkin also targets former TFA teacher DeRay Mckesson who through social media has been narrating and facilitating on-the-ground activism in Ferguson, Baltimore, McKinney, Texas, and other places where civil liberties don’t seem to apply for black folk.

    Malkin slyly quoted one of “[Mckesson’s] fellow peace-loving instigators” as saying, “[W]e’re setting the stage for a terrorist attack in this country, and the group is not going to be ISIS.” Malkin makes no real connection between Mckesson and the “fellow peace-loving instigators,” but she’ll rest on black fear to make TFA into an incubator of social upheaval.

    Packnett and Mckesson have grown accustomed to attacks; black and brown TFA Corps members are criticized from all sides. Progressives regularly accuse them of naively providing black faces for a white agenda. Now they are charged with being the source for race riots in America.

    At least Malkin credits blacks for being the masterminds of something. Black and brown corps members in TFA know too well that deficit thinking—the practice of making decisions based on negative assumptions about particular socioeconomic, racial and ethnic groups—usually casts them as sellouts, militants and/or pawns to someone else’s master plan. […]

    Now that TFA is browner—more than 50 percent of new members are people of color—will the money and prestige still pour to TFA? Will the organization and students still be considered smart?

    Certainly, people like Malkin will attack.

    But, I will never give up on young people of color wherever they are. Will you?

    I have your back.

  460. rq says

    OMG. Is this true?? Fox News Declared Hate Group By Southern Poverty Law Center

    In what should come as a surprise to no one, considering their coverage of unarmed black people being brutalized by the police, the Southern Poverty Law Center has added Fox News to their list of hate groups, as they meet the criteria.

    Time and time again, Fox News has shown their true colors with their own colorful language surrounding people of color and the LGBT community.

    From calling any black person who stands up in protest against the police “thugs” to thinking black people will “shank” officers, to glossing over a white biker gang that actually killed nine people, to thinking gay people are “persecuting” Christians with their audacity to think, they too can, should be able to file for taxes under “married.”

    Their hatred was tolerated for a long time as freedom of expression, which they are still free to do, however, the time has come to no longer ignore their obvious bigotry broadcast to millions of like-minded folks, and label them what they are — a hate group.

    Anyone with a Twitter account can see the hate spew from the likes of host Sean Hannity, who sees fit to not even hide his racism anymore. Not to forget, since the election of the first African-American president, Fox News has gone above and beyond to aid in spreading lies about President Obama. Those lies can be found everywhere from health care reform to whether the president prefers Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

    Fox News is what it is. The hosts are who they are. They are still free to broadcast daily, but the hate and lies will be no longer tolerated.

    WOW.

    #BlackTwitter Never Sleeps; Employer Suspends McKinney Woman After Videotaped Assault Goes Viral

    As chef-to-the-masses Paula Deen can attest, #BlackTwitter is nothing to trifle with. That is a lesson a McKinney, Texas woman learn the hard way, after video emerged of her assaulting a black teenager.

    Social media users kicked off a campaign to identify two white women at a pool party who were captured on tape, punching and pulling the hair of an African American girl. Within hours Tracey-Carver Allbritton was recognized. Her employer has since suspended her.

    Carver-Allbritton allegedly set off a disturbance at the Craig Ranch North swimming facility when she began hurling racial comments at a group of high school students. When challenged, she reportedly struck a 19-year-old in the face and a fight ensued. Residents called police to break up the fracas and to clear the area of people they said had “no right” to be there. […]

    The social justice group Dallas Communities Organizing for Change, which initially launched the crusade to identify Carver-Allbritton, believed she worked for Bank of America based on claims she made on her Facebook profile. An internal bank investigation revealed that she actually works for CoreLogic, a Bank of America vendor in its mortgage division.

    The company released a statement today, saying in part:

    “CoreLogic does not condone violence, discrimination or harassment and takes conduct that is inconsistent with our values and expectations very seriously,” the company said. “As a result of these pending allegations, we have placed the employee in question on administrative leave while further investigations take place.”

    The second woman on the tape was identified as Shannon Barber Toon. Her husband Sean, who has a prior criminal record—including, among other charges, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon– has been making the rounds on cable news channels.

    Asked for comments by the The Guardian about last week’s incident, Toon’s wife said in a text message: “He’s already made his statement on national television. Nothing more to say.”

    If #PaulasBestDishes is any indication, #BlackTwitter may have more to say yet. #SeanToon911 is the latest hashtag.

    I finally get that hashtag, at least.

    Rawlings-Blake on Batts: ‘I support the commissioner’, just a bunch about the police working hard and all that.

    The Burden of Bail, video.

    When Dominick Torrence was arrested in Baltimore and unable to make bail set at $250,000, his girlfriend was faced with child care and other responsibilities.

    Even short stays in jail can mess up an entire life.

    Mosby’s memo

    It is certainly ironic that a request from State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby for stepped-up drug enforcement in a part of West Baltimore may have helped lead to the sequence of events that left 25-year-old Freddie Gray dead and six police officers charged by Ms. Mosby with a range of offenses up to second-degree murder. But it hardly makes her the key witness in the cases against the officers that their attorneys now claim, nor should it preclude her from overseeing their prosecutions.

    On March 17, a Mosby deputy wrote an email to the Western District commander reporting that the state’s attorney had been contacted by members of the community who were concerned about drug dealing in the area of North Avenue and Mount Street, in particular because an open-air drug market was operating outside the offices of a mentoring organization there. “Let me know if you’re interested in working on an initiative and we can discuss further,” the deputy, Joshua E. Rosenblatt, wrote. Three days later, the commander, Osborne Robinson, forwarded the email to four lieutenants — including one of the officers now charged in Gray’s death — and ordered them to “conduct a daily narcotics initiative” in that area “effective immediately.” He added that he would “review daily measurable.” About three weeks later, officers made their fatal encounter with Gray in that exact area.

    The defense attorneys are making much of the idea that a suggestion from the state’s attorney to focus enforcement efforts in a particular place is unusual and had not previously occurred during Ms. Mosby’s four months in office. They also contend that Ms. Mosby was “directing these officers to one of the highest crime intersections in Baltimore City and asking them to make arrests, conduct surveillance and stop crime.”

    First, even if it’s unusual, we see nothing wrong with Ms. Mosby seeking to respond to her constituents’ complaints about drug dealing, whether or not it’s occurring in the district where she and her husband, City Councilman Nick Mosby, live. And second, the memo did not direct anyone to do anything. It was couched in terms of exploring collaboration, not ordering anyone to make arrests — and certainly not to chase down and handcuff someone simply because he ran after making eye contact with a police officer, nor to place him face-down with his hands and legs bound in the back of a police van with no seat belt or other safety device, nor to ignore his pleas for medical attention, all of which prosecutors allege occurred in the Gray case.

    The officers’ attorneys have thrown a fusillade of accusations at Ms. Mosby, most of them seemingly designed to embarrass her and undermine her credibility in the eyes of a potential jury pool. But in fairness, this one is at least connected with a legal issue that is likely to be central at trial. For some of the officers, it will be crucial to determine whether they had the legal right to chase, detain and search Freddie Gray simply because he ran away. (Police say Gray was carrying a knife that the officers believed to be illegal under city or state law, though they did not know that until after he had been detained and handcuffed.) The U.S. Supreme Court and Maryland courts have held that unprovoked flight from the police in a high crime area is sufficient to justify an investigatory stop.

    Whether what happened before the officers found the knife in Gray’s pocket fits the definition of an investigatory detention or that of an arrest will be an issue at trial, but so too will be the question of whether his flight occurred in a high crime area. And on that point, the defense attorneys are making the incredible claim that Ms. Mosby is a “central witness” because she would have to testify about the information she received from community members about drug dealing in the area. That’s simply preposterous. There are plenty of other ways to establish that the corner of North Avenue and Mount Street is a high-crime area more definitively than by Ms. Mosby’s account, not the least of which would be the testimony of the officers patrolling the area. That was all it took in Illinois v. Wardlow, the case in which the Supreme Court set the applicable constitutional standard.

    We have certainly not agreed with every step Ms. Mosby has taken in prosecuting this case, but that’s a far cry from saying she should be legally barred from doing so. The people of Baltimore elected her to represent the interests of justice and public safety. That’s what she did when she suggested collaborating with the police department to address community concerns about drug dealing, and that’s what she’s doing in bringing the officers’ cases before a judge and jury.

    Currently at the NorthEast District #WestWednesday #TyroneWest

  461. rq says

    Unfortunately, Fox News has not been declared a hate group (though it probably should be): Foxy Hate-y.

    Claim: The Southern Poverty Law Center has declared the Fox News Channel a hate group.

    Example: [Collected via Twitter, June 2015]

    So. Southern Poverty Law Center declares Fox News a hate group.

    Origins: On 10 June 2015, the web site Free Wood Post published an article declaring that the Fox News Channel had been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a legal advocacy organization known for its representation of victims of hate groups. The SPLC is also known for maintaining a list of hate groups, which they define as groups that “have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

    The Free Wood Post article reported that:

    In what should come as a surprise to no one, considering their coverage of unarmed black people being brutalized by the police, the Southern Poverty Law Center has added Fox News to their list of hate groups, as they meet the criteria.

    From calling any black person who stands up in protest against the police “thugs” to thinking black people will “shank” officers, to glossing over a white biker gang that actually killed nine people, to thinking gay people are “persecuting” Christians with their audacity to think, they too can, should be able to file for taxes under “married.”

    While many social media users (particularly on Twitter) took the headline at face value, Free Wood Post is a satirical web site that prominently features a “Satire Disclaimer” on their pages:

    Free Wood Post is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within FreeWoodPost.com are fiction, and presumably fake news.

    Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction.

    FreeWoodPost.com is intended for a mature, sophisticated, and discerning audience.

    The article was not dissimilar to a previous satirical piece published by the Free Wood Post in March 2012, claiming that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had reclassified the Fox News Channel “from a valid news source to that of satire.”

    Thanks, Tony, for bringing this to my attention! I guess I’m just not discerning enough. :) Or just too naively hopeful.

    Police Officer In Texas Pool Incident Resigns, just another media outlet getting in on the news.

    Bill Bratton attempts to clarify remarks on recruitment of black police officers

    New York City police commissioner William Bratton on Wednesday attempted to clarify controversial remarks he made about the recruitment of African American police officers.

    Bratton claimed his remarks to the Guardian had been taken out of context in a news story the paper published based on a two-part feature on the New York police department – but that had brought attention to what he said was the improving record of the NYPD in hiring black recruits.

    “The quotes are accurate, but the context in which they’re presented gives the quote a totally different context,” Bratton said at a press conference.

    Bratton said that when he had raised the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in stop-and-frisk tactics as one of the factors behind a difficulty in recruiting African American officers, he had meant that being the subject of such stops could discourage black people from applying.

    “Stop, question and frisk is not preventing people from coming on the job,” Bratton said on Wednesday. “It’s not something that prohibits them. What it might do, however, because of a negative interaction with a New York City police officer – why would they want to become a New York City cop when they feel that they’ve been inappropriately dealt with in stop, question and frisk?”

    In an interview on 20 May for the wide-ranging, two-part feature series on his police force that was published this week, Bratton had said: “We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them.”
    Advertisement

    The application process to join the NYPD includes, among other things, a complete criminal background check.

    Convicted felons are automatically disqualified from the NYPD applicant pool, as is anyone found guilty of a domestic violence charge or who has been dishonorably discharged from the military.

    A complicating factor was what Bratton called the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in stop-and-frisk incidents that caught many young men of color in the net by resulting in them being given a summons for a minor misdemeanor.

    As a result, Bratton said in the interview with Guardian contributor Donna Ladd, the “population pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been”.

    Summonses do not automatically disqualify a candidate, though they are taken into account during the application process. For example, a summons for disorderly conduct would not preclude a candidate from being accepted into the force, but repeated convictions for an offense that demonstrated “disrespect for the law” could result in disqualification.

    “The only absolute disqualifier is a felony conviction,” Bratton said at the press conference on Wednesday. “The others – even if you have misdemeanor arrests, summons activity, we will look at that, but it is not an automatic disqualifier, and under no circumstance has stop, question and frisk activity ever been a disqualifier, and that’s the impression that that Guardian story gave.”

    Bratton said on Wednesday that at one time, police department applications had included a question about whether the applicant had ever been the subject of stop-and-frisk. But answering “yes” would not have disqualified the applicant, he said.

    “We changed that question,” Bratton said at the press conference. “They were asked starting in 2009 and 10, ‘Have you been, basically the subject of a stop?’ We took a look at that as part of the changes we were making as part of the overall stop, question and frisk program. We changed that question. Because really it was not a qualifier … It’s really information that’s of no use or value to us in the application process.”

    Interlude: Music! Vic Mensa and Kanye West Release the Video For “U Mad”

    Roc Nation’s latest signee, Vic Mensa, just dropped the video for his latest single, “U Mad,” featuring Kanye West. In the Grant Singer-directed video, Vic and ‘Ye mob with their crew while all hell breaks loose, with lights flashing and sparks flying throughout.

    Along with the video, Vic participated in a special Q&A with his fans on his Tumblr, where talked about loving his fans, working on new music, and much more. As far as his next project, Traffic, Vic said that the next single is probably a song he has called “Rage,” which he says Beyoncé loves.

    Check out the highlights of his raw and uncut Tumblr Q&A below, and purchase the single on iTunes here.

    A small good news: The House Just Voted to Back Police Body Cameras

    The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution Wednesday urging local police forces to use body cameras, in the wake of several high-profile police shootings and nationwide calls for action to prevent police violence.

    Though the measure is purely symbolic and passed with 421 “aye” votes, even one of its architects said he didn’t think it had a good chance of coming to the floor. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri said he and the resolution’s chief sponsor, Rep. Al Green of Texas, asked for a meeting with Speaker John Boehner a few weeks ago.

    “We talked to him and said, ‘Look, it would be good if Congress could do something to let the country know that the nation’s legislative body is paying attention to what’s going on and we have concerns about police safety and civilian safety,'” Cleaver said. “And he said, ‘I agree.’ I know most people probably wouldn’t have expected that to be the outcome of the meeting.”

    Some Republicans in Congress have been reluctant to legislatively address the incidents in communities such as Cleveland, Ferguson, Missouri, and North Charleston, South Carolina. But Cleaver said he and Green, with the help of Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, crafted a resolution that could appeal to both Republicans and Democrats.

    The resolution supports police in their “continued work to serve our communities” and “their use of body worn cameras.”

    “We were concerned—I think this will address part of the issue in Ferguson—that a lot of those young people in Ferguson are saying, ‘All this tumult and confusion and no one is doing anything,'” Cleaver said. “So as we enter into torrid part of the summer, we wanted to be able to say, ‘Hey, look, here’s what we’ve done.'”

    This was a thing on twitter last night, actually rather funny to watch unfolding. And educational. Montel Williams Is Right: DeRay Mckesson Is ‘No MLK’ And That’s Just Fine

    Montel Williams, the former talk-show host best known for a program that ended over seven years ago, tweeted on Wednesday criticizing DeRay Mckesson, who is among the most widely recognized and respected young black civil rights activists.

    Twitter wasn’t too enthused with Williams’ attack — and neither was Mckesson. Still, he responded characteristically:

    Meanwhile, Twitter users came to Mckesson’s defense, including responses from The King Center:

    And, alas, no Twitter controversy can unfold without its very own hashtag; thus, #MontelWilliamsLogic was born.

    Yes. It’s clear Mckesson isn’t Martin Luther King Jr., the iconic civil rights leader often held up by older black folks as the only black activist worth emulating. Nor has Mckesson made any indication that he is trying to be. In fact, in a New York Times Magazine interview in which he expressed frustration with the way he felt MLK had wrongly been “held up as an avatar of genteel protest,” Mckesson also pointed to the decentralized leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement as one of its biggest strengths.

    It’s unfair for Williams to make such statements and, frankly, it is a poor attempt to erase the phenomenal work Mckesson has done, and continues to do. His efforts — just like the black lives he fights for — matter.

    Here are a few reminders of Mckesson’s many contributions to civil rights activism:

    Mckesson, along with other key Ferguson activists, was recognized as one of Fortune magazine’s “World’s Greatest Leaders” for his on-the-ground leadership in Ferguson, Missouri, during protests that followed the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

    He checked Wolf Blitzer’s privilege during the Baltimore uprising.

    Mckesson is one of the creators of the Ferguson Protester Newsletter — a roundup of tweets, news, photos and other resources for activists and supporters alike — which allows him to continue to support people in the city from any remote location.

    He built and spread word about a text messaging system that alerted people when the grand jury handed down its decision on whether to indict Darren Wilson.

    He constantly lets White America know, along with countless others, that there will be no justice or peace as long as black lives are treated without value or respect.

    He travels hours on end to protest in New York City; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; McKinney, Texas; Selma, Alabama; and any other city in the country in need of a reminder that #BlackLivesMatter.

    His Twitter timeline.

    And, just to amp up his awesomeness a bit more, Mckesson is one of 10 people followed by Beyoncé on Twitter. Is the Queen following you, Montel? NO, NO, SHE’S NOT.

    Meanwhile, Williams is spending his time these days as the spokesman for Money Mutual, a lead generator of payday loans, which, for the record, isn’t nearly as close to being beneficial to black people. African-Americans are the demographic most likely to take out these high-interest, short-term loans that are mostly used for everyday expenses — and that too often drill people further into debt.

    A rep for Williams said Wednesday that there was “no need” to comment and that they had been “hashed to death today.”

    There’s a response from a Montel Willians spokesperson at the link, too.

  462. rq says

    Debating whether to put this up or not, but here goes.
    Johnetta Elsie, one of the original Ferguson protestors, went to visit the site of Rekia Boyd’s death, with Rekia’s brother. She shared some thoughts on twitter.
    This is the park where Rekia was at with her friends. And they left, walking down the sidewalk.
    Dante Servin turned out the alley in his car. Words were exchanged with Rekia’s friends. Everyone kept walking.
    Dante Servin stopped the car, fired shots from in and out of the car. Bullets hit Rekia’s friend in the hand, and Rekia in the head.
    Pole by the alley where one of the bullets landed. And this is the alley where her body laid. #RekiaBoyd
    While Rekia’s brother and I were walking and talking Chicago PD drove up the one way street, turned into the alley.

    Rekia would’ve been 26 this year. #RekiaBoyd.

  463. rq says

    Officer inside patrol car fatally shoots unarmed man

    A Des Moines police officer fired her service weapon through the rolled-up window of her patrol car on Tuesday night, fatally shooting an unarmed man said to be charging at her car, according to police.

    Ryan Keith Bolinger, 28, of West Des Moines, died at the scene from a single gunshot to the torso. Police and witnesses said he led two officers on a slow chase through northwestern Des Moines Tuesday evening that ended with Bolinger exiting his vehicle and coming toward the squad car.

    “He was walking with a purpose,” Sgt. Jason Halifax of Des Moines Police said following a press conference Wednesday on the shooting.

    Senior Police Officer Vanessa Miller, a seven-year veteran, fired the round that killed Bolinger. Miller was assisting Senior Police Officer Ian Lawler, also a seven-year veteran, in the pursuit of Bolinger’s vehicle after a bizarre confrontation involving an unrelated vehicle stop that Bolinger interrupted.

    Both officers are on administrative leave until the investigation, is completed, per the department policy. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation will assist in the investigation.

    Halifax said he expects a grand jury ultimately will evaluate the case, though the department is also conducting its own internal investigation. Both Miller and Bolinger are white.

    Letter: Fox News seeking data from DOJ on Ferguson report

    Gun-rights supporter John Lott is working with Fox News to acquire the data that went into the Justice Department’s probe of the Ferguson police department, according to a letter from Lott posted on the Facebook page of Ted Nugent, an NRA board member. The letter indicates that the Justice Department has “declined” to cough up the information but that Fox News will “fight” for it. “I believe that the Ferguson report is badly flawed, and the Obama administration’s refusal to let anyone examine their research only heightens my concerns,” notes the letter.

    Lott is founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, which studies the “relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety.” He’s the author of the controversial book “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws”; has participated in some loud discussions about gun laws on cable news; and comes in for frequent criticism on the Media Matters site.

    In a brief chat with the Erik Wemple Blog, Lott declined to speak about his activities with Fox News or about the letter.

    The Justice Department evaluation of the Ferguson Police Department was released in March and issued this finding, among many others: “Ferguson’s approach to law enforcement both reflects and reinforces racial bias, including stereotyping.” The investigation went heavy on data, breaking down the Ferguson’s arrests, citations, summonses and other actions. In many cases, the data that go into the report are identified within its four corners. For example: “Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population,” notes the report.

    The Lott-letter-on-Nugent-Facebook-page also claims that Fox News is working on a fresh strain of news coverage relating to guns: “Fox News has agreed to start systematically publishing news stories about mass public shootings that have been stopped by concealed handgun permit holders,” writes Lott. “If you ever see a defensive gun use story, especially one that might involve a permit holder stopping a mass killing, please email me the link to the news story as soon as possible.” Fox News tells us this is not true. […]

    Here’s the official Justice Department line on this matter: “The Civil Rights Division has not received a request from Mr. Lott. The division’s FOIA office has received a request from Fox News. The department declined the request for documents as they related to an ongoing law enforcement proceeding.”

    This Man Speaking Out About The McKinney Pool Party Isn’t Telling The Full Story

    Surrounded by expensive homes and a lush green park, the pool in Craig Ranch, McKinney, has long functioned as a focal point for its community. Residents call the Dallas-area city an idyllic Texan town, and streets in the planned estate are referred to as “trails,” with names like Lonesome Spur, White Stallion, and Desert Dunes conjuring up images of the Old West. On hot summer days, parents and kids stroll from nearby designer brick homes to relax and cool off in the pool, which residents need a card to use. Sometimes the pool hosts movie nights, handing out popcorn as swimmers watch films on a large inflatable screen.

    “I love our neighborhood,” Craig Ranch resident Shannon Barber Toon, who has lived in McKinney for four years, told BuzzFeed News. “I love that I can walk my kids to the pool. We have friends of all races. You can always come out and find people to talk to.”

    Barber Toon went to the pool Friday night with her husband, Sean Toon, their two children, and her two female friends. Later that evening, though, the pool would become the latest flash point for America’s ongoing debate over race relations and police brutality. Sean Toon has claimed in multiple media interviews that the media has misrepresented the events, but Toon himself has failed to tell the full story.

    Tension broke out at the pool after dozens of mostly black teenagers had arrived for an end-of-school party that grew well beyond its planned size. There was a professional DJ playing music, but no tickets were sold and the organizers didn’t throw the party for profit, teens told BuzzFeed News. They also vehemently denied reports that some were using drugs or alcohol. Many kids had cards to the pool and others were using shared guest passes to gain entry, but when pool attendants stopped letting people in some began jumping the fence.

    Soon, the Toons and others called police. Teens fled, and one officer began frantically rounding up anyone he could. In video of the ensuing scenes, Cpl. Eric Casebolt is seen frantically barrel-rolling into frame, before ordering mostly black teens on to the ground, while their white classmates are left to stand by and film the events. After she and her friends were ordered by Casebolt to leave, Dajerria Becton, a black teen wearing only a bikini, was wrestled to the ground by the officer. When others ran to her, Casebolt briefly drew his firearm, sending them scrambling. He was then filmed sitting atop of Becton, his knees in her back as she wailed for her mother. […]

    In multiple media interviews, Sean Toon, 33, has promoted himself as a witness who is able to provide a clear, firsthand picture of the “chaos” unfolding at the pool on Friday night.

    “Watching 30 seconds or seven minutes of a clip, it doesn’t tell the whole story,” Toon told his local ABC affiliate WFAA. “I think [Casebolt] did what he thought he had to do to control the situation.” […]

    What Toon has failed to mention, though, is that he was part of a group of adults that, according to teens at the pool party, initially made racist comments to the mostly black youths, sparking a violent fight.

    “I’m 100% sure that he said, ‘You should go back to the Section 8 [public] housing where you’re from because you don’t belong in our neighborhood,’” Grace Stone, a 14-year-old white McKinney resident who defended her black friends, told BuzzFeed News. “That’s when I went off. I called him an asshole. He had no right to say that. You shouldn’t be that hateful. That’s when [one of Toon’s female acquaintances] came up to me and said, ‘You don’t talk to adults like that.’ She was saying I needed to do something with my life and find a nice path for myself.”

    Barber Toon acknowledged to BuzzFeed News the women she had been with at the pool were involved in the fight. After calling the police to complain of teens jumping the pool fence, she took her children home before the incident, leaving her husband with the two women.

    Tatyana Rhodes, a Craig Ranch resident who organized the party, echoed Stone’s version of events. “This lady was saying racial slurs to some friends who came to the cookout,” Rhodes said in a YouTube interview with photographer Elroy Johnson. “She was saying things such as ‘black f**cker’ and, ‘That’s why you live in Section 8 homes.’”

    “There was also a male that was saying rude things,” she said. Emmanuel Obi, the lawyer now representing Rhodes, refused to allow BuzzFeed News to speak with his client to identify those she said made the racist comments.

    Twitter: @k1dmars

    The verbal confrontation soon became physical and a fight broke out between Rhodes and Toon’s two acquaintances, one of whom is a McKinney resident who has since deleted her Facebook page after her name was shared by activists on social media. Cell phone footage of the fight doesn’t show who became physical first, but Rhodes has alleged she was slapped by one of the women.

    McKinney police spokesman Officer Terry Qualls would not comment directly on the fight between the adults and teens, but did tell BuzzFeed News “the whole incident at the pool is the subject of investigation.” […]
    On Fox, Toon also denied anyone making racist comments, saying that the teens were accusing the adult residents of racism for simply objecting to their boisterous behavior at the pool.

    When asked by BuzzFeed News on Monday night whether she recalled her husband or anyone making any racist comments to the teens, Shannon Barber Toon said, “That’s where it’s a little fuzzy for me. I know there were people yelling at each other. The only racial thing I heard was spoken by some of the black girls inside the pool area saying, ‘They just want to kick us out because we black.’”

    “I know I heard somebody say something about Section 8 housing,” she said. “But I don’t know who said it. I honestly don’t remember who said what.” […]
    After replaying his comments on Tuesday morning, the Fox & Friends hosts cut to an interview conducted with local black activist Dominique Alexander, who was highly critical of Casebolt’s tactics. The Fox News hosts then questioned Alexander’s criminal history, citing a Dallas Morning News report to say that he had “somewhat of a checkered past.”

    What the Fox hosts didn’t make clear, though, was that Toon, who has publicly supported the heavy law enforcement response, also has an extensive criminal background. Records show that in 1999 he was convicted of felony criminal mischief. According to an APBNews.com article posted to a chat group in 1999, Toon was among four teens charged with breaking into a barn, beating at least 12 turkeys to death, and spray-painting the animals with his school’s colors to celebrate a football victory. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed to BuzzFeed News he spent 285 days in jail. Records show he was also arrested in 1999 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

    Toon’s name, criminal past, and mugshots have been circulating on social media where he has been labeled a “racist,” “bigot,” and “white thug.” He told Fox News he was worried about the safety of his family amid the protests. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls. A lot of people wanting to talk to us and based on what we’ve seen on some of the Facebook and people on Twitter…I think we have good reason to be a bit concerned,” he said.

    The Counted: number of people killed by police this year reaches 500 . So fast.

    Interlude: poetry! Claudia Rankine’s Anti-Racist “Citizen” Shortlisted for Forward Poetry Award

    The Guardian confirmed yesterday that Citizen, the latest work from poet and Pomona College professor Claudia Rankine, was shortlisted for the Forward, one of the best-regarded poetry prizes in the UK. The work, which has already won a National Book Critics Circle Award in the poetry category (also having been nominated in the criticism category—a first for the NBCC Awards), has been widely recognized for breaking poetic convention and using lyric essay and visual media in the service of describing contemporary racisim. Says The Guardian about this work:

    Running to 160 pages, Citizen, subtitled An American Lyric, eschews the likes of iambic pentameter and rhyme to command the reader’s attention with a second-person present narrative laying out a series of incidents in which black Americans – sometimes the Jamaica-born Rankine herself – encounter racism. Rankine also includes photo reels of Zinedine Zidane’s 2006 World Cup head butt, Obama’s oath of office and JMW Turner’s painting The Slave Ship. The Forward prize called it “a bold challenge to historic definitions of poetic form”.

    Commenting on the likelihood that Citizen will receive criticism on the basis of its non-traditional structure, Forward prize judge Carrie Etter said the following:

    “People who insist that poetry is only poetry if it’s in lines are missing out. As Citizen is in prose, I anticipate some readers’ definition of poetry will exclude it, and so some may object to its inclusion on the list. So be it.”

    Chance the Rapper Plans Free Chicago Festival Just For Teens

    Rapper, entertainer, and Chicago’s preeminent supporter of teens Chance the Rapper has announced his latest youth-related endeavor. As the Fader points out, the Acid Rap architect and Surf showman slipped the news that he’d be curating a new Chicago festival called Teens In Parks, and its set to go down on June 24 on Northerly Island. The lineup isn’t out in full yet, but the Livenation event reports that local bop star Dlow will play, and DNAinfo reports that Chance’s Social Experiment crony Donnie Trumpet will also perform. Donda’s House, the Art Institute and other groups will also put on activities like graffiti art, jewelery-making, and more.

    The fest is free, but if you’re not between the ages of 13 and 24 (or chaperoning a teen), you won’t be able to attend. You can RSVP over at the Livenation page now, provided you are within the proper age range. This one’s for the kids.

  464. rq says

    2015 Gale/LJ Library of the Year: Ferguson Municipal Public Library, MO, Courage in Crisis

    The Ferguson Municipal Public Library (FMPL), MO, became a model for all libraries in the way it reacted to the crisis and the aftermath of riots brought on by the shooting of Michael Brown, a young African American man, by local police.

    The little FMPL, with its part-time staff, a growing cadre of volunteers and partners, and its director and sole full-time employee, was the one agency in town that stayed open to serve and support all the people of Ferguson. The library quickly became a safe haven and expressed a peaceful resolve, becoming a critical community anchor. Proud of FMPL, librarians nationwide reacted, as did media large and small, and all who heard of the library’s calm leadership.

    “The Ferguson Library provided the example for all of us to live up to. It behaved as all of us hope that we would behave if confronted by a similar situation,” writes Steven V. Potter, director and CEO of the Mid-Continent Library System in nearby Independence. All too soon, that example was called into play, as Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library looked to FMPL for a model in April 2015, when the city was racked by sometimes-violent protest following the funeral of Freddie Gray, an African American man who died in police custody.

    FMPL Director Scott Bonner himself says what FMPL did is what libraries do after tornadoes in Joplin, during hurricanes in New England, and at many other times. “I think libraries step up all the time. There is always tension between do you open to serve your public or do you play it safe,” Bonner says.

    Inspired by the ongoing creative response in Ferguson and the way that work has elevated the public perception of all libraries, Potter initiated a nomination for FMPL for the Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, and Library Journal 2015 Library of the Year, which was submitted by the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) and signed by more than 100 directors of the most prestigious U.S. libraries. From a competitive field, the judges selected Ferguson.

    More on Ferguson and the library at the link.

    We march the entire distance of the chase to show the absurdity of it all #137Shots That’s Cleveland, where Brelo was recently acquitted
    America #137Shots
    Steelyard #137shots

    Yesterday I tweeted about a black woman’s tears.. and later read this poem by @SonofHughes

    i’m still angry
    about Mike Brown
    just because
    i haven’t tweeted about it
    doesn’t mean
    i’ve stopped wishing for
    every black mother’s tear
    to purge this world
    with no ark
    to save you

  465. rq says

    Developments (pretty major) in Tamir Rice case. Tomorrow. But essentially, a judge finds probably cause to bring charges against the officers, due to the special petition submitted by activists. Good news, here’s to hoping!

  468. rq says

    The McKinney, Texas pool party: More proof that ‘black children don’t get to be children’

    Eric Casebolt did something right: He resigned from the McKinney, Tx., police force four days after a Texas pool party in a Dallas suburb became the latest red dot of racial tension on the national map. Not that he really had any choice. His reprehensible and, according to the McKinney police chief, “indefensible” treatment of a bikini-clad 15-year-old African American girl was caught on video.

    But after watching the full seven-minute video of Casebolt’s horrific treatment of Dejerria Becton, the headline on a powerful and important November 2014 opinion piece by Stacey Patton for The Post summed up my feelings perfectly: “In America, black children don’t get to be children.”

    Lord knows what really happened to spark the chaos. Tatiana Rhodes said it was two white women who uttered racial insults to her and her pool guests. an altercation between two adults. Benét Embry said it was “a pool party run amok” by teens who didn’t live in the Craig Ranch suburb north of Dallas scaling the fence to get to the community pool. To be honest, I don’t quite care. Calling the cops was fine. What they did once they got there is what’s at issue. And what we watched Casebolt do to Dajerra was unconscionable.

    Lawsuit: Hialeah police dog mauled teen’s crotch. At least the teen is alive.

    Javarius Ragin and his mother filed the suit against Hialeah police, saying the teen was the victim of excessive force and was not afforded proper medical care immediately after the December 2013 attack.

    The lawsuit says that Ragin’s penis was “literally ripped open” and the teen suffered massive bleeding. Emergency-room doctors later had to stitch him up, causing extensive scarring, according to his lawyer.

    “He may also be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,” defense attorney Rod Vereen said. “This is yet another example of law enforcement using excessive force when none was needed.”

    Hialeah police referred calls to the city’s legal department; the city attorney could not be reached for comment on Monday.

    Back on Christmas Day 2013, Hialeah police pulled over a car that had been reported stolen. Four young men inside bailed out and began running. Ragin, then 14 years old, says he was only a passenger.

    According to the suit, Hialeah Lt. Margaret Daniels saw Ragin hide in an unlocked shed. Officer Earles Gonzalez opened the door and ordered Diesel to attack even though “Ragin was a juvenile and standing with his hands up in the air,” the federal lawsuit alleges.

    “Ragin was screaming and hollering and trying to fight off the attack,” according to the suit.

    Hialeah officers would not call for paramedics, although Ragin was eventually admitted to Palmetto General Hospital. According to the lawsuit, the officers failed to document the use of force against Ragin, spurring a complaint by Ragin to Hialeah’s internal affairs bureau.

    Ragin was charged with grand-theft auto, resisting with violence and unoccupied burglary. According to his lawyer, the charges were dropped after he completed a program for first-time juvenile offenders.

    Seen in tweets before, now in glorious article format: Art display pulled from Maryland school after complaints. Now they’re trying to get it back.

    An art exhibit has been pulled from the lobby of a Prince George’s County high school after the school received complaints that it was offensive.

    Honors students at Oxon Hill High School were given an assignment to create a display that shows what social justice means to them. The exhibit was in the school’s lobby for weeks. It was taken down on Monday.

    The display featured a white police officer reading an obituary section. Next to that was a figure of a black man in a blood-stained shirt with his hands up.

    After a picture of the exhibit spread online, some people said it was disrespectful to law enforcement officers. Others did not have a problem with it. There were mixed opinions on the streets Tuesday.

    “People, black males in specific, are getting killed off a lot by police and it’s happening more often,” said former student Kiana Harris.

    “Was it the right choice to take it down?” FOX 5’s Matt Ackland asked another woman. “I think so. I think so,” she said.

    “It’s honestly what the kids think. It’s what they see, man. And it’s pretty much what they feel,” said resident Dwayne Shafer.

    Tuesday night, people in support of the display began using the hashtag #donttakeitdown on Twitter.

    In a statement, Prince George’s County Public Schools acknowledged that the display has been removed. They said, “While we encourage this type of evaluation, expression and analysis in our school district, we also strive to foster a civil and respectful culture.”

    I don’t see anything uncivil. They asked for social justice, they got an interpretation of what that means, and perhaps they should have questioned why they chose these specific images? I think the students did a stellar job, and the school’s decision-makers are idiots for being too scared to leave it up.

    #DontTakeItDown: High School Students’ Much-Needed Social Media Campaign To Keep Police Brutality Art Displayed, another article.

    “Hello all, My name is Raissa Tchetcho and I attend Oxon Hill High School. Recently, our extremely talented honors art students created a piece to showcase how brutal the police have been to the African American community. Slaughtering them, whether they be innocent or armless. The piece included statistics and our viewpoints on what has been going on in society. It was truly an amazing and heartfelt display. Unfortunately we were not able to keep it up in our building. Words and pictures got out and some people felt offended by the work and we were forced to remove it. This action has left us so heartbroken, but we will not give up that easily. Please, we need your help to bring it back. It everyone could tweet the hashtag #Donttakeitdown at 10:30 pm tonight and make the picture of our art your header, we could possibly make it trend and gain some attention. This is not just about Oxon Hill, it’s about our voices being silenced. We REFUSE to be denied or right to freedom, not when WE are getting killed. Everyday.”

    Point well made, and by a high school student no less. This generation is fired up and wants to see real change in systematic racism in America. This is so refreshing and lovely display of how social media can help spark and carry on major conversations around race, police brutality and equality.

    The art is stunning, well done and needed. It’s symbolically moving that the artist used bullet holes with blood to represent the American flag. It represents everything about America’s history of systematic racism and has obviously caused a stir, since it’s been taken down by the school’s powers that be. “Words and pictures got out and some people felt offended by the work and we were forced to remove it,” Raissa wrote.

    Social media has erupted in support of Oxon Hill students who want to keep the conversation going:

    So please, if you think this conversation is important, especially for high school students, share the above photo and hashtag. #DontTakeItDown

    There’s a link to an article on black achievement within that article, well worth a read, too!

    Woman Involved in McKinney Pool Fight Put on Administrative Leave by Employer

    A Texas woman accused of being part of an initial fight that prompted a harshly criticized police response at a McKinney, Texas, pool party last Friday has been placed on administrative leave by her employer, with the company stating that it does not condone “violence, discrimination or harassment.”

    “CoreLogic does not condone violence, discrimination or harassment and takes conduct that is inconsistent with our values and expectations very seriously,” the employer, CoreLogic Inc., a major financial data and analytics firm, said in a prepared statement given to The Root Thursday. “As a result of these pending allegations, we have placed the employee in question on administrative leave while further investigations take place.”

    A company representative identified the individual placed on administrative leave as Tracey Carver and told The Root that Carver is employed in its tax division and based in Richardson, Texas, which is near McKinney.
    […]

    The Daily Kos reports that a Twitter campaign to identify two white women who allegedly made racist comments that culminated in the fight had led to the identification of Carver as one of those women.

    In the video, one still-unidentified woman is seen struggling with the black girl before a group of black teens attempt to separate the pair. At that point, Carver walks in. At first she appears to be trying to separate the two also before she is seen repeatedly punching the top of the young girl’s head.

    The fight doesn’t last long, and the two groups separate shortly afterward amid some yelling.

    An 18-year-old has hanged himself in a Rikers Island jail cell yesterday. #KenanDavis #KaliefBrowder #RaiseTheAge What the fuck is it with Rikers?

    Twitter activists began questioning why the two women, who were obviously involved, had not been arrested or even questioned for their role in instigating the altercation, and it didn’t take savvy users long to tag Carver.

  469. rq says

    10 minute audio: Zerlina Maxwell Explains Why #McKinney Cpl Casebolt’s Actions Are Characteristic Of Sexual Assault. It’s… a strong perspective.

    Cops Shooting at Cars: A Really Bad Idea

    It’s a scene straight out of a movie: a cop grabs his gun to shoot at a suspect driving towards him. He pulls the trigger, firing a single bullet . The car rolls to a stop, and the suspect slumps behind the wheel.

    “This is nonsense,” says Geoffrey Alpert, a policing expert at the University of South Carolina. In reality, he explains, the scenario plays out much differently: police officers who shoot at moving cars miss their targets far more than they hit them, unintentionally striking nearby bystanders.

    “A bullet is simply no match for 2,000 pounds of moving projectile,” says Thomas Streed, a San Diego psychologist and former homicide detective.

    In recent years, law enforcement agencies across the country have introduced stricter policies dictating when officers can justifiably shoot into moving vehicles. This week, Denver issued new, more detailed rules stating that officers can only shoot at moving vehicles if an occupant is using deadly force against the officers, such as firing a gun. The policy change followed the death in January of Jessica Hernandez, a 17-year-old girl who was shot and killed by two officers while she was behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle. Officers say she drove towards them and refused to stop. No charges were pressed against the officers.

    Similar incidents have prompted law enforcement agencies across the country to adopt stricter rules. In 2011, Miami Beach officers fired 116 rounds into an erratic car, killing the drunk driver and injuring four bystanders. In 2012, Cleveland law enforcement disciplined 12 officers who fired a combined 137 shots at a fleeing vehicle, killing the two suspects inside. In neither incidents did the suspects threaten officers with guns.

    Based on recommendations from Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, police officials in Miami Beach and Cleveland revised their use-of-force policies after those incidents, instructing officers not to shoot at moving vehicles except when fired at first. “Even if a guy is trying to escape, has he done something that justifies the death penalty?” says Alpert.

    The challenge for police departments, says Jim Bueermann, a former police chief who heads the Police Foundation, is crafting a policy that is flexible enough to accommodate the unpredictable nature of police work.

    The next task is getting word out to the rank-and-file about those new rules. According to Lt. John Stanford, a Philadelphia police spokesman, when the department tried to implement policy changes, officers were repeatedly informed of those changes in daily team meetings and were subsequently asked to “sign-off on a written copy of the updated policy.”

    But while law enforcement agencies have largely heeded calls for reform, those changes will be tested when officers are reacting in the moment. Since 2002, despite instructions from top brass to limit using their guns against moving vehicles, Philadelphia police officers have “shot 43 people in vehicles, killing eight of them,” according to a report in Philly.com.

    Officers only have a “nanosecond or maybe a bit more to factor in all the criteria,” says Streed, before deciding whether to pull their guns out. He describes an officer’s typical physiological reaction in the moment: “Their hearts start beating fast, they begin breathing heavily, and they have a narrowing of vision.”

    Under these circumstances and with little time to assess a situation, how do officers make sound decisions about firing their guns at vehicles? The solution, says Wexler, is to never reach that point. Let suspects escape in their cars without confrontation, and “get a warrant.”

    Here’s the first info on Tamir Rice: Tamir Rice: judge finds cause for murder charge over police killing of 12-year-old

    A judge in Ohio said on Thursday he had found probable cause to charge a police officer with murder for the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year.

    Judge Ronald Adrine of the Cleveland municipal court said there were grounds to prosecute officer Timothy Loehmann with murder, manslaughter, reckless homicide and negligent homicide.

    Adrine also found there was probable cause for a charge of negligent homicide against officer Frank Garmback, Loehmann’s partner, who was present when Tamir was shot at a park on 22 November while holding a pellet gun.

    The judge’s recommendation, however, was brushed aside by Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, who pledged to proceed as planned with having a grand jury decide on whether the officers should be charged.

    “This case, as with all other fatal use of deadly force cases involving law enforcement officers, will go to the grand jury,” McGinty said in a statement. “That has been the policy of this office since I was elected. Ultimately, the grand jury decides whether police officers are charged or not charged.

    In a 10-page ruling, Judge Adrine wrote that after viewing surveillance video, which shows Tamir being shot dead within two seconds of Loehmann’s arrival, he was “still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly”.

    The judge said Tamir was given “little if any time” to respond to any commands from the officers, that his arms were not raised, and that he made no “furtive movement”. Adrine wrote: “Literally, the entire encounter is over in an instant.”

    Adrine noted that his role remained “advisory in nature” and that any charges must be brought by prosecutors for the city of Cleveland or Cuyahoga County.

    However Walter Madison, an attorney for Tamir’s family, said on Thursday that he knew of no legitimate impediment to a prosecution and that Loehmann and Garmback should be arrested and arraigned in court.

    “We are very much relieved and it is a step towards procedural justice and people having access to their government,” Madison told the Guardian.

    The ruling followed community leaders taking advantage of a little-known law to appeal directly to the judge to commence a prosecution of the officer, as is permitted in Ohio and a few other states.

    “State law does provide an avenue for a private citizen having knowledge of facts to initiate the criminal process,” Adrine wrote in his order.

    Madison said the decision showed “the police are public servants and not the public’s master”.

    I don’t know what the prosecutor is doing here anymore. He confuses me. The judge’s advice seems sound.

    Probable cause for the charges: murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide, dereliction of duty. Ofc Loehmann.
    Probable cause found for charges: negligent homicide and dereliction of duty charges Ofc Garmback. #TamirRice

    Activists calls for arrest in 12-year-old’s shooting death, CNN video.

    Hey, there was Martese Johnson, the one who lived! Because he didn’t get shot. Charges against Virginia student injured in violent arrest expected to be dropped

    Criminal charges against a University of Virginia student who was injured in a violent arrest at a bar in March are expected to be dropped on Friday morning, the Guardian has learned.

    Martese Johnson’s arrest was filmed on another student’s cellphone, after Johnson was stopped by alcohol beverage control (ABC) agents on 17 March. Blood poured down his face while officers handcuffed him as he lay prone.

    The footage, which showed Johnson yelling to the officers as they restrained him that he attended the university and that they were being racist, went viral.

    Johnson is black and the officers who arrested him are white. The incident became part of the national debate on race and the use of force by the police, whichhas been raging since an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.

    Hundreds of students protested on campus, drawing comment from college president Teresa Sullivan, and Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe ordered a review and retraining for state alcohol enforcement officers.

    Johnson, who was underage, was detained after a dispute about whether he used a fake ID to get into a bar on a strip opposite the UVA campus in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident was considered unusual, despite a boisterous bar life off campus.

    The 17-year-old was handcuffed and shackled at the ankles and bundled into a police van. He was later taken to hospital, where he had stitches and staples put in a deep gash in his head and was treated for cuts and bruises to his head and face.

    He was charged with public drunkenness and obstruction of justice and appeared in court later that month.

    On Friday morning, he is due in court with his lawyer, Daniel Watkins of the law firm Williams Mullen, based in Richmond, Virginia. The prosecution is expected to announce that it will no longer pursue the charges.

    Johnson was not available for comment on Thursday and Williams Mullen declined to issue a comment. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that it is understood the charges will be dropped.

    A spokesman for McAuliffe said that the governor’s review of the ABC agency was ongoing.

  470. rq says

    … And the first Tamir Rice information goes into moderation.

    BeyGood: Beyonce’s Trip To Haiti Is Even More Inspiring (VIDEO)

    A couple weeks ago Beyonce took a trip to Haiti to explore the country five years after it was hit by an earthquake that killed thousands. During her trip Beyonce spoke with residents and visited local programs that have worked endlessly to restore confidence and faith in their community. In particular, Beyonce visited the country’s only children’s hospital that is in need of financial support to continue it’s daily operations.

    Now, an official video of her trip has been released giving us even more of a reason to love the Queen Bey herself. We just can’t help ourselves!

    Those looking to join Beyonce in her efforts are encouraged to visit the official BeyGood site to find out how they can get in on all the fun.

    .@ShaunKing – #KarenFitzgibbons was just relieved of her duties for her disgusting post! #BlackLivesMatter @deray, that’s the teacher who came out in support of segregation.

    The only “race card” I’m familiar with is the Dompas that the racist Apartheid government made people of color carry.

    Keeping black people away from white swimming pools is an American tradition

    To many, the story is just another addition to a recent series of high-profile incidents in which police have been accused of misconduct against African-Americans, a topic that has made regular headlines since the police shooting of unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

    But the setting here — a swimming pool where black kids were swiftly identified as outsiders and reportedly subjected to racial hostility for daring to be there, whether they were invited guests or not — means it has its own unique context.

    There’s a case to be made that the very existence of private pools like the one in McKinney was a response to the end of legal segregation of municipal pools in the late 1940s and early ’50s. In other words: many white people preferred to build their own pools than enjoy this type of recreation side by side with their black neighbors.

    That’s according to Jeff Wiltse, the the author of Contested Waters, a book about the history of controversy surrounding America’s public pools.

    In a 2007 interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, he provided this interesting piece of insight into the anxiety around intimate contact with black people, which he said made resistance to integrating swimming pools even more contentious than integrating schools in some cases:

    And so the concern among white swimmers and public officials that if blacks and whites swam together at these resort pools in which the culture was highly sexualized, that black men would assault white women with romantic advances, that they would try to make physical contact with them, and that this was unacceptable to most northern whites …

    … There was a court case that emerged added an attempt by the local NAACP to desegregate the municipal pools in Baltimore. And this was right after Brown v. Board of Education. And so the local attorney argued that, well, schools may be being desegregated, but we can’t have swimming pools be desegregated because swimmers come in potentially intimate contact with one another.

    And so a federal judge upholding racial segregation of Baltimore pools reconciled his decision with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision by claiming that pools were more sensitive than schools, and that to integrate a swimming pool would not just potentially, likely lead to race riots and all sorts of violence.

    And so in the interest of the public good it was reasonable to keep swimming pools segregated along racial lines, even though the Supreme Court had ruled separate but equal was unconstitutional at schools.

    (You can listen to the entire interview or read the transcript at NPR.)

    There’s of course not legally enforced racial segregation anymore, and it’s doubtful that any of the white residents of McKinney — even the one who allegedly directed the kids back to Section 8 housing — would say they were squeamish about physical contact with African Americans.

    But the residential segregation that made it possible for the black kids who were seen as outsider the pool to be so easily identified, and for their presence to cause such intense offense, is a reminder that some of the sentiments that fueled separate-but-equal swimming in this country still linger.

    And more on the history of segregation and swimming pools: Fairground Park: The History We Choose to Forget

    In 1912, three years after Fairground was dedicated as a public park, the city began construction of a swimming pool on the site of the former fair’s amphitheater. It was the first municipal pool in the city of St. Louis and, just as the amphitheater had been the largest in the country, the original Fairground Park pool was the largest in the world. It had a diameter of 440 feet, almost one and a half times the length of a football field, and hosted between 10,000 and 12,000 swimmers per day.1

    For 37 years the pool provided an escape from the summer heat, but only for white patrons. In 1949, St. Louis city officials decided to open the pool to the city’s black residents in response to a federal court’s holding that prohibiting blacks from using public golf courses was a violation of the 14th amendment.2

    On June 21, 1949, opening day for the city’s pools, about thirty African American children entered the pool and swam with white children without incident. However, as they were swimming, a group gathered outside of the pool’s fence shouting threats at the African American swimmers. City police were called in to escort the black children out of the park when the swimming period ended around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Conflicting eyewitness reports suggest simultaneously that the children were not subject to violence while they were under the police escort and that despite the police escort, white teenagers would periodically strike the black children without police reprisal. Reports of violence against African American youths were called into the city police throughout the 3 and 4 o’clock hours on this day.3

    By 6:45 p.m., witnesses reported that a crowd of several hundred had gathered. Only 20 to 30 of the people gathered were African American youths. White boys with baseball bats surrounded a group of black boys, one of who was said to have a knife, and beat one of the African American youths until a police officer fell on top of the victim to stop the attack. At this point, the riot report suggests, the original crowd of several hundred swelled to the thousands as other park users and baseball fans on their way to Sportsman’s Park heeded the apparently false cry that an African American boy had killed a white youth. The violence that resulted required the involvement of nearly 150 police officers. Relative order was established by the 10 o’clock hour, though crowds did not disperse completely until after midnight.4 The mayor immediately reinstituted segregation policies in order to minimize the potential for future violence. […]

    LIFE Magazine publicized the riot to a national audience in its July 4, 1949 issue, reporting eight arrests as a result of the violence, and noting that seven of the eight people arrested were injured. The magazine, however, did not provide information about the racial identities of those arrested or injured, instead highlighting the criminality and the bodily harm. However, the official report states that only seven people – three whites and four blacks – were arrested; this despite the fact that, of the six people who were seriously injured, five were African American. Three African Americans and one of the white youths who were arrested were ultimately charged with inciting a riot according to the official report.5 LIFE also claimed that 400 police officers intervened to restore order, as opposed to 150 officers as stated in the official report. These conflicting reports are probably the result of the purpose of each of these publications as the official report was to provide the political record of the event whereas the LIFE Magazine article played upon national concerns about racial integration. […]

    We don’t talk about this part of our history because it forces us to confront the city’s racial divisions. However, not talking about the riot does not mitigate its effects on the city’s racial history or its effects on the city’s current racial climate. In 1950, the year after the riot, public pools were integrated once more, this time without incident. Within the first year after integration, though, attendance at the Fairground Park Pool decline by 80%.7 By 1954, the pool was no longer profitable enough to be maintained appropriately, and the city closed it down. Between 1950 and 1960, the population of the city of St. Louis dropped by 107,000 residents while the number African American residents increased by 10%. The demographic shift created by white flight from the city began in earnest at the same time that the Fairground Park Pool became an integrated facility.

    I do not mean to imply that white residents left the city because the pool was integrated, but rather, I believe that the pool and the riot are symbolic of larger social issues with respect to race in the mid-20th century. At the time, city officials sought to quell fears of the effects of racial integration though the actions of city residents suggest that the political rhetoric had little effect. In retrospect, it is clear that the Fairground Park Pool riot was a more significant occurrence than city officials were willing to admit. To ignore the riot is to ignore the history of race relations in St. Louis. And to ignore the history is to ignore the legacy that shapes race relations in our city today.

    Videos Show Cops Pepper Spray and Tase Man as Jaywalking Incident Escalates

    A New York man is claiming that Schenectady officers used a stun gun and pepper spray on him after he jaywalked last week and refused to submit to a body search, in an incident that was partially captured in two separate cell phone videos.

    Shaquille Parker, 22, alleged that the June 3 incident began when he crossed a road in front of a bus while traffic had the green light, theDaily Gazette reported. Parker claimed the driver was stopped and had motioned him to cross, but when he got to the other side, an officer stopped him and asked for identification.

    Parker said he gave his ID but refused to submit to a search when the cop asked. Parker later told the Gazette, where he works as a mailroom sorter, that he had marijuana on him, but that the officer did not know that at the time the he stopped him. Officers were reportedly in the neighborhood on June 3 to respond to “nuisance activities.”

    The cop then reportedly told Parker to put his hands up against a wall. Parker refused, and started walking away. Witness’s footage of the incident begins with the officer following Parker down the residential street. At one point, the cop lifts his hand to Parker’s face, which is when he alleges he was pepper sprayed. In the same 2 ½ minute clip, two other officers can then be seen running up to the pair, before one fires his stun gun, bringing Parker to the ground, where he is then cuffed by officers. Parker says he was sprayed again after the backup officers arrived at the scene.

    “It was definitely excessive, excessive, because, I mean, all I wanted to do was go home,” Parker told the Gazette.

    Of course, Parker is now charged with second-degree assault. And a few other of the usual things.

  471. says

    Miami police officer fatally shoots homeless man .

    A man who may have been armed with a metal pipe was shot and killed by a Miami Police officer in a park, according to police.
    The incident occurred Thursday afternoon at Gibson Park located at 350 Northwest 13th Street in Overtown. The park is near a YMCA and dozens of children were playing nearby as part of summer camp activities, according to witnesses.

    Officers responded to the scene around 10 a.m. after receiving calls about a violent disturbance at the park.
    Witnesses say that the man, who they claim is homeless, was holding a metal stick or pipe and would not drop it when commanded to do so by police, so the person was shot.

    “There’s a pipe on the scene,” Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes said, adding that he didn’t know if the man had the pipe in his hand. “The pipe is there and like I said, the mechanics of the confrontation we won’t know until we interview the witnesses.”
    Police said the officer involved is Antonio Torres, a 20-year veteran of the department.

    The nature of the violent disturbance was not immediately clear.
    Antoine Ezell is the maintenance man at the park. He said the homeless man had a routine there every morning.

    “To sit down and go to the library and use the computer, read the newspaper, that’s his thing every morning and wait for me to open up the door,” he said. “Man, for that to happen to a guy like that, no I don’t understand that.”
    Ezell was critical of the officer’s actions.

    “Now there is just a lot of noise, man. One officer pulled out his Taser and another officer pulled out his gun and that was it. He didn’t have to shoot them though, I can tell you that much,” he said. “There was no need for it, he didn’t really put up a big fight or come at them like that for him to shoot him. It was non-threatening man. To do that in front of all them kids.”
    Miami Fire Rescue confirm that they transported the man to Ryder Trauma Center. He later died at the hospital. His identity hasn’t been released.
    One witness said she saw the man raise the pipe toward officers.
    “[The officer] stopped the man, the man had the metal stick, pointed it at him, the next thing you know the man shot him,” Stephanie Severance said.
    “That man is somebody’s uncle, somebody’s brother, somebody’s cousin, somebody’s daddy,” one witness said. “That man still has a family that is out here somewhere, just because he is homeless don’t mean you are supposed to take his life.”
    The shooting is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
    Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Police union, said Torres is a firearms instructor and a field training officer. He said the officer had no option but to fire his gun.
    “The FOP is confident that when the independent investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is completed, it will find that our officer involved acted within the law,” Ortiz said in a statement.

    No clue what the victim’s race was, but I have a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t white.

  472. rq says

    What an image. #donttakeitdown @deray @Nettaaaaaaaa RT @SumdimaB @UncensorUs Talk about creativity! Those are the students at Oxon, whose art project was deemed offensive and uncivil and an insult to police officers. I guess they’re trying again.

    The False Promise of Black Political Representation

    The recent unrest in Baltimore, Ferguson, and other cities is puzzling in one important respect. Unlike in earlier eras, when African Americans’ political exclusion drove them to protest, blacks today are as likely to vote as whites and are well represented at all levels of government. The mayor of Baltimore and a majority of its city council are black. So are forty-five members of Congress—an all-time high. And, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, so is the current occupant of the White House. Why all the turmoil, then, at a time when blacks—finally—seem to be enjoying the fruits of American democracy?

    One answer is that the appearance of black political clout is deceiving. Despite their gains in participation and representation, blacks continue to fare worse than whites in converting their policy preferences into law. This poor performance is more revealing than statistics on turnout or black electoral success. And even though its causes remain mysterious, it is very much a rationale for frustration with the status quo.

    In a recent study, I analyzed group political power at the federal and state levels. At the federal level, I relied on a remarkable database compiled by Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens. It includes responses to thousands of survey questions from the last few decades. Crucially, it also tracks whether each policy referred to by a question was adopted by the federal government over the next four years. At the state level, I measured people’s ideologies using exit polls that asked whether they are liberal, moderate, or conservative. And I assessed state laws using an index of overall policy liberalism created by another pair of scholars.

    At both levels, I found that blacks hold much less sway than whites. For example, a federal policy with no white support has only a 10 percent chance of being enacted, while one with universal white support has a 60 percent shot of adoption. But while a proposal with no black support has a 40 percent chance of becoming law, one enjoying unanimous approval has only a 30 percent probability of enactment. In other words, as support for a policy rises within the black community, the odds of it being achieved actually decline.

    Likewise, whether most black voters are conservative or liberal, state legislative outcomes barely budge. But vary the views of white voters to an equivalent degree, and a state’s policies go from looking like Alabama’s to resembling Michigan’s, even controlling for black and white population size.

    Read those last two paragraphs again: proposals without black support are more likely to be passed, while those with unanimous black support are less likely to be passed. So, can you honestly tell black people now that it is voting that matters?
    More:

    These results help explain the rage that has recently coursed through America’s cities. If blacks seem not to be satisfied with (mostly) uninhibited access to the polls and (close to) proportional representation, this is because they should not be content with these achievements. What really matters in a democracy is getting policies enacted that correspond to people’s views. And on this front, blacks still have a long way to go. Their opinions—on vital issues like crime, welfare, and housing—are too often ignored by elected officials when they conflict with whites’ preferences. This grim reality is well worth getting upset about.

    More broadly, the results also highlight other distortions of the political process. Unsurprisingly, in this era of skyrocketing inequality and campaign-finance deregulation, policymakers pay closer attention to the views of the rich than to those of the poor (or of the middle class). More unexpectedly, women are largely ineffectual politically despite their large numbers, high turnout rates, and substantial representation. None of these assets provides them with what a healthy democracy should: laws as reflective of their preferences as of those of men. And Hispanics seem to hold an intermediate position, neither as weak as blacks nor as influential as whites.

    So how might the promise of American pluralism be fulfilled—so that public policy is about equally responsive to each group’s views? Unfortunately, this is where we reach the limits of current academic knowledge. We can now quantify the power wielded by different groups. But neither my work, nor anyone else’s, has determined what the causes of group influence might be, let alone how disparities in clout can be corrected.

    Still, even in the absence of hard data, it is possible to speculate. In particular, three drivers of group power come readily to mind: participation, resources, and ideology. Perhaps groups whose members engage more actively in politics—by voting but also by attending meetings, contacting representatives, volunteering for campaigns, and so on—have more sway over policy outcomes. Or maybe wealthy groups have more influence. If money is the mother’s milk of politics, as Jesse Unruh once said, it is the affluent who control more of this vital resource. And ideology may matter too. Extreme groups may have trouble making deals and forming alliances as effectively as moderate ones.

    These hypotheses point to an agenda of sorts for those who are troubled by the power imbalances of modern American politics. Automatic voter registration and other electoral reforms might broaden political participation. Reducing income inequality, and introducing public financing or more vigorous campaign-finance regulation, could lessen the impact of money on politics. And groups could try aiming for tactical moderation even as they keep fighting to achieve their ideological goals.

    Ultimately, it is unclear if these policies would eliminate the power differentials that my study identified. But they would likely help. The first step, though, is simply recognizing the hurdles facing many groups as they struggle to translate their views into law.

    Re: the extreme groups, I suppose that idea is supported by the perception that any groups of more than one black person is automatically seen as ‘radical’ and ‘extreme’.

    Texas elementary school teacher says she almost wants to return to segregation and the 1950s, that’s the teacher mentioned before.

    Yes, that’s a real post from a real elementary school teacher in Texas responding to the mess in McKinney. Karen Fitzgibbons, an elementary school teacher at Bennett Elementary School, had the nerve, the racist gall, the ignorance, to log into Facebook and post:

    “I’m going to just go ahead and say it … the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin….GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity”

    Sigh.

    Where do we even begin here? Let’s explore below.

    1. This is frightening as hell. Her school district is not an all-white town. This school, it has been confirmed, has black children. Even if she only taught white kids, it’s awful, but to know that black children are in a school with a teacher like this is just disgusting.

    2. Fitzgibbons offered a half-assed apology in which she said she already apologized to everyone that mattered. Ummmmm. Really? Who?

    Fitzgibbons insisted the post “was not directed at any one person or group.”

    “It was not an educational post; it was a personal experience post,” Fitzgibbons said, adding she has a personal connection to the McKinney situation, but declined to elaborate.

    She added: “I apologized to the appropriate people,” declining to identify those people.

    3. This woman absolutely needs to be fired. These views are racist, offensive, and disgusting. She is in clear violation of school policy, seen below.

    Frenship’s policy states that employees will be held to the same professional standards in their public use of electronic media as they are for any other public conduct. The policy specifically mentions social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

    “If an employee’s use of electronic media interferes with the employee’s ability to effectively perform his or her job duties, the employee is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment,” the policy states.

    Well, her true and honest opinion definitely got bashed. When is she going to complain about being muzzled and how those peaches just ain’t frozen?

    Hypervisible Bodies: Protesting White Supremacy Whilst Racialised

    Growing up in white supremacist societies many of us have been conditioned to work hard to remain invisible. The physical and emotional labour involved is draining and destructive. You risk years, sometimes decades and even generations building a security buffer around you, more specifically between you and white bodies. It is difficult and comes with a high price; higher than most white folks, whether allies or non-allies, would ever have to pay or consider. Under white supremacy we grow up internalising the criminalisation of our bodies and are taught from childhood life-saving lessons to circumvent these macro and micro-aggressions. It is these many little moments that accumulate throughout our lives when we, for instance, pull the seatbelt tighter when the cops drive by, when we dress in ways to not appear as threats, when we make sure that the supermarket bill is visible to not be considered looters, or when we choose to not call out racism.

    Throughout the last few years, public protests against austerity or institutional racism are regularly cited in media. The outspoken and courageous activists who involved are often times white. In the case of protests against deportations of asylum seekers, it doesn’t take long to realize that there is an overwhelming number, if not dominance of white allies who are actively challenging the status quo. Activists standing up inside commercial planes to prevent the deportation of asylum seekers are, for instance, almost always white. I always wondered whether I could socially or financially afford joining such protests. Would the airline, passengers, public, media and police treat me in a similar way to how they’d treat a white activist if I did the same? If I stood up in an overwhelmingly white plane as a racialised body in solidarity with another racialised body would I survive? What would the consequences be for me, my future but also that of my family and community?

    As racialised people, our bodies, actions and politics are after all never just ours but those of collectives who we may never even associate or identify with. For women of colour and queers of colour this question is further complicated by how heteropatriarchy positions and violates their bodies.

    Protesting means becoming visible. It means defying the status quo and is critical when considering the intersections of oppressions we live under and are complicit in. But – because of the very oppressions we fight – not all of us are positioned equally and come with the comfort of being able to, when practicing our political activism, get away with it as easily. Being fined, arrested or even caught by cameras often bears different consequences for racialised, gendered and class-marked bodies that aren’t sufficiently contemplated or talked about in activist circles.

    It takes years to learn to assert our rights. Unlearning and resisting white supremacy requires active and constant labour. Irrespective of how much labour we put into it however, we’ll always be positioned differently as long as white supremacy continuous to be in place. As a result, we risk facing repercussions that non-racialised and middle-class activists never do or need to reflect about in the first place.

    Our bodies are read and treated differently irrespective of whether we remain passive or actively challenge existing power structures. When racialised and working class people then tell white middle-class activist friends that they can’t join this or that protest, it’s for many of the very same reasons that we try to challenge. Being hypervisual throughout life and then also in protests against powerful institutions deems our bodies even further vulnerable than we already are to the everyday violence of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, casteism and neoliberalism .

    The fact that Brandon Brooks, the white teenager, is left to document and tell the story of the events from last week in McKenney, Texas, – but not the black teenagers who were violated -, tells volumes about what it means to protest against white supremacy while being governed by white supremacy. It’s after all a privilege to be listened to, taken serious and credited back. Just as much as it is a privilege to protest and walk away from it without physical, emotional, social and/or economic harm.

    Interlude: movies! It Appears Sanaa Lathan Will Be Omar Tyree’s ‘Flyy Girl’

    I say “it appears” because this isn’t news that’s been officially announced – at least, not that I’m aware of (maybe I just missed it?). This morning, I received a Google alert (I have Google alerts set up for just about every black actor and filmmaker for obvious reasons) that led me to the Tracking Board website, with an “exclusive” on Codeblack Films’ adaptation of author Omar Tyree’s trilogy bestseller “Flyy Girl,” saying that Sanaa Lathan will star in the film. […]

    Further out, look for her in the sequel to “Now You See Me,” currently titled “Now You See me 2,” playing an FBI agent on the hunt for the magician troupe known as the Four Horseman, a year later, as they take on a new dangerous heist for a new enemy. Last fall, she wrapped filming on the Sundance Lab-developed feature “Ad Inexplorata” – a curious sci-fi project in which she plays the head of a spaceship fleet on a one-way trip to Mars. She’s joined by Mark Strong and Luke Wilson in the film.

    Police Chief Speaks After Shooting Of Homeless Man. It’s not live anymore, but Miami police shot a homeless man in front of a crowd of children from a summer camp. More on this later. :/

  473. rq says

    New York City Council Passes ‘Ban The Box’ Bill Restricting Use Of Criminal Records In Hiring

    Carl Stubbs, 63, stood outside New York City Council chambers Wednesday in anticipation of the council’s vote on the Fair Chance Act — a bill that would delay when many of the city’s private sector employers can ask job applicants about their criminal history.

    “I feel [that] being black, having a felony, you don’t get hired,” he told The Huffington Post. “I have had a felony for over 30 years.”

    Stubbs, who’s also an activist with the group Voices of Community Activists Leaders (VOCAL-NY), wanted the bill to pass because it could improve his chances getting a job.

    “I would love to go back to work,” he said.

    Earlier, Piper Kerman, author of the memoir-turned-hit-Netflix-series Orange Is The New Black, offered her support of the bill.

    “Saddling people with a permanent barrier to employment only adds to existing inequality,” Kerman, who spent 13 months in a New York prison on a felony money-laundering conviction, told supporters outside City Hall, according to The New York Observer. “Getting a job is the single most important expectation we have for a person returning home from prison and yet there are a host of policies and also prejudices that put that brass ring out of reach for way too many people.”

    “This all amounts to a never-ending punishment for people who have frankly paid their debt to society,” she added.

    Both Kerman and Stubbs got their wish Wednesday. The Fair Chance Act passed in a landslide vote, with 45 yeas, five nays and one abstention. New York City now joins more than 100 other cities and 17 states that have passed similar “ban the box” laws. (The “box” refers to the check box on job applications asking the applicant if they have been convicted of a crime.)

    Under the bill, which applies to businesses with at least four employees, a job offer can be rescinded after a criminal background check, but not before the employer gives an explanation and engages in “an interactive discussion, considering the employer’s requirements and the applicant’s evidence of good conduct,” according to a statement on the VOCAL-NY website. In 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed a similar law for all city employees.

    Before the vote Wednesday, the bill’s lead sponsor, council member Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), explained to his fellow council members that the legislation would “not hurt employers and it does not require them to hire any particular applicant.”

    Simply “delaying the background check,” he elaborated, “will make it possible for qualified applicants who also happen to have a record to make it through the screening process.”

    Federal and state laws allow employers to consider applicants’ criminal records when hiring for certain jobs, including bank tellers, safety officers and people who work with children. The Fair Chance Act does not change that.

    Williams said Wednesday that the bill has the “pleasure” of being a “jobs bill, a criminal justice bill, and a public safety bill” all at once. It’s a public safety bill, he explained, because employing people keeps them from pursuing illicit forms of income.

    Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to sign the bill.

    And then let’s see more black officers hired, since it should now be so much easier. :P

    Two innocent Black men that spent 30 Years In prison are finally pardoned

    Half brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were finally pardoned this month after spending 30 long years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.
    1lkmmh.So.156

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    Photo: Newsobserver.com

    In 1983, McCollum and Brown were convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Sabrina Buie in North Carolina. At the time McCollum was 19 and Brown was 15.

    According the the Washington Post, both were mentally disabled, and the police coerced them into signing confessions. Those confessions were a major factor in the evidence against them.

    McCollum and Brown were originally sentenced to death. However, after a retrial, Brown was convicted of rape and given a life sentence, while McCollum returned to death row.
    In an an Aug. 12, 2014 photo, Henry McCollum sits on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. He and his half brother Leon Brown have spent more than three decades in prison for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983. On Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, lawyers for Lawyers for 50-year-old McCollum and 46-year-old Brown will ask for their release, saying DNA analysis of a cigarette butt found at the crime scene in Robeson County link it to a man serving a life sentence for a similar rape and killing that took place a month later. The Center for Death Penalty Litigation says that man was the real killer of Sabrina Buie in 1983. (AP Photo/The News & Observer, Travis Long) MANDATORY CREDIT, TV AND TV WEBSITES OUT

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    Photo: Time

    After years of voicing their innocence, the two men were released this past September after DNA evidence pointing to another man was discovered. In fact, this very man was already sentenced to life in prison for a raping and murdering another victim less than a month after the death of young Sabrina Buie.

    Yet for some reason, Joe Freeman Britt, the district attorney who prosecuted the two in 1983, still states that he thinks both McCollum and Brown are guilty.
    CAROLINA-2-master675

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    Photo: NYTimes

    Currently, the men may receive more than $1 million from the state of North Carolina for their wrongful convictions.

    After learning that the two men who spent 30 years in prison are innocent, I wonder how many stories like these exist. Personally, it’s hard to look past the fact that this took place in the ’80s in the south, and that the police might have wrongfully judged McCollum and Brown based on their race and mental disabilities.

    It’s also hard to ignore the fact that in North Carolina, half of those sentenced to the death penalty are black, while blacks only account for approximately 21% of the state’s population.

    And now imagine the death penalty had actually been executed in their case. So much bullshit.

    Messenger: McKinney pool incident reminds us Fairground Park wasn’t that long ago. Yeah, that pool story is not going to go away this summer!

    Almost immediately in the viral aftermath of the video of a McKinney, Texas, police officer violently pinning a black teenager in a bikini to the ground and drawing his gun on other black swimmers, comparisons were made to Ferguson.

    In many ways, they were apt.

    Both are suburban enclaves of larger cities — McKinney in Dallas, Ferguson in St. Louis — marked by a historical change from majority white wealthy suburb to one in which minority populations are significant. Each has white areas and not-so-white areas with higher pockets of public housing subsidies. And, of course, there’s the singular case of a white police officer demonstrating that brutality toward people of color in 2015 at the hand of government is very real, indeed.
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    But the most important connection has little to do with demographics and everything to do with a symbol that has deep meaning in the history of racial strife in America’s biggest cities.

    The swimming pool.

    In that regard, Ferguson isn’t the local connection to McKinney, it’s Fairground Park.

    In 1949 in St. Louis, public swimming pools, like so much of everything else in the Jim Crow era, were segregated. When it was built 37 years earlier, the Fairground Park pool had been the largest such public swimming pool in the nation, bigger than a football field, large enough to host more than 10,000 swimmers per day, as long as they were white. In (fill in the year depending on where you grew up), blacks weren’t allowed to swim with whites at public pools.

    For blacks in America, this is an integral element of the nation’s civil rights history. For many whites — myself included — it’s less well-known. I didn’t know about Fairground Park until after Ferguson, after Aug. 9, and now, in light of McKinney, it’s more relevant than ever.

    Sixty-six years ago, city officials decided the Fairground Park pool would be, for the first time, open to young black swimmers. On June 21, dozens of young African-Americans swam in the no-longer-segregated waters with no issue. But outside the park trouble was brewing. An angry crowd of whites showed up with violence on their minds. As a police escort walked the black children from the pool, some of the white men and women attacked, tossing bricks and rocks. It spurred a race riot caused by racists who didn’t want their white bodies tainted by water that had touched black skin. It took more than 12 hours to restore order, and the aftermath continued for days.

    Sixty-six years ago seems like ancient history. It’s not.

    If your parents, like mine, were born in the 1940s, they were children when the Fairground Park swimming pool incident sparked horrible violence against black people because they dared to swim.

    Children like Robert Gammon, who was one of the African-American swimmers that day.

    “I thought all white people hated us,” recalled Gammon in a Post-Dispatch story in 2009. He remembered being chased through the city because he wanted to go swimming on a hot day.

    One of the lessons of Ferguson, and now Cleveland and New York and North Charleston and Baltimore and McKinney, is that 1949 wasn’t that long ago.

    Two years ago, almost exactly one year before Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Virvus Jones educated me about America’s civil rights timeline from the point of view of an African-American man. We met for coffee because I needed help understanding why racial politics in St. Louis were (and are) so much more open and vitriolic than any place I had lived before.

    Jones, the former comptroller for the city of St. Louis, and father of city Treasurer Tishaura Jones, let me in on a nugget of insight that had previously escaped me. Tishaura’s generation — she is a few years younger than me — is the first to have the full protections of the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965.

    The way he explained it, pointing out that to his generation the Jim Crow era isn’t ancient history, took the names and dates learned in a history book and breathed a new life into them.

    Then Ferguson happened. Then Cleveland. New York. Baltimore. And now McKinney. The pool in that Texas city wasn’t public like the one in Fairground Park so many years ago, but that’s part of the point. White Americans fled cities and built private pools rather than swim with black neighbors. This is the story of America and it continues.

    As DeRay McKesson, one of the leaders of ongoing civil rights protests around the country, is fond of typing on Twitter: The movement lives.

    Only 9 Days in 2015 When The Police Haven’t Killed Someone. America.

    To the black girls in America: survival can be an unspeakable burden

    We all know the names of black boys and men killed by police (or wannabe police)—Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Akai Gurley, and Amadou Diallo. We also know—although we also tend tend to forget—the names of women and girls lost in the very same way: Rekia Boyd, Tarika Wilson, Aiyana Jones, Miriam Carey and others, lost in the backdrop to a narrative that focuses on the ongoing clash between white and black masculinity.

    But I also worry about the black girls who survive. I wonder about that girl in the video, pleading and sobbing as people stand around without helping. I am washed away by her terror, that panic that strikes when you realize that you could be killed amid a crowd of onlookers, and that no one will do anything to stop it.

    I can’t stop thinking about the black girls who survive.

    I think about Tamir Rice’s sister, Tajai, the girl attacked and handcuffed by police as she tried to reach her baby brother as he bled to death.

    And Rachel Jeantel, who told her best friend to run away from an armed man following him in the dark—she survived.

    And a tiny baby girl who watched her mother’s body get riddled with bullets from inside her car seat.

    The black girls who survive are not unscathed.

    Survival can be an unspeakable burden. Black women and girls live in fear for others and for themselves. We are scared that we might pick up a phone and learn that the man, son, or brother we love is gone. But we also live in unrelenting anticipation that we will be beaten on the side of a California highway, raped by police officers, handcuffed in kindergarten and arrested for science experiments at school.

    We are afraid of surviving only to be attacked by a police officer in public on a sunny Friday summer evening on our way to the pool. We are afraid that no one will help us, that no one will ever see us as a girl worth saving.

    Survival can be an unspeakable burden. The very labor of keeping your sanity and your joy is its own, consuming work. Even as black women navigate spaces that question our humanity, knowledge, and capabilities, we are expected to smile. Even as we are maligned by the media as bad mothers and lazy people, we are told to keep a positive attitude in the face of oppression.

    We take buses to bring our children to visit relatives in prison, we post bail, we work two jobs, we go to church to pray and plead, we attend college and vote in elections more than anyone else in the country, we risk our lives in intervening with police to keep their rage from spilling over to our boys and men. And we are told that our pain, in comparison to that of the men we love, doesn’t matter.

    Amid the protests against police brutality, it’s useful to remember that pain doesn’t end when the bullets stop firing. The trauma continues for those of us who manage to get away with our lives. Sometimes survival looks like a child who is not murdered—merely dragged by her hair and smashed to the ground by a man with a gun.

  474. says

    Imagine that. The homeless man (in my #470) shot and killed by police in Miami? He was black. I never would have guessed.

    Florida officer shoots homeless man in front of children:

    A Florida police officer fatally shot a homeless black man who was carrying a pipe at a park in front of dozens of children on Thursday, according to the Miami Herald newspaper.

    The killing comes amid a national outcry over police violence against minorities, sparked by high-profile police killings of unarmed black men in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and New York in the past year.

    Miami Police told the newspaper that officer Antonio Torres shot 46-year-old Fritz Severe dead at a park where children were attending summer camp, adding that as many as 60 people may have witnessed the killing.

    Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes told the newspaper that officers were responding to a call of a “violent disturbance” at the park when they encountered the man, and urged that “everybody wait for the facts.”

    Nichelle Miller, a witness to the morning shooting, told the newspaper that the officer fired around five times.

    “The man had a stick in his hand. They could have tasered him. He was a homeless guy who’s there every morning,” she said.

    A picture published online by the newspaper showed that Severe was black.

  475. rq says

    Yah, it’s about as bad as it sounds: Miami Police Shoot Homeless Man In Front Of 50 Children: Victim Was Holding A Stick, Witnesses Say. As Tony says, no surprises here.

    The homeless man who was shot by a member of the Miami Police Department has died, according to a police source, reports the Miami New Times.

    The officer who shot the man will be placed on administrative leave, said Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes, according to local media.

    Llanes also said there were approximately 40-60 witnesses at the scene and that the officers were given information on the phone that the man was armed with a metal object. While there was a pipe on scene, they were not yet sure if it was the metal object previously mentioned.

    Update, 12:48 p.m. EDT: Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami police union, told Miami New Times that “the officer is fine, but the suspect is wounded.”

    One witness claims that the homeless man was well-known in the neighborhood and always carried a stick, reports the Miami Herald.

    Original story: A Miami police officer shot a homeless man in front of 50 children Thursday morning, witnesses claimed, according to local media. The homeless man, who was carrying a stick, was allegedly shot five times before being transported to a nearby hospital. Miami police have neither confirmed eyewitness reports nor revealed the condition of the injured man.

    Police fired at the man around 10 a.m at Gibson Park in the predominately-black Overtown neighborhood of Miami after the homeless man refused to drop his metal stick, alleged witnesses. The park is notable for its public swimming pool and athletic fields and is designed for local families, according to its website. The children who allegedly witnessed the shooting were attending a summer camp in the park, according to a tweet by CBS reporter Natalia Zea.

    How much do these officers think before shooting?

    Just another heartless story: Texas cops shut down two little girls’ lemonade stand. Two little white girls, but still. It’s a fucking lemonade stand.

    Prosecutor: “Ultimately, the Grand Jury decides whether police officers are charged or not charged” #Tamir Rice – Prosecutor McGinty’s statement re: the advisory of the judge. Basically, it’s policy to go to the Grand Jury, so this will go to the Grand Jury.
    Now, the judge’s advisory re: probable cause today may make it easier for the prosecutor to actually file charges, distancing himself.

    Racists love to pretend that racists are some unemployed unschooled anomaly. But look at #McKinney–a cop, a teacher, a bank employee.

    And here is the first in a story about a white woman who, in a major act of appropriation, has been passing herself off as a black woman. Please let’s not use the word ‘transracial’. Twitter commentary and thoughts to come. Credibility of local NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal questioned

    Controversy is swirling around one of the Inland Northwest’s most prominent civil rights activists, with family members of Rachel Dolezal saying the local leader of the NAACP has been falsely portraying herself as black for years.

    Dolezal, 37, avoided answering questions directly about her race and ethnicity Thursday, saying, “I feel like I owe my executive committee a conversation” before engaging in a broader discussion with the community about what she described as a “multi-layered” issue.

    “That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said after being contacted at Eastern Washington University, where she’s a part-time professor in the Africana Studies Program. “There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”

    Later, in an apparent reference to studies tracing the scientific origins of human life to Africa, Dolezal added: “We’re all from the African continent.”

    Dolezal is credited with re-energizing the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. She also serves as chairwoman of the city’s Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, where she identified herself as white, black and American Indian in her application for the volunteer appointment, and previously was education director for the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene.

    In recent days, questions have arisen about her background and her numerous complaints to police of harassment. Members of her family are challenging her very identity, saying she has misrepresented major portions of her life.

    Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, said Thursday by phone from her home in Northwest Montana that she has had no contact with her daughter in years. She said her daughter began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007, after the family had adopted four African-American children and Rachel Dolezal had shown an interest in portrait art.

    “It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,” Ruthanne Dolezal said. “Her effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community would have been so much more viable, and she would have been more effective if she had just been honest with everybody.”

    Rachel Dolezal dismisses the controversy as little more than an ugly byproduct of contentious litigation between other family members over allegations of past abuse that has divided the family. She’s particularly suspicious of the timing, noting that the allegations broke on her son’s birthday and come as the Colorado lawsuit filed by her sister against their brother nears a key juncture.

    I can support the work she has been doing, but there’s more to this, in the sense that the space she has been occupying as a white black woman (twitter description :P) could have been occupied by a black woman, and she, as a white ally, could have done the same work from an honest position.

  476. rq says

    We’ll come back to Rachel Dolezal later.
    #KaliefBrowder vigil in #NYC. #Rikers #RikersIsland #BlackLivesMatter

    Charlottesville prosecutors to withdraw charges against Martese Johnson – Yay!

    Prosecutors in Charlottesville will no longer pursue charges against a University of Virginia student who was bloodied during an arrest by ABC agents in March.

    Johnson’s arrest outside of a Charlottesville bar on March 18 made national headlines. Johnson was charged with public intoxication and obstruction of justice, both misdemeanors.

    A hearing was scheduled for Friday in Charlottesville.

    Also, no criminal charges will be placed against ABC agents.

    The Commonwealth will make a public presentation about the evidence in the case at 1 p.m. June 17 in the City Council Chambers in Charlottesville City Hall.

    Here is the news release from the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Charlottesville:

    The Office of Commonwealth Attorney for the City of Charlottesville has filed in the Charlottesville General District Court a request for the entry of an order of nolle prosequi of misdemeanor charges pending against Martese Johnson. The charges against Mr. Johnson derive from events of March 18, 2015 at The Corner in Charlottesville. An order of nolle prosequi constitutes a voluntary termination of a pending prosecution that is subject to the court’s approval for good cause shown.

    Upon review of the evidence resulting from a thorough and independent criminal investigation conducted by the Virginia State Police, the Commonwealth reached a conclusion that the interest of justice and the long term interest of the Charlottesville community are best served by using this case as an opportunity to engage ordinary citizens, law enforcement officers, and public officials in constructive dialogue concerning police and citizen relationships in a diverse community.

    In reaching this decision the Commonwealth also found that the evidence did not warrant criminal charges against law enforcement officers who were involved in the events of March 18th.

    To begin the dialogue the Commonwealth will make a public presentation concerning the evidence in this case and the conclusions that have been reached at 1pm on Wednesday, June 17th in the City Council Chambers in Charlottesville City Hall. In the weeks that follow we expect to participate in similar sessions for interested civic and community groups, to ensure that the events underlying this case result in a constructive community dialogue on this vitally important topic.

    No criminal charges against the law enforcement officers? Well, damn.

    Citizens deserve professional policing, says Belmar, who is responsible for the teargas and rubber bullets of last August.

    As the events in Ferguson transpired last August, many long-standing issues in St. Louis area policing were exposed to the nation for scrutiny. Suddenly, the 90 St. Louis County municipalities and their municipal courts were scrutinized by the public for the predatory nature of their traffic enforcement and the exorbitant court fines and fees imposed on primarily poor, minority citizens. Protesters and community members alike demanded a new model of policing: a model where the focus is not on sustaining insolvent governments and exaggerated police traffic units.

    I am here to tell you that small police co-ops or consolidations headed by unaccredited departments are not what the St. Louis region deserves. St. Louis County has too many of these small departments. By combining resources, they give the appearance of a substantial department, but the numbers are deceiving.

    First of all, some of these municipalities count reserve officers as their part of their total. Doing this artificially inflates the ratio of officers to citizens, not to mention places public safety in the hands of volunteers with unreliable training records.

    Furthermore, the departments aspiring to unite the smaller forces are only able to do so knowing that the St. Louis County Police Department is always a phone call away to handle the resource-intense policing such as homicide investigations, barricaded subjects, crowd control, or officer-involved criminal activity. A collection of transient officers with little professional policing experienced hired to primarily enforce traffic violations is not what is needed in the most socio-economically challenged areas of St. Louis County.

    What the region needs for such areas is a stable police department with the resources to tackle the long-standing issues in these areas with a focus on public safety and promoting vibrant communities. This is only done through a large established department with years of municipal contracting experience. The mishmash of municipal agencies vying for power will not improve public safety. The model of public safety-focused policing that we propose is consistent with the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the Police Executive Research Forum and is supported locally by the NAACP.

    The St. Louis County Police Department not only has the resources in manpower and tangible assets, but more importantly, it has technical expertise and leadership to accomplish real public safety. The men and women of the department are accomplished career law enforcement professionals giving them the requisite skills and knowledge to provide the quality law enforcement that every citizen deserves. The St. Louis County Police Department stands ready to serve.

    A small good news: Special grand jury indicts Norfolk police officer in mentally ill man’s death

    A special grand jury has charged Officer Michael Carlton Edington Jr. with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of David Latham the night of June 6, 2014.

    Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Underwood and his office requested the grand jury, and they will prosecute the officer, spokeswoman Amanda Howie said in a statement.

    “I just want to say that I’m glad the justice system is working out, and that we are on the right path,” said Latham’s mother, Audrey, upon learning of the indictment.

    The charge comes in the midst of a national focus on the deaths of young black men at the hands of police in cities such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. Charges against officers in such cases have been rare.

    In a statement released after the charge was announced, Chief Michael Goldsmith asked that the public exercise patience and not rush to judgment while the case works its way through the justice system.

    “Norfolk police officers will continue to work hard to protect our communities and build relationships with our neighbors,” he said. “These officers put their lives on the line every day and have my full support as we move forward.”

    Edington remains on the job on administrative duty, Mayor Paul Fraim said at a quickly called news conference in front of City Hall.

    “He enjoys the presumption of innocence,” Fraim said. “It’s tragic for everyone concerned. What we have here is the tragic collision of the criminal justice system with the mental health system…. That’s been very difficult for all of us.” […]

    Judge Junius Fulton III impaneled the special grand jury, made up of three black women, two black men, two white women and two white men, on Monday. Whether their verdict was unanimous is not known – five of the nine jurors had to agree on a charge, and the proceedings are kept secret.

    Over two and a half days, they heard sworn testimony from more than a dozen people, Howie said in a statement. They were told to consider charges of second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, as well as the voluntary manslaughter charge they returned, Howie wrote.

    Virginia case law dating back to the 1840s defines voluntary manslaughter as an unlawful killing, but one without malice.

    Former mayoral candidate and local community activist Michael Muhammad called the indictment a good step and a first for the city.

    “This is a process that should have been handled by the citizens, and the citizens have spoken and determined that black lives do matter,” he said, invoking a national slogan and movement centered on the deaths of young black men at the hands of police. “You cannot kill a black man with impunity and there be no recourse…. Now the difficult work of a prosecution begins.”

    What’s sad is that the article mentions that usually an officer familiar with Latham would usually attend the family’s calls… which consistently ended with him not being dead. :( And then this one time…

    Witnesses: Police Officer Shoots Homeless Man Five Times In Miami, CBS on that shooting. Police shooting in front of children. I just.

    Iowa police officer kills unarmed man who ‘walked with purpose’

    A veteran police officer shot and killed an unarmed man this week in Des Moines, Iowa, after firing through the rolled-up window of her patrol car. Police say the man, identified as 28-year-old Ryan Keith Bolinger, “walked with purpose” toward officer Vanessa Miller’s vehicle when she fired the fatal shot.

    According to police, the incident began on Tuesday night when Bolinger pulled up his Lincoln sedan to a Des Moines police patrol car helping to make an unrelated traffic stop of another vehicle. Bolinger was allegedly so close to the pullover that the officer inside could not open his door.

    In a press conference on Wednesday, Des Moines police sergeant Jason Halifax said Bolinger then got out of his car and began “dancing in the street or making unusual movements in the street”.

    Halifax said that Bolinger then got back into his vehicle and led police on a low-speed chase before making a U-turn, giving officers an opportunity to block his path with their patrol cars.

    It was at this point, Halifax said, that Bolinger got out of his Lincoln and rushed toward the officer’s vehicle. Officer Miller, a seven-year veteran, fired one shot at Bolinger’s torso, who died on the scene.

    No weapons were found on or near Bolinger’s body.

    Halifax told the Guardian on Thursday that it was not Bolinger’s rapid movement toward the patrol car by itself that prompted officer Miller to fire. But he would not elaborate on the specific reason, citing the ongoing investigation.

    A teacher on twitter lamented the fact that he has been telling his students to ‘walk with purpose’ in the halls, and now they can get killed for it…

  477. rq says

    Interlude: TV! Netflix releases ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 3 several hours early.

    Miami Police Shoot and Kill a Homeless Man In Front of 50 Children , same story, different source.

    Several witnesses were distraught that the officer did not use a Taser instead of a gun. Zea asked Chief Llanes about that and he said not all officers carry Tasers, they have to be certified. He would not say whether this officer was carrying a Taser.

    Stephanie Severance was shocked when she heard the shot. She later realized the man who was shot was a homeless man she sees every morning and the man who shot him was a Miami Police Officer.

    “He stopped the man, the man had the metal stick, pointed at him, the next thing you know the man shot him,” Severance said.

    One mother, went to the scene when she heard what happened, said her grandson and son are both inside the summer camp. She hadn’t been able to speak to them and doesn’t know whether or not they saw anything.

    The man shot by the officer, witnesses said, did not launch at the officers but would not drop the stick when he was asked.

    Nichelle Miller said the shooting happened in front of 50 kids and that many started “hollering, screaming and running.”

    Sprite cans are going to be covered in rap lyrics this summer. Yay? I guess? No women in the list of rappers?

    A few more articles on Rachel, then some of that commentary: Did NAACP president lie about her race? City investigates

    The City of Spokane announced Thursday it’s investigating whether the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP violated the city’s code of ethics in her application to serve on the citizen police ombudsman commission.

    Rachel Dolezal serves as chair of the independent commission, in addition to her work as an adjunct faculty member at Eastern Washington University and president of the NAACP local chapter. On her application to serve on the commission, she identified herself as African-American. But public records, including Dolezal’s own birth certificate, list her biological parents as Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal of Montana. The Dolezals told KXLY Thursday that Rachel is their biological daughter and that they are both white.

    “We are committed to independent citizen oversight and take very seriously the concerns raised regarding the chair of the independent citizen police ombudsman commission,” Mayor David Condon and City Council President Ben Stuckart said it a joint statement Thursday. “We are gathering facts to determine if any city policies related to volunteer boards and commissions have been violated. That information will be reviewed by the City Council, which has oversight of city boards and commissions.”

    On the NAACP Spokane Facebook page, a picture was posted earlier this year showing Dolezal and an African-American man. In the post, he’s identified as Dolezal’s father. KXLY4’s Jeff Humphrey asked Dolezal about that claim Wednesday afternoon.

    “Ma’am, I was wondering if your dad really is an African-American man,” Humphrey asked.

    “I don’t understand the question,” Dolezal answered. “I did tell you [that man in the picture] is my dad.”
    “Are your parents white?” Humphrey asked. At that point, Dolezal removed the microphone, ended the interview and walked away.

    The one thing I don’t like is the automatic assumption (or implication, I should say) that the hate crimes against her are also falsified. They may very well be, but they may very well be not, since she has been fooling so many people with her lifestyle and presentation.
    I really hate where this kind of thing is going, and I feel like I’m trying to object to someone’s identity in a way that diminishes their own perception of themselves.

    Spokane NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal falsely portrays herself as black, family says, super-short Washington Times article.
    And BuzzFeed, A Civil Rights Leader Has Disguised Herself As Black For Years, Her Parents Say

    When reached by BuzzFeed News late Thursday, Rachel Dolezal’s father, Larry Dolezal, said that he and her mother are both white.

    “She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” he said, adding, “we’re puzzled and it’s very sad.”
    Rachel Dolezal has been the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP since January. She also serves as chair of the city’s police oversight commission.

    She is also an adjunct professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University.

    According to her staff biography, Dolezal received her master’s degree from Howard University, an historically black university in Washington, D.C.

    “Her passion for civil rights is influenced by her years in Mississippi, where she advocated for equal rights and participated in community development,” the bio states.

    Dolezal’s biography also states she has been the victim of at least eight “documented hate crimes.” No suspect has been identified.

    Representatives at EWU said they did not have a comment on Thursday night. [..]

    But, he added: “She has over the past 20 years assimilated herself into the African American community through her various advocacy and social justice work, and so that may be part of the answer.”

    He went on to say that Rachel cut off all communication with him and her mother, and “doesn’t want us visible in the Spokane area in her circle because we’re Caucasian.”

    More at the link.
    I think what bothers me is the conflict between (a) her truly feeling that she should be perceived as a black woman because that’s her identity and (b) the fact that she has basically been living a modern version of blackface. And I’m having trouble drawing some kind of line, here, especially with the work that she does. Most importantly, though, the work that she has been doing hasn’t come from a background of honesty, but one of appropriation, and I think that is definitely wrong.
    So I don’t know.

  478. rq says

    Someone’s gonna write that we’re “outraged,” but it’s more like astounded. Baffled. Perplexed. Amazed.

    Ppl who are mad #RachaelDolezal is getting dragged on Twitter and not when #DejerriaBecton was *actually* dragged in #McKinney can sit down.

    And I agree with everyone else, if she really wanted to help? She could be doing whitefolkwork & letting black women lead in those spaces.

    Erasure is not equality. Replacing actual Black women with white women playing identity dress up is not helping anything.

    Part of me feels like this story was put out to discredit their efforts to organize in Spokane. The other part can’t stop laughing.

    So there’s a few comments.

    Ruby Dee, actress and civil rights activist, dies at 91

    Ruby Dee, an actress who defied segregation-era stereotypes by landing lead roles in movies and on Broadway while maintaining a second high-profile career as a civil rights advocate, including emceeing the 1963 March on Washington, died June 11 at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 91.

    In a career spanning seven decades, Ms. Dee was known for a quietly commanding presence opposite powerful leading men, including Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington and James Earl Jones.

    As a young woman, she won acclaim as a chauffeur’s steadfast wife in the Broadway and film versions of “A Raisin in the Sun,” starring Poitier, and then earned an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role as the mother of a drug kingpin played by Washington in “American Gangster” (2007).

    In 1965, Ms. Dee became the first black actress to perform lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., playing Kate in “The Taming of the Shrew” and Cordelia in “King Lear.” Moreover, critics consistently praised Ms. Dee’s ability to make the most demanding roles seem effortless. Off-Broadway in 1970, in Athol Fugard’s “Boesman and Lena,” she was commended for her searing portrayal of a South African woman beaten down by society and physically abused by her husband, played by Jones.

    Ms. Dee’s marriage to actor and playwright Ossie Davis was widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s most enduring and romantic, lasting 56 years, until his death in 2005. (Ms. Dee’s death, from undisclosed causes, was confirmed by Arminda Thomas, the archivist for Dee-Davis Enterprises.)

    Now, that article is a year old. I place it as an example of a light-skinned black woman, in case anyone was wondering how Rachel Dolezal could so easily pass herself off as one.
    (Because that has been a thing too, ‘she’s not black enough to be black!)

  479. rq says

    Texas Teacher Fired After Calling For Segregation Over McKinney Incident

    A self-proclaimed non-racist teacher for Bennett Elementary School in Lubbock, Texas is now out of a job after she her very racist Facebook post stemming from the McKinney pool party incident went viral.

    Late Wednesday evening, Karen Fitzgibbons voiced her displeasure for the brutality tactics of Eric Casebolt against unarmed teenage girls resulting in his resignation.

    She wrote:

    “I’m going to just go ahead and say it … the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin….GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity,” the Facebook post stated.

    Fitzgibbons tells the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the rant “was not directed at any one person or group,” but her employer, Frenship ISD, knew better than to keep her employed. She was immediately terminated.

    “Frenship ISD is deeply disappointed in the thoughtlessness conveyed by this employee’s post,” their statement read. “We find these statements to be extremely offensive, insensitive, and disrespectful to our Frenship community and citizens everywhere. These comments in no way represent the educational environment we have created for our students.”

    “The employee whose account is responsible for the post will be relieved of her teaching duties at Frenship ISD.”

    Fitzgibbons was employed at Frenship ISD for 16 out of her 20 years of teaching. See the Frenship ISD statement and the terminated teacher’s racist Facebook post for your own two eyes on the next couple of pages.

    Grand jury indicts Virginia cop for fatally shooting mentally ill black man ‘like a dog’

    The panel opted to charge Officer Michael Carlton Edington, Jr. on one charge of voluntary manslaughter for shooting and killing 35-year-old David Latham. The grand jury selected the manslaughter charge instead of two heavier charges, second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
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    “I just want to say that I’m glad the justice system is working out and that we are on the right path,” Latham’s mother, Audrey, told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

    The grand jury was called by Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Underwood’s office, and was the first such panel called in the area in connection with a fatal police shooting since 2008. When asked whether another officer had ever been indicted in such circumstances during her 10 years working for Underwood’s office, spokesperson Amanda Howie said, “Not to my knowledge.”

    Edington was one of four officers who went to Latham’s home on June 6, 2014, after his mother told a dispatcher that he had grabbed a knife. Latham was living with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and police had been called out to the residence several times since he and his mother moved there in March 2013. However, Edington had not been involved in any of those calls.

    “We kind of trusted them,” Audrey Latham said to the Virginian-Pilot earlier this month. “A lot of times they would come out and talk with David.”

    It really seems like the police in that case had been doing a lot of things right re: interacting with a person with mental lilness. It’s so sad that one of them failed so tragically.

  480. says

    Here is the fucking face of white privilege:
    White guy opens fire on state troopers with high powered rifle, shouts ‘kill me’, survives with only a shoulder injury.

    I know readers here are well aware that if it was a black person or hispanic person, they’d have been riddled with bullets before having the time to finish saying ‘kill me’.

    hite Georgia man who opened fire on state troopers and begged them to kill him on Monday walked away with only a shoulder injury.

    Authorities say Leighton Marchetta, 21, pulled up to Post 6 and shot at two troopers with a Ruger American .30-06 hunting rifle, WSB-TV reports.

    “He was saying something to the effect of, ‘You guys are going to have to kill me,’” Georgia Bureau of Investigations spokesperson Sherry Lang told the station.

    “A high-power rifle was used by the perpetrator. Would’ve easily penetrated a vest. Fortunately that wasn’t the case,” said Capt. Keith Canup with the Georgia State Patrol.

    “He had advanced towards the troopers, who took cover, and then he fired a second shot. One of the troopers started giving commands, telling the man to drop the gun,” Lang said.

    One trooper fired a single shot at Marchetta that hit him in the shoulder. So Marchetta, who shot at cops with a high powered rifle, is still alive and suffering from only a shoulder injury.

    “It appears that he was intoxicated this morning,” Lang said. “We’re trying to do background information on him, on what occurred recently with him. We’re trying to determine why this incident occurred, why he came here.”

    Agents are in the process of getting a search warrant for Marchetta’s home. The trooper who shot him is currently on administrative leave.

    I’m glad he’s not dead, but I’ve got to ask why didn’t they treat him like a threat? He actually *was* a threat. Their lives actually *were* in danger. Yet the officers were able to take him in alive.
    Goddammit. This pisses me the fuck off!

  482. says

    Grand Jury clears officer who killed man during traffic stop in 2011:

    Maurice Hampton was fatally shot by Atlanta Police Officer Thomas Atzert during the stop in June 2011.
    Hampton’s mother, Rosa, spoke to the Fulton County Grand Jury Thursday.
    “I have no hate and I just want to let them know who he was. He was a human being,” said Rosa Hampton.
    She says she spoke with her son Maurice hours before his encounter with Atzert.
    She says Atzert and his attorney sat in the room as she testified.
    Atzert’s attorney, Lance LoRusso, tweeted, “In the Fulton Grand Jury today with a brave and honorable LEO.”
    After her testimony, Rosa Hampton says the eyewitness in the case testified.
    “I prayed and I just believed. I have faith,” Rosa Hampton said.
    Statements and records say that Atzert saw Maurice Hampton run a stop sign. Hampton then ran, and when Atzert caught him, a struggle started. Atzert said Hampton grabbed his baton and that’s when Atzert fired.
    LoRusso said APD investigated and kept Atzert on the force. The FBI also investigated, but did not bring federal charges.
    Atzert also won a jury verdict in a civil suit filed by Maurice Hampton’s estate.
    After he was cleared Friday, Atzert handed Channel 2’s Mark Winne a note saying, “I just want to say thank you to the Grand Jury for listening to all of the evidence and making an educated and fair decision. I respect the process and I am glad my family and I can put this past us and move on.”

  483. says

    Rockdale, GA inmate suing over excessive force:

    An inmate who was housed at the Rockdale County Jail filed a federal lawsuit against the county and a Rockdale County deputy alleging use of excessive force against him inside the jail.

    violated county policy. He was given verbal counseling and was allowed back on the job, according to records provided by the inmate’s attorneys.

    The inmate, Alonzo Gay, said he had his hands on his cell door in the surrender position when he was thrown to the ground, restrained and pepper-sprayed.

    “He put his hands in the surrender position. There is no reason for him to empty the can of pepper spray onto his face,” said Louise Smith, Gay’s attorney.

    Gay says the incident stems from an interaction between the inmate and the deputy a few minutes earlier.

    “Deputy Turnipseed made an offhand comment, referred to him as ‘chocolate,’” his attorney said. “Mr. Gay found that offensive either sexually or in a racial way.”

    “He basically said to him, ‘Look, I don’t do that gay stuff,’” Smith said.

    In the internal report, Turnipseed stated that he never made a derogatory remark and that it was Gay who stated he was going to ‘knock the Ray Bans off his face.’”

    Turnipseed also stated that Gay was resisting arrest, even when they put him on the ground.

    “Deputy Turnipseed didn’t like his response so made his life hell,” Smith said.

    It is hard to tell what is going on in surveillance video, but it shows the inmate running away to his cell and then a fight in front of his cell.

    In internal documents provided to Channel 2’s Rachel Stockman, a deputy present during the situation said, “Deputy Turnipseed sprayed him again and at which time I told him to ease up and stop spraying him.”

    Both deputies say that Gay actively resisted them.

    An internal investigation found that Turnipseed “did not follow policy” and he was given “verbal counseling.”

    The report states: “Deputy Turnipseed should have recognize the O.C. spray was not an option he should have used when inmate Gay was fleeing from. There were three deputies in the area and the inmate did not have any place to escape too.”

    After verbal counseling, Turnipseed is back on the job.

    “People like him, they need to get rid of them as soon as they see a tendency of being overly hostile and aggressive,” Smith said.

    According to records, Turnipseed was suspended for two days in 2014 after taking an inmate’s food, throwing it to the floor and stomping on it in front of the inmate.

    The Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office referred Channel 2 Action News to the Rockdale County Attorney, who has not returned a call to his office.

    ****

    Local DA tells teens family he intends to take case against officer to new grand jury:

    Attorney Paul Howard met with family and supporters of a Union City teen shot in the back by an officer Wednesday, and told them he intends to take the case to a new grand jury.
    The move comes after a Channel 2 Action News – Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation exposed new evidence in the case.
    Howard did not make public comments, but met with Ariston Waiters’ mother for about an hour.
    He told her and her son’s supporters that he plans to “hold someone accountable” for Waiters’ death.
    The teen was already lying face down on the ground when Union City police officer Luther Lewis shot him twice in the back; it happened in December 2011.
    In 2012, a grand jury opted not to indict the officer for murder and violating his oath, after hearing some of the evidence in the case.
    Now, fellow officers have spoken out about several incidents which raise questions about Lewis’ actions and judgement prior to the shooting. It’s information the grand jurors never heard.
    Waiters’ mother was pleased with the DA’s commitment to the case and addressed citizens who gathered outside.
    “Continue praying for me and thank you for your support, and I will receive justice,” Freda Waiters told the crowd.

    The family says the DA offered no timetable for when a new grand jury might re-hear the case.

    Howard also expressed interest in pursuing action against the Union City Police Department if he can prove information was deliberately altered or withheld in the case.
    He urged anyone with information on that to come forward.

    ****
    Judge’s orders allegedly destroyed by chief probation officer:

    CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A state leader has admitted to destroying signed orders from judges.
    That is a part of what a Channel 2 Action News investigation uncovered when we began looking into allegations a Clayton County man was wrongfully kept on probation.
    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now involved in the case.
    “I think about Watergate (scandal) when I think about this and the shredding of documents,” said former probationer John Walker.
    Walker was on probation for bribery. He credits a state employee who went against his superiors’ wishes and a new attorney for getting him off.
    A judge sentenced Walker to five years’ probation in 2011.
    He told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Erica Byfield that nearly two years into his probation, he learned he would qualify for early termination.
    Walker told Byfield he was thrilled and ready to move on. Ultimately, it would take the former Clayton Schools security director months of fighting to make that happen.
    Wayne Kendall is Walker’s attorney.
    Kendall told Byfield that the day before Walker’s probation revocation hearing in 2014, he stopped by the Clayton County Probation Office to obtain a copy of his client’s file.
    “John had told me that he thought he should have been off probation because the probation officer at the time told him he was being processed off of probation,” Kendall said.
    He says he spoke to Clayton County Probation Chief Chiquita Dean about his client’s file.
    “I went to her office, she started to tell me that, ‘No, that had not happened, he had not been approved for early termination,’ and I indicated to her that I nevertheless wanted to see the records,” he said.
    Kendall added he did not know it at the time, but a probation officer, Andrew Scott, who was familiar with Walker’s case, heard their conversation.
    “Mr. Scott approached me and indicated to me that he had overheard the conversation and that the information that I was being given, that Mr. Walker had not been terminated off of probation was, in fact, false information,” he said.
    Kendall told Byfield that in that conversation, he learned Scott believed his boss destroyed Walker’s signed early termination order.
    “I didn’t believe it, really, I was skeptical,” Kendall said.
    “I told him, ‘Sir, I know you don’t know me, and I’m not the officer that is currently on this case,’” Scott told Byfield.
    The veteran probation officer added he decided to speak to Kendall after praying.
    “It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life,” he said.
    What Scott did cost him his job but kept Walker out of prison.
    “I really believe he was touched by God to do that,” Walker said.
    Records Channel 2 Action News obtained show a probation officer sent paper work in September 2013 to Judge Matthew Simmons to end Walker’s probation.
    “The petition for early termination has been completed and PO has placed the petition in Judge Simmons’ box to be signed,” the internal note reads.
    The next entry is from Dean on October 1. It says, “FOA Discharge… not sent to the judge in error and therefore voided by the Chief.”
    There is no mention of the early termination.
    “It’s very strange,” Scott told Byfield.
    He said early termination paperwork and first-offender discharge paperwork are never apart.
    Byfield called Dean.
    She said she could not comment without the approval of the Department of Corrections.
    A spokesperson for the agency said no to an interview because of pending litigation.
    Channel 2 Action News did get Dean’s side of the story through audio recordings of her conversations with state investigators.
    “Did you shred, destroy or discard a petition for early termination for probationer Walker?” an investigator asked.
    “No, ma’am,” Dean replied.
    “Did you void it?” the investigator questioned.
    “Yes,” Dean said.
    Dean told Simmons the same thing in open court. There is a transcript of her testimony.
    The problem is there is no proof — the document no longer exists.
    In February, Simmons ruled “it is more likely than not” he signed the order, and he immediately ended Walker’s probation.
    Byfield spoke to a retired judge.
    “That is an incredible situation,” retired Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Moore said.
    During the same taped interview, Dean dropped a bombshell.
    “Have you ever destroyed a signed order from a judge?” the investigator asked.
    “Yes, only as it relates to being wrong, not because I’m trying to keep someone from getting it,” Dean said.
    “You don’t have that authority … that would be, in my opinion, a violation of the Georgia law,” Moore said in reaction.
    Dean’s revelation got the attention of nine Clayton County lawmakers.
    They sent letters to Clayton County’s police chief, sheriff and chief judge demanding an investigation.
    “If we all have to follow the law, then the judicial system has to follow the law,” said Democratic Clayton County state Sen. Gail Davenport.
    The GBI got involved in the case in March.
    The next day, Scott lost his job.
    “Do you think talking to Wayne Kendall cost you your job?” Byfield asked.
    “I do,” Scott said. “I feel like there are some things that they possibly didn’t want to come out in the way that they did.”
    Other documentation Channel 2 Action News found shows Dean told investigators she will destroy signed orders from three Superior Court judges, but not a fourth, because that judge tracks what she signs.
    Byfield attempted to ask the judges if they have made any administrative changes in the wake of these developments.
    The court administrator responded to her inquiry. He said the judges agreed to not comment because of pending litigation.
    Walker and Scott are considering their legal options, including civil litigation.

  484. rq says

    So here’s the CBC and the Toronto Star on Rachel Dolezal.

    Then this is an interesting look at forensics in general (and misapplications thereof…): Why it’s so hard to keep bad forensics out of the courtroom. Some of the astounding numbers we’ve seen (e.g. on the FBI’s hair-and-fibre analyses and their wrongness), but there’s a few other useful tidbits in there, too.

    And the CBC on other recent events:
    Miami police officer fatally shoots man in crowded park (I keep thinking, he shot the man in a crowded park – was he even thinking of the safety of all the other people (incl. children)? And I keep replying to myself, No.)

    Llanes said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting.

    He added that several dozen people were in the park, many of them children, who may have witnessed what happened.

    “I understand the anxiety that’s been created across the country from police-citizen interactions, but I would ask that everyone wait for the facts of the case and not make up your own story,” Llanes told reporters. “We will know what the facts of the case are.”

    The chief added that the officer involved in the shooting, who is a 20-year veteran of the department, will be reassigned to administrative duties pending the investigation’s outcome.

    Yes, don’t make up your own facts, the police will make some up for you!

    Tamir Rice shooting: Judge says there’s enough evidence to charge policemen

    Attorneys working with the activists acknowledged that, regardless of how a judge ruled on the affidavits, evidence would ultimately have to go to a grand jury for the case to proceed to trial. The activists used an obscure section of state law that allows private citizens to file affidavits in court alleging a crime has occurred.

    An Ohio State University law professor, Ric Simmons, said it was a “troubling precedent” for a judge to weigh in on a criminal case before the prosecutor has acted.

    “Given the prosecutor’s expertise and access to the evidence,” he said, “the prosecutor is in the best position to make a decision about whether to bring charges and what charges are appropriate.”

    Actually, I’m glad the judge weighed in, if that will lend any weight to the members of a grand jury, where the prosecution may or may not be biased towards the police. This is keeping in mind, though, that McGinty is the same prosecutor who brought charges against Brelo, so we’ll see. I’m sure he has a good reason for being so set on having a grand jury.

    And this is a small story about small houses just to make you smile, about one person trying to make a difference for others: Tiny houses for homeless people sprout in Los Angeles

    A couple of months ago, McGhee was collecting recyclables and she ran into Elvis Summers, a 38-year-old resident of Van Buren Place.

    A white man with a red Mohawk, Summers looks as out of place in this neighbourhood as the tiny house. “He asked me one day, he said, ‘How would you feel if I built you a house?'” McGhee says. “Hah. I’m like, when is it gonna be ready?”

    “Once I found out that she had no shelter whatsoever, that was enough,” Summers says. “So I went to Home Depot and started loading up my little car with materials and started building her a little house.”

    Tiny house movement

    Summers got the idea to help McGhee after seeing other examples of the Tiny House Movement, an initiative to build small shelters for homeless people. Summers says he has a background in construction, so building the little house was fairly simple.

    “It’s really just a box, you know,” Summers says. “You just build out a frame. Four edges, put a couple of beams in between. But I think there’s a special psychological component to putting a little extra into it.”

    The key, he says, was the wheels. That meant it complied with local bylaws.

    “Since it is on wheels, it’s kind of treated like a car when it’s in the street, it has to be moved every 72 hours.”

    It took Summers five days and it cost him $500.

    McGhee said the first night she slept in it, she cried.

    “I slept so comfortable. I wish I could just hug it all the way round,” she says, hugging the side of the house.
    […]

    Summers is now building two more tiny houses and hopes to build dozens more.

    “It’s not the solution,” Summers says. “It’s just the first step. We have more than enough resources and more than enough money. The problem is that people don’t care.”

    Standing outside her home, McGhee proudly gives me a tour. It takes about 10 seconds.

    “A radio, my clothes, a bed … my little dishes,” she points to a red ghetto blaster on the floor, “my music.”

    On the window sill is a present from Summers: a cross that reads “Hope.”

    “Hope I can do better,” she laughs.

    McGhee says she’d like to go to school and get a job, and eventually have a home in which she can actually stand up.

    “I want to do so much! But I can’t,” McGhee says. “One day at a time, one step at a time.”

    Then she jumps on her bike and pedals downtown for an appointment. Life isn’t easy, she says, but at least these days she has something to come back to.

    “I can get a good night’s rest!”

    Then she’ll push her house a little further up the street. So she doesn’t get a ticket.

  485. says

    More on Rachel Dolezal-
    One Tweet exposes the hypocrisy of Rachel Dolezal’s views on race:

    Rachel Dolezal, the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, was exposed on Thursday for being a white woman, despite portraying herself as black. After suspicion regarding her ethnicity swirled, Dolezal’s parents were contacted and they confirmed the rumors.

    “She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” Larry Dolezal, Rachel’s father, told BuzzFeed News Thursday night. “We’re puzzled and it’s very sad.”

    Some people attempted to exonerate her by calling her “transracial,” at which Twitter erupted in fury, leaving many outraged at the justification. But one tweet in particular perfectly captures everything wrong with what Dolezal did — and by using her own words.

    “Follow the money trail,” Dolezal said during an organized discussion on the film The Help in 2012 at Gonzaga University, the Gonzaga Bulletin reported at the time. “A white woman makes millions off of a black woman’s story.”

    “Dolezal worried that people might believe this film followed a true story,” the Bulletin writes. “She grew worried and frustrated when she saw it in the theaters in Idaho, a prominently white town that rarely shows ‘those types of films—black films,’ and the audience laughed at inappropriate moments.”

    Washington Post reporter Abby D. Phillip tweeted this excerpt of the interview on Friday afternoon highlighting the hypocrisy of Dolezal’s capitalizing off a fraudulent identity, building a career and persona off it. She is not only an NAACP chapter president but teaches Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University too, all the while implying she understands the African-American experience because she’s lived it.

    Even her colleagues suspected she was responsible for sending herself threats after she repeatedly claimed she was the victim of hate crimes. It was Dolezal’s reporting a threatening package in her post office box which ultimately led to the public scrutiny.

    In a February interview with the Easterner, Dolezal also claimed she was of Native American descent, that she had been born in a tepee and was required to hunt and gather her food as a child.

    She’s a fraud who’s been wearing blackface for years. And that last bit about claiming she’s Indian is offensive as well.

  486. rq says

    Martese Johnson: ‘It doesn’t matter what I do in this world, I’m still an African-American’

    Martese Johnson, the Kenwood Academy graduate who become the bloodied face of protest as a University of Virginia student after a violent arrest, is continuing to speak out.

    Charges concerning underage drinking were formally dropped Thursday — though officers involved in the incident will not be charged as a result. On Thursday night, he talked to the Sun-Times about the incident that left him bloodied and incited three days of protests at the school. On Friday morning, he talked to the CBS Morning News about the arrest and his takeaways after the takedown by Alcoholic Beverage Control officers outside a college bar in March.

    Johnson told CBS about how he escaped the dangers of Chicago violence, but that he believes his race is still a hurdle despite his accomplishments:

    “Although I left the South Side of Chicago, I hadn’t left my skin behind,” he said. “And at the end of the day, I’ll always be a black man. Always be seen as a criminal, always be seen as dangerous.”

    . . .

    “I’ve come to the University of Virginia. I’ve joined the Honor Committee to prove that I’m an honorable student with integrity,” Johnson said. “And with all those things done, it meant absolutely nothing, at the end of the day.”

    Johnson originally was arrested trying to enter a bar in an underage drinking sweep, officers said. Video and images of the aftermath, his head bleeding after being slammed to the sidewalk by ABC police, sparked outrage as the university community rallied behind the co-chair of the Honor Committee.

    That is the perception that needs changing: the fact that a black person’s skin colour can arouse such baseless suspicions in others.

    Going to be more stuff and thoughts (mostly from others) on Rachel Dolezal, because. SPD suspends all cases involving Rachel Dolezal

    Leaders with the Spokane Police Department suspended all cases involving Rachel Dolezal Friday afternoon.

    The decision came one day after Dolezal’s claims of harassment and race came under internationally scrutiny with the help of the internet.

    SPD tweeted that all cases involving the leader of the NAACP in Spokane were suspended.

    “If new information comes to light we can investigate that information,” wrote SPD leaders.

    Rachel Dolezal has admitted to filing numerous police reports as the victim of threats and hate crimes. She told officers she believed letters received in the NAACP PO Box were threats directed at her and her sons.

    When Dolezal reported a letter sent to her in March, it was the ninth hate crime in less than a decade for her.

    Same folks applauding & defending #RachelDolezal’s “work” won’t do the same for those currently working their asses off in “the movement.”

    On Rachel Dolezal, via Shakesville, kindly provided by CaitieCat!

    Rachel Dolezal, president of Spokane’s chapter of the NAACP and a professor of African studies, has reportedly been misrepresenting herself as a black woman for years. There is background here and here.

    There are, quite understandably, a lot of people—and I am among them—who are angry that a white woman essentially donned blackface in order to do black activism, accepting positions that otherwise likely would have gone to a black academic. There are a lot of people who have lots of questions.

    There are a lot of people defending her, often in deeply mendacious ways. Like suggesting it doesn’t matter what her “real race” is, because she’s doing good work (a contention based, at this point, solely on her own claims). Or suggesting that race is just a social construct, anyway, so it makes no difference who she claims to be. Which elides so many realities about race in the United States that it is difficult to know where to begin. I will simply note, for now, that treating race like a costume has nothing to do with race being a social construct.

    And of course there are jokes on social media. So many jokes.

    Not all of these jokes are equal. Jokes made by aggrieved black people who are using humor to process a theft of their identity, and some of the jokes made by white anti-racism activists, are not the same as jokes made by the white people who don’t actually give a fuck about the complex racial issues of this story and for whom Rachel Dolezal’s appropriation scheme is just another “weird” news story to briefly penetrate the shallowest levels of their consciousness.

    Anyway. Dolezal’s fraud was vast, and her reasons for it are not entirely clear.

    More at the link.
    And like I said, more commentary forthcoming, mostly from twitter folk.

    The Fitful Journey Toward Police Accountability

    For almost a year, the nation has been focused on cases of violence against citizens by police—most of them involving black victims, and many of them involving white officers. A complaint that advocates have raised again and again is that there’s too little accountability for officers: They’re seldom prosecuted or punished when people die, and when they are prosecuted, they usually aren’t convicted.

    That makes this an interesting moment, because across the nation this week, steps are being taken to hold officers accountable—whether through official reviews, the legal process, or citizen action. Here are a few of the stories swirling on Wednesday:

    McKinney: In McKinney, Texas, Corporal Eric Casebolt resigned Tuesday afternoon. Casebolt was the officer captured on camera pulling a gun and tackling a black teenage girl at a pool party in the Dallas suburb. While Casebolt’s resignation—a two-word statement, “I resign,” with no apology—was described as voluntary, Police Chief Greg Conley also made clear that he did not approve of Casebolt’s actions, calling them “indefensible.” Casebolt’s attorney, Jane Bishkin, is expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday, though the timing is not yet clear. (A call to her office has not yet been returned.) Bishkin is experienced at handling cases involving police, and has represented unions and individuals.
    Cleveland: Community leaders are awaiting a decision from a judge on a criminal complaint they filed in Cleveland Municipal Court, seeking arrests for the two officers involved in the November shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. As I explained Tuesday, that comes under a little-known and less-used Ohio law that allows citizens to request an arrest warrant from a court. Michael Benza, an instructor at Case Western Reserve Law School, believed that a warrant was likely and could come quickly.
    Los Angeles: An investigation found fault with two officers involved in the August death of Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old, mentally ill black man shot at his home while he was unarmed. A civilian oversight commission “found that both officers acted improperly when they drew their guns, and that one officer also acted improperly in both approaching Mr. Ford and using his gun.” The case now goes to Police Chief Charlie Beck to decide whether to take any action against the officers. Ford’s mother welcomed the commission’s decision but was dubious that Beck—who had previously cleared the officers—would take serious action. She also called for prosecution of the officers.
    New York: The FBI announced arrests of two New York City corrections officers in connection with the 2012 death of a Rikers Island inmate. Ronald Spear, 52, was restrained when officers attacked him, with one reportedly repeatedly kicking him in the head. The two guards were charged with conspiracy, filing a false report, and lying to a grand jury. The city agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle a suit over his death last year.

    Meanwhile, a different sort of vision of accountability: Following up on a project launched by The Guardian that seeks to record every police-involved fatality—a response to the fact that no government authority keeps reliable statistics—The Intercept’s Josh Begley has created a collection of Google Maps images of the locations of fatal encounters. It’s an unsettling journey through haunted corners of the American landscape.

    I suppose it’s actually important (not to mention interesting) to look back and see that some things seem to have changed, if only a little bit. General attitudes? Not so much. General awareness? I would say so. Work is by no means finished yet, but it’s a start.

    Loving Black people is respecting our agency & space(s). NOT trying to ‘appear’ Black in order to occupy them.

  487. rq says

    Commentary #1:
    Historically passing for white was a very different phenomenon. 1.) Most people of color had significant amount of white lineage…
    So their claim to whiteness was only “fake” in a racial system that made any amount of blackness cancel out any amount of whiteness.
    3) most people of color who passed during segregation did so to gain access to better education, employment, housing, etc.
    4) For folks who passed permanently, it must have been a painful, fraught choice for self-preservation in an age of lynching, segregation.
    There seems to be a “2)” missing, but it is now lost to the sands of internet.

    A Formal Guide as to Why Rachel Dolezal Was Wrong

    Hasn’t Rachel Dolezal done a lot of great things for the black community?

    This depends. While Dolezal has accomplished a lot within blackademia and social justice, any and all academic work based on her identity—that being a lie–has become moot. In America, people of specific races share specific experiences and race-based academia depends heavily on them. If a white person were to find a passion in black history and Afrocentric social justice issues (which does happen), they must inspect these issues through a White Lens, recognizing how their experiences differ from blacks’. The problem with Dolezal’s facade is that she deliberately claimed to experience what I have after having grown up a white woman. Her academic work then lacks the necessary profundity and, more or less, accuracy because she’s attempted to view a people’s problems through their lens rather than her own. In order to extrapolate whether Dolezal’s work is valid and sound rather than counterproductive and futile, one must inspect her work. Has she provided any new insight into the black struggle or just republish work done by legitimate blackademics? As far as her teaching and community work go, I haven’t been able to find any testimonials as to the quality of this work past one former student claiming Dolezal was an incompetent professor.

    But, can’t Rachel be transracial the way Caitlyn Jenner is transgender?

    No. First and foremost, the word “transracial” refers to adoptees of one color being raised by parents of another. Ironically, her adopted black brothers are transracial. Second, race and gender are in no way interchangeable. Gender is a social construct corresponding biological sex. The concept of gender is man-made, relying on social norms and—arguably—natural instinct, but still depends on genitalia to a certain extent.. Race, on the other hand, is completely man-made. There are no innate, natural differences between a black person and a white person past their skin tone and minor facial/bodily features. Any and all racial differences are based on culture and experiences. You can want to be black, but you can’t feel black. There is no way to feel black unless you are black because Blackness is cultural, lived. This is not a criticism of Dolezal considering as of right now she hasn’t come forward explaining why she’s done what she’s done, but a criticism of those defending her. Third, not once has Caitlyn Jenner adopted cisgendered women’s issues as her own. Trans* activists advocate for trans* issues, because they’ve lived different experiences and face different prejudices for being trans*. Dolezal’s story would be comparable to Caitlyn’s if Caitlyn claimed she were born with a vagina and called a slut in elementary school. Rather, Dolezal has completely lied about her identity. She perpetuated this lie in order to gain legitimacy for her scholarly work, because few people will question a black woman’s thoughts on a black woman’s issues. Had Dolazel pursued this same career path as a white woman, she’d be held under much more scrutiny because she’s exploring spaces and telling stories that are not hers. What she may not have realized is there are nonblack blackademics putting out excellent work on these same topics. For example, I present Dr. Gao Chunchang. m_1272894994 Based in China, Dr. Gao Chunchang is an American studies professor and scholar, with a specialization in African-American history. In 2000, Dr. Chunchang published his dissertation “African-Americans in the Reconstruction Era” as an international student. He’d found a passion in African American history and followed through, giving lectures around the world on the Transatlantic slave trade and Reconstruction to this day. Through his work, he’s made clear his place in black history: nowhere. He makes no claims to sharing any black-American plights and instead tackles his subjects as a scholar and silent observer. He, unlike Dolezal, has made an effort to explore a black space without becoming the center of it. In summation, what Dolazel has done—pretending that her adopted brothers are her sons, allegedly hiring a stand-in to act as her black father, actively lying about her background for over 10 years—was wrong because it was deceit. The problem isn’t that she’s white in a black space, but that she deliberately lied to legitimize her work. In the end she’s lied to her students, colleagues, and the world every step of the way. And lying is wrong, is it not?

    And here is the official @NAACP statement re: #RachelDolezal.

  488. rq says

    Commentary #2:
    TRANSRACIAL IS NOT A THING. RACE IS SOCIAL CONSTRUCT CREATED ONLY TO CONQUER & OPPRESS. YOU CAN’T SWITCH RACES. THANK YOU. [kind of a misconception on what being transgender means, no? still…]
    TRANSGENDER PEOPLE HAVE EXISTED PRIOR TO WESTERN GENDER BINARIES. THIS SOCIAL CONSTRUCT IS NOT THE SAME AS RACE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
    History matters. Gender & race do not have the same history. At, fucking, all.
    Oppression of gender & race are only parallel in the execution of such oppression, but that is true for all. It doesn’t make them equal.

    Here’s someone else: Comparing what #RachelDolezal did to being transgender is 1.) fucking stupid and 2.) erasing the existence of Black trans people. STOP IT

    And one more: @Karnythia Also important to know “Transracial” refers specifically to adopting/being adopted outside of ones race ≠ Blackface/appropriation

  489. rq says

    Trangender vs. Transracial: Caitlyn Jenner & Rachel Dolezal, another kindly provided by CaitieCat. So much intersection here, but I promise to get back to all the other racism soon, too. :P (Actually I’m finding all of this incredibly educational and I’m sad that it takes a white woman appropriating a black identity in order to learn about this. “This” being more things on appropriation, identity, and that sort of thing.)

    Those comments [that gender identity and ethnic identity are equal, parallel, and totally comparable] are from Buzzfeed, but they’re everywhere, and largely being made by cisgender white people. The opinion I really want is from a Black trans person, not Becky from North Platte, Nebraska who has no frame of reference for either of those groups.

    Until Janet Mock or Laverne Cox gives me something to work with, I want to attempt to explain that while race and gender are both social constructs, they don’t occupy the same space with regard to perception or flexibility.

    Rachel Dolzeal is white and she’s been white since the day she was born.

    Her parents say she is a mixture of Czech, German, and Swedish, which is to say Rachel is White, Whiter, and Whitest. At some point in her life she decided to just BECOME Black.

    For people saying Rachel never actually lied about being white or never stated she was Black, don’t be simple. [And there’s the fact that she did self-identify as Black, even on official forms. – rq] She knew exactly what she was doing, talmbout her “natural” hair which is obviously a perm, taking her dreadlocks out, leading the public to believe her adopted younger brother is her son, posting pics with this random Black man and commenting about her father, etc. Rachel wanted to be Black because she felt an overwhelming need for attention, because she felt an affinity for Black culture, or because she supports Black politics but was dismissed as a white woman, or possibly a combination of all three. Rachel didn’t want to be Black because she *felt* Black, because Black is not a feeling. Black is an existence that was created for us by racists as a tool to justify ill-treatment and codify oppression into law.

    The concept of race as we understand it today developed as an extension of colonialism in tandem with the scientific revolution, where science was used to definitively classify people, rank them along variables such as beauty and intelligence, and solidify whiteness as the ideal in each category. The scientific community “objectively” placing white people at the top was a way to justify the maltreatment of non-white people further down the list, because white is the pinnacle of humanity and the further you differentiate away from that, the closer you are to beasts. That is where race comes from. Race isn’t even 400 years old and it’s a flexible standard by which to judge people.

    White people are white. Period. Any tainting of that whiteness means you are no longer white, and if the physical expression of that tainting is clearly evident, you are perceived as non-white by a societal structure created by white people to keep themselves at the top. Rachel was able to fool people into thinking she was Black because she made enough cosmetic changes to make herself appear non-white. Her act only works because white is 100% white. Anything less and you can claim minority status because you are not pure and you have been tainted. Obama is 50% white and could never be perceived as a white man, while Wentworth miller is (at most) 25% Black and used his race as an explanation of a racially charged cartoon he drew while at Princeton. Race and the perception of race is based on the need to keep white people at the top.

    Gender is a performance wrongfully based on what your body does and how you should behave accordingly. For most of human history, sex and gender have been interchangeable. Gender roles developed because male bodies look like this and female bodies look like that. The male body is stronger, so he should hunt. The female body gives birth, so she should stay close to home to care for the children. This was the basis of gender for tens of thousands of years, however, humanity develops. We are not the same kind of people we were 10,000 years ago. Sex is something assigned to you by a doctor at birth based on what’s between your legs. It’s an imperfect classification not only because gender develops later but also because doctors frequently get it “wrong” when infant genitals do not meet expectations and they are altered incorrectly. Gender is an expression of an inner self’s need to perform, present, and be perceived as male or female.

    Like race, gender expression is highly variable. Society says Men Look/Behave This Way and Women Are The Opposite, though a lot of us blur those lines and perform gender in a way that fits us personally. The difference between perception of race and perception of gender is, Random White Man can perform his gender as 25% female and still identify as male. He cannot be 25% Black and still identify as white. (You can’t be 25% female, I’m just drawing a comparison.) For example, my physical self-expression naturally tends toward blurring gender lines. I have long hair and I’ll throw on a dress if the mood suits me. Those behaviors are typically associated with women, but I am still a man and I still perform my gender as a man because that is who I am inside and who I want to be perceived as by society.

    One last strike against anyone claiming to be transracial: It only works one way. Only white people can claim to be another race on the inside and then “perform” that race because race operates with white as the default. Racial classifications are based on deviations FROM whiteness. Rachel could pay a Black woman to do her hair and then pick up some NARS bronzer and say “Look! I’m not white!” I can’t straighten my hair and put chalk on my face while saying “Look! I’m not Black!” Transracial as a concept is another extension of white privilege, with those people – firmly situated at the top of society – experiencing an overwhelming need to identify with some other culture to validate their misplaced feelings of oppression because of their affinity for said culture.

    There’s more at the link. But I’m just going to pull this one more quote:

    It’s not always easy to be a white ally, and a large part of that is the repeated assertion that white people don’t and can’t get it. A lot of (most) white people truly do not, and that’s where the sentiment comes from, but for the white people who do TRULY get it, they understand that sentiment. They also realize most white people don’t get it and they’re not offended at being scooted over to the viewing section, because the overall conversation taking place is more important than sidelining it to focus on how they feel about not being heard on a topic that does not concern them directly. They’re not interested in taking over the conversation anyway – they just want to offer another voice.

    Moving on to some science, Study Finds Sexism in STEM Hits Women of Color the Hardest. Show of hands, is anyone surprised?

    A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that not only are women struggling to get ahead in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, but women of color are disproportionately impacted by bias and prejudice in the workplace.

    The study’s authors—Joan C. Williams, Kathrine W. Phillips and Erika V. Hall—worked with the Association of Women in Science to survey 557 female scientists and interview 60 of them to gain insight into how bias impacts them on a daily basis. Their findings support the growing theory that the low numbers of women working in STEM fields isn’t solely due to a lack of candidates in the pipeline or even women who choose other careers that they feel will allow for better work-life balance. The results made it quite clear that there are five distinct issues that push women out of the field: Having to constantly prove competence, needing to be “feminine enough,” having their commitment questioned when they have children, encountering manufactured competition between women, and being socially isolated.

    Key findings include:

    Two-thirds of the women reported that they have to prove their competence more often and with more vigor than their peers. A full 77 percent of black women have encountered this issue.

    Thirty-seven percent of Asian women say that their colleagues have suggested they step back from work after they had children.

    More than half the scientists surveyed said that they have been discouraged from displaying “masculine” behaviors such as being decisive or being direct when speaking their minds.

    More than 40 percent of Asian American women reported feeling pressured to play a stereotypically feminine role, such as the “office mother” or the “dutiful daughter.”

    Nearly half of black and Latina women surveyed said they have been mistaken for administrative or custodial staff.

    Forty-two percent of black women said that they worry that engaging with their colleagues on a social level could negatively impact their view of their competence. As one biologist said: “You don’t know who you can trust. This has been a very lonely life.”

    The authors write that companies can increase the number of women working in STEM by developing objective metrics that root out bias and making cultural shifts to eliminate it.

    Cops murder a man in New Jersey yesterday… Making this one of the worst weeks all year for cop murders. There’s a link to the link of the article in there, but I wanted to let that intro statement stand. The year isn’t half-done yet (not quite).

    How the Oakland Police Woke a Man to Kill Him.

    It’s just one of more than 500 extra-judicial executions so far this year by US Police. It’s not national news, and probably never will be. It doesn’t, after all, ring out like someone shot in the back on video while running away.

    photo demouria-hogg-button_zpsqxrj17t9.jpg

    Still, it happened in Oakland, CA, and a member of the Oakland Police Department pulled the trigger. That is worthy of note, as OPD is still, after eleven years, under a Federal Monitor and a Federal Judge for both egregious acts of criminality and racism and just as blatant and violent civil rights violations.

    In the early morning hours of June 7th, 2015, for reasons still unknown, a car with a lone driver and no passengers pulled to the side of the I 580 westbound Lake Merritt exit ramp. And the driver fell asleep – or became otherwise unconscious. The Fire Department was tasked to investigate; upon doing so, and noticing that a gun was visible on the passenger seat, they called in the Oakland Police.

    You can write the rest of the story yourself. You know how it ends. […]

    His name was Demouria Hogg. He had three children.

    The Anti Police Terror Project, a group formed in Oakland after Michael Brown was executed, released the following statement yesterday.

    … There are no plausible circumstances under which a man sleeping in a car should be rousted and then killed. We know it, OPD knows it, and the City of Oakland knows it. In fact, last month in West Oakland, another man was found sleeping in a car with a gun and was apprehended safely. The failure of OPD’s imagination in how to deal with the situation at Lake Merritt without loss of life is in and of itself a crime, and those responsible should be fired for gross negligence and prosecuted for wrongful death.

    If the Mayor of Oakland, the Oakland Police and the City of Oakland wish to have us believe there is any shred of accountability within, they must
    1. Immediately release the name or names of the officer or officers involved in the shooting, as required by the 5/29/14 California Supreme Court decision, Long Beach Police Officers Association v City of Long Beach.
    2. Immediately make public all body camera video, dashcam video and any surveillance video of the entire event.
    3. Release the coroners report and the police report to the family.
    4. Immediately request that the Attorney General appoint a special investigations team for this officer involved shooting. No one in any police department, let along the Oakland police department, can be trusted to investigate their own, nor is the District Attorney capable of an impartial or robust investigation of an OPD officer, as evidenced by their sham report clearing Miguel Masso of the death of Alan Blueford three years ago.

    A vigil for Demouria Hogg will be held tonight, Friday, June 12th, in the vicinity of the gas station / off ramp at Lake Merritt, beginning at 6:00 PM.

    I’m sorry I missed reporting the date and time of the vigil for anyone who may have been in the area. There will probably be more.

    West Baltimore’s Police Presence Drops, and Murders Soar – because police are refusing to go to certain areas. As if to prove some weird point?

    A month and a half after six officers were charged in Mr. Gray’s death, policing has dwindled in some of Baltimore’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and murders have risen to levels not seen in four decades. The totals include a 29-year-old man fatally shot on this drug corner last month. Police union officials say that officers are still coming to work, but that some feel a newfound reluctance and are stepping back, questioning whether they will be prosecuted for actions they take on the job.

    Around the nation, communities and police departments are struggling to adapt to an era of heightened scrutiny, when every stop can be recorded on a cellphone. But residents, clergy members and neighborhood leaders say the past six weeks have made another reality clear: that as much as some officers regularly humiliated and infuriated many who live here, angering gang members and solid citizens alike, the solution has to be better policing, not a diminished police presence.

    “Without law enforcement, there is no order,” Pastor Weah said. “In truth, residents want a strong police force, but they also want accountability.” She said that she sympathized with many officers who did their jobs well but were now just as hated as the abusive officers, and that she prayed the spate of killings would be the shock that finally caused change.

    “This crisis was bound to happen because of the broken relationship between law enforcement and the people,” she said. “When something gets this infected, you have to break it down and start from new.” […]

    Still, the speed and severity of the police pullback here appear unlike anything that has happened in other major cities. And rather than a clear test case, Baltimore is a reminder of how complicated policing issues are and how hard it can be to draw solid conclusions from a month or two of crime and police response.

    For example, police commanders here attribute the spike in violence in large part to a unique factor: a flood of black-market opiates stolen from 27 pharmacies during looting in April, enough for 175,000 doses now illegally available for sale.

    They say drug gangs are now oversupplied with inventory from the looting, resulting in a violent battle for market share from a finite base of potential customers. Gangs sell a single OxyContin dose for $30, twice what they get for a dose of heroin, said Gary Tuggle, a former Baltimore police officer who was the head of the city’s Drug Enforcement Administration office until this month.

    Police leaders acknowledge, though, that they do not yet know how many of the recent murders were drug-related. Mr. Tuggle also said he took issue with “this idea that the only reason for the rise in violence” is drugs.

    “It’s hard to police effectively if you are only concerned about self-preservation,” he said. “If you are not challenging them because of the need for self-preservation, then these folks are likely going to go out and commit these crimes.”

    Whether hostility from residents or police slowdowns lead to increases in crime is hotly debated among academics. David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies police accountability, said increases were usually attributable to local circumstances, including the drug trade and gang rivalries. […]
    The crisis has also set the police commissioner — Anthony W. Batts, who took command three years ago after serving as police chief in Oakland and Long Beach, Calif. — between a city angry at the department’s posture toward many residents, and police union officials who suggest he does not fully support rank-and-file officers.

    Tensions with the police union broke out into the open late last month, when Mr. Batts apologized emotionally to members for not preparing for unrest on the scale of April’s riot, which wounded more than 100 officers.

    “I got my guys hurt, and I got to own that, and I stand tall behind that,” he told the union members. “That won’t happen again in this organization.” […]

    Mr. Butler went to prison a decade ago for distributing heroin with a feared drug organization. But he wants the police back on the job.

    With the force diminished, he said, criminals think, “I don’t have to worry about the police coming, so why not?”

    Police assertiveness “is a gift and a curse,” Mr. Butler added. “To some extent, it keeps the violence down. But when they become overaggressive or abusive or combative to the citizens, then it causes them to be in an uproar.”

    Just how much the Police Department changes may depend on the outcome of a Justice Department investigation into whether the force has used abusive patterns and practices against residents.

    That inquiry may take a year or more, two Justice Department officials told about 20 residents who gathered last week at Sharon Baptist Church in Sandtown. At the meeting, residents described frustrations that ranged from the difficulty of finding affordable housing to humiliating police practices like strip- and cavity-searching men in full view of bystanders.

    The police say there were 13 homicides in the first 11 days of June. One teenager outside the booming open-air drug market down the block from Pastor Weah’s church was not optimistic that the pace would slow.

    “Summertime,” he said. “That’s when they do all the killing.”

    There was a blog post upthread, a couple of days ago: “I dread summer”.

  490. rq says

    Prosecutors in Freddie Gray case say defense ‘fishing’ in request for police training materials

    Baltimore prosecutors say a request for police training manuals by defense attorneys in the Freddie Gray case is a “fishing expedition” that would be “oppressive” to meet.

    The office of State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby also called a separate defense subpoena request for the “complete file” on the investigation into Gray’s death — including his autopsy — an “end run” around court rules governing “the scope and timing of permissible discovery.”

    The state’s attorney’s office responded this week in Circuit Court to three separate subpoena motions by attorneys for Officer Garrett Miller, one of the officers charged in Gray’s initial arrest.

    Discovery in the case is due June 26, and Mosby’s office said it would provide all documents governed under discovery rules — including the autopsy — by that time. But it said it should not have to provide the documents sooner, as the defense is requesting.

    An attorney for Miller declined to comment Friday. […]

    This week, Mosby’s office pointed to the use of force and lack of probable cause in Gray’s arrest in further outlining second-degree assault and misconduct in office charges against Miller and Nero.

    In the subpoena requests, Miller’s defense attorneys say materials used by both the State’s Attorney’s office and the police department to train young officers at the city’s police academy will be “relevant and necessary to the defense in this case.”

    Police department general orders allow for officers to stop and even handcuff individuals before determining probable cause for an arrest, during what are known as “investigatory stops,” if the officers have reasonable, articulable suspicion a crime has been committed.

    Police Commissioner Anthony Batts reiterated that policy earlier this week.

    Byron Warnken, a University of Baltimore School of Law professor hired by Mosby’s office to train police officers, has said the point when an involuntary stop turns into an arrest depends on a variety of factors, including duration of the stop and any use of force by officers involved.

    Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, the union that represents officers in Baltimore, has said Mosby’s decision to bring charges against the officers in the Gray case has had a chilling effect on police in the city. The number of arrests in Baltimore plummeted to 1,531 in May, compared to 2,677 in April.

    In calling the defense attorney’s requests for police training materials a “fishing expedition,” prosecutors wrote the requests, as written, would force the state to produce “all training, on any conceivable subject (including wiretaps, ballistics, preparing search and seizure warrants, to name a few.)”

    It said the other request for the “complete file” in the Gray case was also overly broad, and documents the defense is entitled to — including the autopsy — would be delivered to them in due time.

    Why is it so bad for this information to go out to the public? Is there something they are trying to hide…?

    John Legend: New York Failed Kalief Browder

    When I saw Kalief Browder’s 2013 television interview, I wanted to meet him. He was 20 and had just come home from a more-than-thousand-day stay on Rikers. Like a lot of people I know who are disappeared by the system, Kalief seemed like the same 16-year-old he was when he went in, but he had an inner strength, an ability to stand up for himself that I deeply admired. He explained why he wouldn’t cop a plea for a crime he hadn’t committed, even if it meant facing 15 years in prison. Offered immediate release from Rikers’s notoriously grimy RNDC, after more than ten months spent in the Bing (solitary confinement), Kalief turned the prosecutor down. He didn’t think it was right to admit to something he’d never done. This weekend we learned that Kalief, who reportedly had no mental illness when he was arrested, killed himself.

    New York failed Kalief. The list of things that went wrong in his case begins with his first encounter with the NYPD, whose practice of targeting black teens is well documented. The idea that being accused of stealing a backpack would lead to his arrest and detention would be absurd if it weren’t actually tragic. He should not have been tried as an adult, or had prosecutors, defenders, and judges so overwhelmed with cases that he waited three years for trial, violating his constitutional right to swift justice. He should not have been held in an adult jail where he would spend 700 to 800 days of those three years in solitary confinement. He should not have spent one day being abused by guards or the others incarcerated there.

    This Martin Luther King Day, Governor Cuomo publicly released findings from a task force he began last year to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice found that the patterns and practices at Rikers violate the human rights of adolescent males in jail. Rikers shouldn’t even have a youth unit. The RNDC, where Kalief spent three years, where 18-year-old Kenan Davis hanged himself this week, should not exist. Right now legislators in Albany are considering legislation that would end the automatic prosecution of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, and remove youths like Kalief from Rikers and other jails throughout the state. Kalief died because our system is broken, and lawmakers can act now to stop tragedies like this in the future.

    Missed this one with the others: The Huge Problem With the Rachel Dolezal Scandal That Everyone Needs to Know

    On Thursday, Rachel Dolezal, the 37-year-old head of the local NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, evaded questions from KXLY that she lied about her racial identity and falsely identified a black man as her father. Despite passing herself off as a black woman for years (and reportedly getting paid to talk about said identity), Dolezal, it turns out, is white. Her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, confirmed as much by phone to the Spokesman-Review.

    The fiasco is a glaring example of white privilege in action. During a moment when so many are finally speaking out about the unceasing police abuse brutalizing black Americans — most recently seen with the McKinney, Texas, pool incident — news of Dolezal is now taking up much-needed space in media and public dialogues. The constant re-centering of racial conversations on whiteness and the excessive focus on white lives are two of the most prominent features of white privilege.

    The hashtag #transracial is now trending on Twitter, for example, as if notions of racial ambiguity or post-racialism are somehow new entry points into our understanding the history of race and racism in the U.S. These are not new conversations, even if a white woman posing as black may make it seem as if they are. […]
    To be clear, in attempting to pass as black, Dolezal falsely represented her identity. Trans people don’t lie about their gender identities — they express their gender according to categories that reflect who they are.

    Dolezal practiced cultural theft. There’s a stark difference between racial indeterminacy, or the idea that race is not fixed and individuals may have multiple racial identities, and racial misrepresentation. Racial misrepresentation is cultural theft.

    Cultural appropriation is a contested activity in the U.S., especially in the realms of artistry, but cultural theft committed with the purpose of gaining access to positions or institutional power is more insidious. This is what Dolezal did. According to the Washington Post, for example, when Dolezal “applied to Howard University to study art with a portfolio of ‘exclusively African-American portraiture,’ the university ‘took her for a black woman’ and gave her a full scholarship.”

    “You’ve got a white woman coming in that got a full-ride scholarship to the black Harvard,” Dolezal’s father, Larry Dolezal, told the Washington Post.

    Later, Mayor David Condon of Spokane appointed Dolezal as chairwoman of an independent citizen police ombudsman commission. According to CNN, she identified herself as “at least part African-American” in her application for appointment to the commission. […]

    “Black privilege is a myth, is a joke, is a punchline, is a time a teacher asks a little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said alive,” poet Crystal Valentine stated at a college poetry slam in April.

    It takes a certain amount of entitlement to claim blackness as an identity category, and even more to move about society falsely representing oneself while gaining access to areas because of the color of one’s skin. That is a privilege black people do not have.

    But white privilege is a truth. And it is perhaps no more obvious than when a white woman, posing as a black woman, achieves prominence while fighting on behalf of the people she has betrayed.

    Saved footage from Freddie Gray arrest and unrest limiting city’s camera capacity – that’s the footage they’re using to track down all those looters and criminals that wandered the streets during the unrest. Even though most of them wore helmets and faceshields.

    A decision to save surveillance video of Freddie Gray’s arrest and the subsequent unrest in the city has significantly reduced the storage capacity of some cameras on Baltimore’s closed-circuit system — shrinking the window during which police may flag footage to help with criminal investigations.

    Capacity on some of the city’s 700 CitiWatch cameras has been reduced from 28 days to three, meaning footage of any illegal activity is wiped clean after 72 hours unless a police officer shows up to save it, city officials said. The capacity of other cameras has been reduced to a lesser degree.

    City attorneys made the decision to save the footage because it could prove critical in future litigation related to Gray’s death or the crimes committed during the unrest, a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. [..]

    Harris said the city plans to spend $140,000 on new hardware for long-term storage. The city does not know when the new hardware will be in place, he said, but Rawlings-Blake “has ordered that all red tape be cut to expedite the process as quickly as possible.”

    Police have relied on CCTV footage to make arrests in more than 1,000 cases a year, according to data kept by the city.

    Grant Fredericks, an instructor of video sciences at the FBI National Academy, said it’s important to save footage from incidents such as Gray’s arrest and the riots.

    “That now becomes critical data,” Fredericks said. “All of it is evidence, and the authorities should secure all of that information.

    “If anyone is charged in the future and that evidence is allowed to be erased, then the defendant can argue that exculpatory evidence was lost. And if that is lost, because the managers of the system or the government that is maintaining the system failed to retain the evidence, then the defendant can argue that the prosecution is prejudicial because they allowed the evidence to be erased.” […]

    “We don’t want to have an incident where we need the data but we don’t have it because we had nowhere to store it,” he said. “That creates an emergency situation.

    “Are we going to store it on a cloud? Are we going to store it on a server? Those are all conversations we need to have.”

    I can think of other conversations they need to have.

  491. rq says

    I’m sure everyone now has heard of the shooting and attempted bombing in Dallas at the police department there… So, there will be some comparison-type commentary remarking on some strange facts in police actions and media responses in the case.
    Dallas PD is being very transparent, so you know this is in no way related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

    For those of you who don’t know Dallas, PD headquarters is in the middle of a residential area. So they negotiated because of civilians.
    And in reply to the previous, They negotiated bc WHITE. They shot Tamir Rice in a park and John Crawford in a crowded Walmart.

    The Face of American Terror. #DallasPDShooting – that has a picture of a Time cover (don’t know if it’s real or not), but the headline seems correct…

    WTF is CNN Talking about “No known Connection to Terrosim”? What do you call SHOOTING UP the POLICe, PIPE BOMBS, Threats. ETc??? @CNN

    That young boy in McKinney said the cops treated him like he was invisible Guess this terrorist invisible to cameras too #DallasPDShooting

    A few more to come…

  493. rq says

    Documents coming out on Tamir Rice case, but it will have to wait for tomorrow – I’m going to bed. But it’s going to be ghastly. I’m going to leave this one more comment with some links as… intro, I guess. But damn.

    Officer Loehmann: Tamir “gave me no choice” – and I would like to know how a 12-year-old child playing in a park was able to outwit a trained officer so quickly.

    The officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice told investigators that the Cleveland boy reached for a gun just before the patrolman opened fire.

    “He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do,” Officer Timothy Loehmann told a fellow officer in the moments after he shot Tamir at a gazebo outside the Cudell Recreation Center last Nov. 22.

    The officer’s words — released Saturday inside a 224-page report released by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty — mark the first time the Loehmann’s account of the shooting was revealed.

    The report also notes that Loehmann and his partner each refused to be interviewed by sheriff’s investigators. The report, however, notes the observations of fellow officers, many of whom said Loehmann appeared distraught after the shooting when police learned that Tamir was much younger than first thought and that his gun was actually a BB gun.

    One officer said the BB gun appeared to be “1,000 %” real.

    It is unclear why McGinty chose to release the report, which was compiled over four months by county sheriff’s deputies. The evidence has yet to be presented by prosecutors to a grand jury for consideration of an indictment against Loehmann or his partner. […]
    The swiftness of the shooting was noted by Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine, who found probable cause to charge the officers involved in the shooting. Adrine said he was “thunderstruck” after viewing surveillance video of the shooting. A group of Tamir supporters filed papers earlier this week seeking charges against the officer.

    Adrine forwarded his conclusions to prosecutors.

    As for Loehmann, the FBI agent expressed empathy.

    “He seemed like a guy that was put in a very difficult situation and had to make a very quick decision based upon…what he believed was a imminent fear of death or serious physical injury to himself, and he reacted to it,” he told investigators. “Either way, I don’t think it was a position he wanted to be put in.”

    I’m not particularly apologetic about the fact that I don’t have a lot of empathy for Loehmann. Something approaching zero in fact.

    Investigation into the Death of Tamir Rice, from the Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor.

    The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office today is releasing results of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department investigation into the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on November 22, 2014.

    “Transparency (i.e., the actual facts) is essential for an intelligent discussion of the important issues raised by this case,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty. “If we wait years for all litigation to be completed before the citizens are allowed to know what actually happened, we will have squandered our best opportunity to institute needed changes in use of force policy, police training and leadership.

    “I believe releasing the BCI Task Force investigation of the November 29, 2012 chase and shooting deaths of Ms. Williams and Mr. Russell provided the public with an accurate, factual basis to discuss the case, the issues and the reforms that have followed.”

    Tamir Rice was shot outside the Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland’s West Side on a Saturday afternoon and died at MetroHealth Medical Center the following day. He was fatally shot by a police officer responding to a 911 call that someone had a gun in the park. That weapon turned out to be an airsoft gun.

    At the request of the Cleveland Division of Police, the Sheriff’s Department took over the use of deadly force investigation in January of this year. On June 3, Sheriff Clifford Pinkney delivered his investigative report to Prosecutor McGinty. The Sheriff’s Department was assisted in its work by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI).

    The documents released today have been redacted to exclude personal information, confidential medical records and reports not germane to the events of November 22.

    “I want to thank Sheriff Pinkney, his investigators and BCI for being willing to take on the thankless job of investigating the conduct of officers in another law enforcement agency,” said Prosecutor McGinty. “We are now in the process of reviewing this report and deciding what additional investigation is needed. That is the way that every significant investigation works: The Sheriff’s investigation is a good solid foundation that will support the grand jury’s own investigation. Tamir’s family, the people of this community and the officers involved deserve nothing less than the most thorough investigation and analysis possible.”

    In accord with the policy of the Prosecutor’s Office in fatal use of deadly force cases involving law enforcement officers, evidence from this investigation will be presented to the Grand Jury. Members of the Grand Jury also can ask to hear from additional witnesses, including expert witnesses.

    In Cuyahoga County, the Grand Jury ultimately makes the final decision, after its investigation is complete, whether criminal charges are warranted.

    “The death of a citizen resulting from the use of deadly force by the police is different from all other cases and deserves a high level of public scrutiny,” Prosecutor McGinty said. “These cases involve peace officers/public employees whose decision to take a fellow citizen’s life must be evaluated to determine, by law, whether the police officer’s action was reasonable under the circumstances and therefore justifiable.”

    This article contains links to the documents: RESULTS: Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s investigation into Tamir Rice’s death

    Nearly seven months after his death, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office has released the results of the Sheriff’s Department’s investigation into the death of Tamir Rice.

    According to the investigation, it is clear that Tamir had a realistic looking BB gun the day he was killed. Experienced officers arriving on the scene saw it on the ground and nearly everyone interviewed said it looked real. An FBI agent says he was 100 percent sure the day of the shooting that it was real.

    Why Tamir had it is revealed in the interview of two boys who knew him. They say he was picked on from time to time at school and at the Cudell Recreation Center. Other boys made fun of him for his clothing, or wearing the same stained clothing multiple days. They believe it was a chance for him to look “cool” and maybe fit in and end the bullying.

    Testimony varies on why Tamir was shot. Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fired the shot, was distraught and was overheard muttering something to the effect of he had a gun and reached for it after I told him to show his hands.

    Nearly everyone involved on the scene thought Tamir Rice was older than 12. Estimates are from age 17 to early 20’s, this is likely due to his size. The autopsy report revealed he was 67 inches tall or 5 foot 7, and weighed 190 pounds.

    Did his age and dispatchers failure to say the gun may be a toy or that he was a pre-teen work into Officer Loehmann firing? That is anyone’s guess as once again decisions like that are not included in the Sheriff’s investigation, that will be up to the Grand Jury when the Prosecutor’s Office presents the case.

    There are 10 documents, approximately 250 pages, of the investigation available. Some is it has been redacted.

    To read the first document, the overview, click HERE.
    The second document contains interviews, requests, and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s report. Click HERE to read it.
    The third document is an extensive interview with a redacted person. Read it HERE.
    Document four contains more interviews, including one with the dispatcher.
    Document five has more from the Medical Examiner, additional interviews and requests for interviews. read it HERE.
    The sixth document has even more interviews, including some with Tamir’s friends and family. You can read the full document HERE.
    Read document seven HERE. It has interviews with EMS paramedics, supervisors, Firefighters, and other requests. Additionally there is a review of the Cudell Rec Center video.
    The eighth document is a synopsis of interviews, and the interview with the dispatcher who took the original 911 call. Read it HERE.
    Document nine contains interviews with detectives, and contains the full comprehensive report from the Medical Examiner’s Office. More HERE.
    The final document contains the last set of interviews. Read it HERE.

    In other stuff, Oh. Art. Life. Check out the attached image.

    Beyond the Chokehold: The
    Path to Eric Garner’s Death

    Mr. Garner’s final words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry for a protest movement. On screens large and small, his last struggle replayed on a loop. Official scrutiny and public outcry narrowed to focus on the actions of a single officer.

    But interviews and previously undisclosed documents obtained by The New York Times provide new details and a fresh understanding of how the seemingly routine police encounter began, how it hurtled toward its deadly conclusion and how the police and emergency medical workers responded.

    This was not a chance meeting on the street. It was a product of a police strategy to crack down on the sort of disorder that, to the police, Mr. Garner represented. Handcuffed and motionless on the ground, he did not receive immediate aid, and the apparent lapses in protocol prompted a state inquiry. The first official police report on his death failed to note the key detail that vaulted the fatal arrest into the national consciousness: that a police officer had wrapped his arm around Mr. Garner’s neck. [emphasis mine – rq] […]

    Cellphone video gave the world an unobstructed view of the chokehold, which was found to be a cause of Mr. Garner’s death, along with the compression of his chest by officers who helped to handcuff him. For all the clarity the video seemed to provide, the focus on the chokehold left largely unexplored crucial events before, during and after the fatal confrontation.

    Tensions had been building well before July 17. That day, a lieutenant from the 120th Precinct, on his way to a meeting, saw a group of men on Bay Street and recognized them as a chronic source of problems in the area, said Lou Turco, the head of the lieutenants’ union. The lieutenant called the precinct. Officers Damico and Pantaleo were sent to address it.

    At the scene, the two plainclothes officers moved in, and the supervisors who arrived moments later never gained control. Two witnesses said they heard a sergeant tell the officers to ease up as they held Mr. Garner down on the sidewalk. “Let up,” a beauty store manager, Rodney Lee, recalled hearing the sergeant say that day. “You got him already.”

    For minutes as Mr. Garner lay on the ground, he was not given oxygen by the responding emergency medical personnel, who were from Richmond University Medical Center.

    “If someone was choked out, probably they need oxygen right away,” said Israel Miranda, president of the Uniformed E.M.T.s, Paramedics and Fire Inspectors F.D.N.Y. Local 2507, which does not represent the Richmond University medical personnel.

    In the hours after Mr. Garner died, an initial five-page internal report prepared for senior police commanders, known as a 49, did not refer to contact with his neck. The report, as well as the actions of supervisors involved, is part of the review by the New York Police Department, a spokesman said.

    Instead, the report quotes by name a witness who described seeing how “the two officers each took Mr. Garner by the arms and put him on the ground.” That same witness, Taisha Allen, later said she told the grand jury on Staten Island that she saw a chokehold. She said the statement attributed to her in the report was not accurate.

    Without video of his final struggle, Mr. Garner’s death may have attracted little notice or uproar. Without seeing it, the world would not have known exactly how he died.

    The video images were cited in the final autopsy report as one of the factors that led the city medical examiner to conclude that the chokehold and chest compression by the police caused Mr. Garner’s death. Absent the video, many in the Police Department would have gone on believing his death to have been solely caused by his health problems: obesity, asthma and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. The autopsy report, which is confidential, was provided by a person close to Mr. Garner’s family.

    “We didn’t know anything about a chokehold or hands to the neck until the video came out,” said a former senior police official with direct knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his access to confidential department information. “We found out when everyone else did.” […]

    Edward D. Mullins, the head of the sergeants’ union, said the officers and their supervisors did nothing wrong. Officers can take action without sergeants present and regularly do, he said. The lack of any reference to contact with Mr. Garner’s neck in the initial police report was not troubling, Mr. Mullins said, because the Internal Affairs Bureau would later prepare its own, more detailed report.

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    In addition, Mr. Mullins said, “no one” at the scene thought a chokehold was used.

    He said the sergeants were still “being kept inside,” or off the streets, pending results of the department’s investigation.

    A lawyer for Officer Pantaleo, Stuart London, declined to comment and pointed to a summary he provided in December of the officer’s statements to the grand jury. Officer Pantaleo testified to trying a takedown move during the arrest and said he began holding Mr. Garner’s neck out of fear that they would both crash through a glass storefront.

    “He thought that once E.M.T. arrived, everything would be O.K.,” Mr. London said at the time.

    Difficulty Breathing

    Officers in the videos did not appear to respond to Mr. Garner’s pleas. Sergeant Saminath reported Mr. Garner had difficulty breathing and called an ambulance, but he said Mr. Garner “did not appear to be in great distress,” the report said.

    The department’s Patrol Guide, its manual of rules, calls for officers to immediately send a person with a life-threatening medical condition — “apparent heart attack, breathing difficulties” — to the nearest hospital.

    At 3:32 p.m., officers radioed for an ambulance, said a city official, who requested anonymity to discuss details of the response that remained under investigation by state authorities. About a minute and a half later, another request was made. Both were categorized as “unknown,” a low priority.

    Sergeant Adonis told investigators that she “believed she heard the perpetrator state that he was having difficulty breathing,” according to the department’s initial report. Sergeant Saminath said the ambulance he requested arrived about five minutes later.

    Witnesses said the officers did not react in accordance with Mr. Garner’s medical distress. (After his death, current and former officers said those at the scene might have believed his pleas were part of a ruse to avoid arrest.)

    But even after emergency medical workers arrived, the response appeared disorganized.

    Their actions, from arriving at Mr. Garner’s motionless body to wheeling him away, were captured in an eight-minute video recorded by Ms. Allen, who lives in the area and was on the block shopping for sandals. The video of the medical response has not been as widely understood as those of the physical struggle recorded by Mr. Orta.

    An ambulance crew arrived unaware of Mr. Garner’s condition, or that police officers were involved. A stretcher was not immediately brought to him. A bag with oxygen equipment that should have been near his body at all times was carried away.

    Ms. Allen said in an interview that when medical workers arrived, they casually asked Mr. Garner to wake up, appearing to believe he was “faking it,” she said, recounting her testimony before the grand jury.

    At first, one emergency medical technician, Nicole Palmeri, leaned over Mr. Garner to feel for a pulse, first on his wrist and then his neck, according to Ms. Allen.

    As Ms. Palmeri checked for a pulse, another E.M.T., Stephanie Greenberg, walked back to the ambulance to retrieve a stretcher. An E.M.T. trainee followed her, walking away from Mr. Garner with the oxygen equipment.

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    Five medical workers were there: the two medical technicians, the trainee and two paramedics who arrived later and are not seen on video. They were from Richmond University Medical Center. Supervisors from the Fire Department are routinely dispatched to serious medical calls, but the Garner call was not initially considered serious. No supervisorsassisted in his medical care on the scene.

    Ms. Palmeri did not respond to phone messages or a letter left with a relative. Ms. Greenberg declined to comment. […]

    At 3:44 p.m. — 12 minutes after the first request for an ambulance — emergency medical workers upgraded the seriousness of the situation to the highest priority level, or Segment 1. They did so, the city official said, because Mr. Garner was in cardiac arrest.

    Sergeant Saminath instructed Officer Damico to ride in the ambulance with Mr. Garner. Mr. Garner was declared dead at 4:34 p.m. at Richmond University Medical Center.

    An autopsy was performed the next day. “On external examination of the neck, there are no visible injuries,” according to the final report. On the inside, however, were telltale signs of choking: strap muscle hemorrhages in his neck and petechial hemorrhages in his eyes. No drugs or alcohol were in his system.

    The results of the examination contrasted sharply with the Police Department’s initial account, titled “Death of Perpetrator in Police Custody, Within the Confines of the 120 Precinct.” It contained no mention of any contact with Mr. Garner’s neck. […]

    In the only inquiry completed so far, a Staten Island grand jury found Officer Pantaleo committed no crime when he used a chokehold — a technique banned by police rules.

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    Daniel M. Donovan Jr., who was the Staten Island district attorney, fought to keep secret the testimony and other evidence presented to the grand jury. In May, Mr. Donovan was elected to Congress.

    Elected officials and civil liberties advocates have unsuccessfully tried to pry open the grand jury transcripts. Separately, lawyers from the civilian review board argued before a Staten Island judge on Friday for access to the transcripts.

    “Efforts to obtain N.Y.P.D.’s investigative file of the incident from the N.Y.P.D. have been unsuccessful,” the board’s lawyers wrote in legal filings.

    On a recent afternoon, steps from where Mr. Garner was arrested in July, a dozen men congregated on the stoop of a Bay Street building owned by Mr. Gjeshbitraj, the landlord who named an “Eric” in his 311 complaint. A man sweating through a red tank-top turned his back to a companion, who put a cigarette in his palm. He raised it to his lips and walked away.

    Mr. Gjeshbitraj said in a recent interview that he no longer called the city or the police to complain about the conditions around his building, as he had frequently in the months and years before Mr. Garner died.

    “The last time I called the cops, someone got choked to death,” he said. “Eric got killed because I called.”

    And that, folks, is how lives are list and public trust in the police is eroded.

    Kaylan Ward, 16. Found dismembered on overpass of highway I-10 in New Orleans. Had been ran over multiple times. Not a police killing, not a loud case, possibly racially motivated… and just fucking sad, another life lost.

    More tomorrow.

  494. rq says

    Short interlude from a presidential campaign, and one activist’s comments on Clinton’s launch event:
    .@HillaryClinton’s campaign invited me to the launch today on Roosevelt Island. I’m here to hear what she has to say.
    And there are protestors here at @HillaryClinton’s launch, too. (Note lack of general outrage over upside down flag in white protestor hands.)
    And @HillaryClinton has delivered strong messages re: tax code revisions, small businesses, LGBT, research, and clean energy. (Among other things.)
    And @HillaryClinton has talked a few times about “inner cities” which I think might be code for black people. I think.
    Okay, @HillaryClinton just said she’ll fight for the rights of “people of color.”
    It is important that political leaders acknowledge race and police reform if they expect any modicum of support from black folk.
    In other words, in this respect, it was a poor showing from Clinton.

  495. rq says

    For some strange reason, Japan and racism in Japan seem to pop up regularly (though not often). Previously it was those musicians who perform in blackface.
    Here’s another trend.
    ‘B-Stylers’ Are Japanese Teens Who Want to Be Black

    Dutch photographer Desiré van den Berg has spent the past seven months traveling around Asia. She lives in Hong Kong at the moment, but when she was in Tokyo, back in December 2013, she met Hina, a 23-year-old who works at a trendy Tokyo boutique called Baby Shoop. Hina’s shop has the tagline “Black for Life.” She describes its products as “a tribute to Black culture: the music, the fashion, and style of dance.”

    Hina’s appearance is also loyal to what the Japanese call “B-style”—a contraction of the words “Black” and “Lifestyle” that refers to a subculture of young Japanese people who love American hip-hop culture so much that they do everything in their power to look as African American as possible.

    I called up Desiré to find out more about her time photographing Hina and her gang. […]

    I know Japan is full of weird subcultures, but how do you explain this one?
    There are things like the Harajuku Girls, which I guess are rather normal but some are complete excesses. B-style is the sort of thing you would find on wtfjapanseriously.com. Hina often goes to New York, and she idolizes America. Japanese TV is full of American films and commercials and that must be a reason, too. She sees America as a kind of promised land. […]

    What do B-stylers like Hina mainly do?
    Hina, for example, visits a tanning salon every week to darken her skin. I was surprised these tanning salons even exist, because in Japan it is a classic beauty ideal to have your skin be as pale as possible.

    Just to be clear: Hina is 100 percent Japanese and naturally has pale skin. She is only dark because of the sunbed and the use of really dark foundation. B-stylers also listen to hip-hop, and visit special African hair salons to get braids or curly hair. These salons are usually found in Tokyo’s ghettos and are run by small African communities. Hina wears colored contact lenses: they are a lighter shade of brown to make her eyes seem bigger. […]

    Are there people who believe this to be inappropriate?
    Apparently not in Japan, but in most comments underneath videos on YouTube you see fierce reactions. Many seem to feel the Afro-American typecasting is all wrong. Hina and other B-stylers are not really aware of this.

    And what do B-stylers’ families think of their lifestyles?
    When I was in Japan I realized that it’s considered really impolite to stare. You see the weirdest people on the streets, but no one stares, not like the way they can in the Netherlands, where I’m from. It’s easier for people to be who they want to be. Hina’s parents are fine with it. Her mom sees it as a phase that will pass. Even though many Japanese feel right at home in the mass, it is still a land of extremes, which manage to coexist rather well.

    See, they don’t seem to be calling themselves black, just… trying to look as black as possible. Doesn’t make the trend not problematic… appropriation on a different scale?

    See, the fact that his Boulware’s race is not repeatedly being referenced in MSM or by the police told was the indicator that he was white. Missed that comment earlier.

    Here We Go Again: Armed Racist Idiots On Motorcycles Descend On McKinney To Support Hate… yes.

    So far more than 800 people have signed up with nearly 150 “maybe’s.” If past conservative rallies like Operation American Spring are any indicator, approximately nine people will show up. The event, scheduled for Saturday morning, isn’t just to support former police officer, emotional nut job and gun wielding asshat Eric Casebolt, it’s to protest black people in general.

    A new conservative theory says that the pool party in McKinney was organized as a part of a sex-slavery ring where young girls would “twerk” while doing drugs.

    They don’t seem to get the point. An out-of-control cop pulled a gun on a bunch of teenage black kids, threw a 14-year-old girl to the ground and planted her face in the dirt with his knee while completely ignoring anyone who was white.

    The issue in McKinney isn’t about whether or not a bunch of kids shouldn’t have been at a pool, it’s about a completely irrational response by a completely irrational racist.

    The organizers of the newest hatefest aren’t even trying to hide their racism, posting videos of what they call “another day in section 8 housing and calling black people “mud monkeys” and “n*ggers.”

    That’s good old-fashioned patriotism for you. In the pre-1864 south these people would’ve been commissioned as officers in the confederate army. Today they’ve been commissioned as a-holes in the conservative war against anything not white, racist or “Christian.”

    Anyone who would come out in support of Eric Casebolt’s actions at that pool party has serious issues. Maybe a police presence was warranted to break up a pool party, but there was no reason for the antics of the little robo cop who could.

    These idiots couldn’t care less about Eric Casebolt. The only thing they care about is promoting hate and violence while they hide behind the American (and confederate) flag.

    Good Cop Demoted, Transferred & Worse for Exposing his Dept in the Killing of a College Student. And yes, I appreciate having good cops in the system. But the problem is they’re in the system, and it’s really hard to beat the system without the system beating you…

    Trooper Anthony Piercy was the officer who stopped then young Iowa native that day. According to witnesses, Piercy handcuffed Ellingson’s wrists behind his back and then pulled an already buckled life vest, with armholes, over his head and upper torso, completely against the recommended use of the vest.

    As Piercy drove the dangerously restrained young man back to the office for a breathalyzer, he tumbled out of the boat and into the water. He would never come back up.

    An investigation by the Star showed that Piercy only had 2 days of training prior to holding this young man’s life in his hands. It also showed that the boat was travelling at over 40 mph which required patrol investigators to hold on or fall out; Ellingson was not given the option to hold on.

    Only days after the death of this young man, special prosecutor Amanda Grellner announced that she would not file criminal charges against Piercy, and his death was ruled an accident.

    This young college student, who was merely suspected of a misdemeanor, died at the hands of police and no one was held accountable.

    Enter Trooper Randy Henry.

    According to the Kansas City Star:

    Days after Ellingson’s death, Henry was interviewed by patrol investigators looking into the incident. At one point during the interview, a recording shows, Henry had questioned whether the highest degree of care was taken with Ellingson that day. When he mentioned a state law pertaining to that, his sentence was cut off and one investigator insisted the recorder be turned off.

    Earlier this month, Henry was deposed in the civil suit the Ellingson family has filed against the patrol, Piercy and top commanders. In a letter to the patrol superintendent, Col. Bret Johnson, Pleban stated: “You might want to educate yourself by requesting a copy of the transcript of Sgt. Henry’s deposition so that you can fully comprehend his status as a whistle blower.”

    Since Henry has begun to expose the lack of training, the resultant death of a young man, and the subsequent cover-up of that death by his department, he has since been retaliated against.

    Sgt. Henry was demoted to corporal and transferred from his nearly three-decades long patrol at Lake of the Ozarks to Truman Lake.

    “Randy Henry doesn’t have a horse in the race,” Henry’s attorney, Chet Pleban told The Star. “He’s not on one side or the other. He has testimony to give that’s material. The truth is the truth. He went to his superiors to say, ‘This is wrong. This is what happened.’ And they blew him off. So now here we are.”

    Since he spoke out, Henry has been forced to undergo multiple mental health evaluations at the demand of his superiors. The exams found nothing

    “Ultimately, the mental-health provider warned that because she found nothing wrong with Sgt. Henry, it would be unethical for her to see him a third time at the insistence of the patrol,” Pleban wrote to Johnson. “When the mental health route failed, a Professional Standards investigation surfaced.”

    The departemnt has been silent on the reasons behind any of the investigations.

    Craig Ellingson, Brandon’s father, has insisted that Piercy should be held accountable for what happened to his son. He is also outspoken about the retaliation, noting that Henry’s discipline is wrong.

    “It’s retaliation,” he said. “They shouldn’t be doing that.”

    So…this is why we don’t get to hear about good cops. Another perspective on the same case.

    So…. cops are A-OK when they are blasting innocent people into the next life, but if one of them says “I think there’s a problem here related to safety” send him to the psych ward for evaluation.

    So there’s not just a huge problem with bad cops – the whole cop system is corrupt, compromised, and often criminal.

    The entire police system is built on and invested in getting away with lameness, incompetence and outright murder.

  496. rq says

    There’s another police-involved shooting in Cleveland, but no details available yet. Even the tweets are super-unclear. Hopefully more on that later.

    Judge disqualifies all 250 prosecutors in Orange County, CA because of widespread corruption – a somewhat old story (end of May) but worth a re-read. Probably not the only place where such things happen.

    Racist Walmart Throws Four Black Men Out Of Store For ‘Walking Too Slow,’ One Arrested (VIDEO)

    Since the advent of smartphones, America has become a laundromat – all its unmentionables are showing and people are beginning to talk now that all the cotton and lace is visible. Much the way smartphones have allowed the common practice of police brutality to be witnessed nationally and thereby condemned, so we are able to do the same with racism.

    Though thankfully no one was killed in the video below now circulating social media, it is nonetheless disturbing and repulsive to witness thanks to those very same smartphones, not to mention the foresight of the fella to begin filming the incident in the first place. Somehow, coupled with the climate of endless murders of unarmed black folks by (typically) white cops, this video of a group of four black men being kicked out of a Pensacola, Florida, Walmart for “walking too slow” rounds out the reality and broader picture of systemic racism in the United States.

    You don’t have to be killed in the streets by the police for no reason in order to experience racism. It comes in many shapes, forms, and in nearly any degree. In this case, one man was even arrested for maintaining his right to continue shopping, having committed no crimes or behaved in a manner that would justify the store’s request that he leave. Officers also threw his phone to the ground and broke the screen even though the man never resisted or struggled in the slightest while handcuffed.

    The incident began after the four men had been in the store “a few minutes,” according MediaTakeOut. One of the men, later revealed to have been in a car accident recently, drove one of the store’s electric carts. Apparently, however, the store’s manager felt the men were “taking too long,” and rather than approaching them, himself, to voice his bigotry to their faces, he called the police on them instead, seeking to have them removed from the store.

    The video clearly shows the men remaining calm, though somewhat indignant, as most anyone would be in such a situation. In response to being told to leave the store by a police officer, one man can be heard saying, “F*ck you,” and good for him. He and the folks in his party are then met with a barrage of profanity and intimidation to leave the store. One of them is eventually accused of “showing his ass,” which more than likely is simply a reference to sagging. All the men, naturally respond that no one was “showing their ass” and that they would not leave the store. In response, they are then threatened with arrest if they do not immediately leave.

    Facing arrest, the men start slowly making their way toward the front of the store, arguing in disbelief the entire time, insisting that they were still going to purchase the few goods they’d picked up on their way out.

    They were not successful, however, as the man driving the electric cart was placed in handcuffs, arrested and ushered outside by one officer as his friends followed him, pleading with the cop that arresting the man was unnecessary, stating over and again, “We don’t need this!”

    A second cop shows up then, also white, and shoos the arrestee’s friends away, ushering them off into the parking lot to enter their vehicle and leave the premises while their friend is being arrested for nothing more than insisting on his right to shop in a public business.

    As the men back off toward their car, still grumbling about the absurdity of it all, one of them yelled out:

    “This is so racist!”

    Unbelievably, the second cop on the scene yelled back:

    “Yeah, it is! Take off! TAKE OFF!”

    Later that same cop told the men as he stood waiting for them to get in their car and leave that it didn’t matter what their argument against it was, Walmart had called and told him they wanted the men removed from the store and that’s what he needed to do.

    Ummm… Walmart called him? Do you mind if I not believe that?

    Fulton grand jury does not indict Atlanta cop in traffic stop killing, possibly reposted.

    We’re having a laugh at this whole #RachaelDolezal thing (pretending it’s new & such) but this kind of laughing involves a deep, deep hurt.

    @Deray We’ll know everything about the #DallasPDShooting suspect to:
    A.Individualize criminality
    B.To show that his whiteness is defective

    And in Canada, Desmond Cole’s feature on carding lit a fuse under the city’s elite, but why did it take so long?

    Among a certain segment of Torontonians, there is little love for Toronto Life magazine. Every month, the city mag churns out a glossy blend of real estate envy, materially minded service journalism, and schadenfraude about the town gentry’s ups and downs. Some find it intoxicating; others, noxious, especially in regard to the magazine’s sometimes narrow vision of what constitutes a good neighbourhood.

    So there was some cognitive dissonance when, after a run of typical covers aimed at its chattering class readership (“Trouble in the House of Rogers,” “The Power List,” “McMansion Wars,” etc.), Toronto Life’s May issue featured a simple photograph of journalist Desmond Cole and the cover line: “I’ve been stopped by cops on the street 50 times. I’m not a criminal – A memoir about being black in Toronto.” The article lit a fuse on a long-simmering conversation in the city about carding, the troubling police practice of stopping individuals and demanding identification. Last Sunday, when John Tory reversed his position and announced that he would push the Police Services Board at its next meeting to end carding, he cited Cole as an influence.

    It’s the way journalism is supposed to work, but so rarely does: A story shines a light on a problem, the issue is taken up by citizens, they lobby their political leaders – and voilà! So there was justifiable pride in the Toronto Life offices this week. But if the episode illustrates how journalism can still effect change, even as the industry is in notorious turmoil, it also suggests something deeply troubling about this city’s calcified power structure and the limits of media.

    When editors first spoke with Cole last fall about writing for the magazine, he envisioned an article about the lived experience of black Canadians, something that explored an array of troubling questions: Why are so many black Canadian children in the child welfare system? Why are so many more black children, relative to their peers, expelled from school? But when he filed his first draft, he recalled this week, his editor Emily Landau told him, “in a nice way, ‘This is absolutely not what we’re looking for.’” She encouraged him to tell more of his own story. As the article evolved, he settled on carding.

    He’s actually been writing about the issue for years: In fact, his first piece for the website Torontoist, where he is a staff writer, covered a Weston-Mount Dennis community meeting on carding. (The photo accompanying the story is of then-superintendent Mark Saunders taking notes at the meeting.) “I would write these stories, with details of what the police were doing that I found shocking – that were very, very difficult, if not impossible to explain, that were discriminatory,” he said in an interview. “And, outside of a loyal readership within Torontoist and my own network, I didn’t feel the word was getting out.” […]

    The article hit like a cluster-bomb. Within minutes of Toronto Life posting it on the afternoon of April 21, Cole’s inbox, Twitter feed, and voicemail were flooded. For weeks afterward, he seemed to be everywhere – on radio, in print, and on unlikely TV shows such as CTV’s daytime gabfest The Social, where the discussions tend more toward whether women should grow out their armpit hair. Still, even as the wider conversation unfolded, Tory remained unmoved.

    Gordon Cressy, a civic leader and former city councillor, found himself troubled by reading the piece. “I think for the white community – or the non-black community – the Desmond Cole article finally lit a fire and said, ‘This is not right, this is not fair out there.’ Up until then, the black community was fighting this one on their own with different press conferences, and no one appeared to be listening in the power structure. So, you call your friends.” Some had already read the piece and had been similarly moved.

    Cressy and his friends in Toronto’s aging but still active power elite – a group he jokingly calls The Elders, which includes former mayor Barbara Hall and former attorney-general Roy McMurtry – convened a press conference at City Hall last week to call for an end to carding. Days later, Tory changed his stance. […]

    While Cole is elated with Tory’s change of heart, his feelings are tempered by the way it came about. “It’s very sad, and should concern people. Because not everyone will get a feature in Toronto Life to air their story,” he noted. After all, Cole had been there during a Police Services Board meeting, when John Tory sat and listened impassively to testimony from lower- and middle-income black people who were living in fear of random police stops.

    “It’s not a good sign, when you can have that direct contact with leaders and they won’t listen to you. But they will listen to essentially their peers, who might not experience this issue in the same way at all, who might not know a lot about it.”

  497. rq says

    Today NY is saying #CloseRikers after a 16yo Blk boy killed himself at Rikers after 3y of torture #Justice4Kalief
    Robert Johnson – Bronx District attorney is guilty for the death of Kalief Browder #Justice4Kalief #CloseRikers
    Delivering a coffin to the home of Bronx DA responsible for Black Lives murdered by state violence #Justice4Kalief

    These news outlets are really trying to ensure #TamirRice is blamed for his own death. Link to Times headline.

    Is this a repost? When Police Brutality Goes Viral

    One might find little reason to hope after seeing a video of a white police officer in suburban Dallas terrorizing a bunch of African-American high-schoolers at a pool party. It was the latest in a string of videos to reveal the gross misconduct and institutionalized bigotry among police officers that African-Americans routinely face. In light of yet more evidence, how could anyone hope for a future in which racism stopped being so destructive?

    But there is reason, abundant reason, to hope.

    Not too long ago, an episode in which a white cop manhandled an African-American girl and drew his sidearm on African-American boys would have boiled down to points of view: what the kids said happened and what the cops said happened. In past courts of law, as well as past courts of public opinion, deference was almost always paid to police officers, who, as we are reminded, lay their lives on the line every day in the name of duty.

    That’s no longer the case.

    Continues at the link.

  498. rq says

    Tamir Rice investigation released: The Big Story

    The investigation into the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice includes new details about how Cleveland officers behaved at the scene, the efforts to save Tamir’s life and the remorse of the boy who gave Tamir his airsoft pellet gun.

    The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office released a redacted account of the investigation on Saturday. The 224-page report, compiled by Sheriff’s Department investigators, offers no determination as to whether the Nov. 22, 2014 shooting was justified.

    The report also includes accounts from witnesses – none of whom heard officers issue a warning to Tamir before one of them opened fire outside a West Side recreation center. That contrasts with statements made by police that the officers ordered Tamir to “show your hands” three times before a shot was fired.

    Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said in a statement explaining his release of the document that transparency of the facts is key to an “intelligent discussion” of the case, which has prompted street demonstrations, a lawsuit and calls for police reform.

    “If we wait years for all litigation to be completed before the citizens are allowed to know what actually happened, we will have squandered our best opportunity to institute needed changes in use of force policy, police training and leadership,” McGinty said.

    McGinty has stated he intends to eventually take all evidence gathered from the shooting to a grand jury to consider whether rookie Officer Timothy Loehmann, who shot Tamir, should face criminal prosecution along with his training partner, Officer Frank Garmback.

    Loehmann and Garmback declined to be interviewed by investigators. So too did the Rice family. But investigators interviewed more than two dozen people, including officers, dispatchers, firefighters and EMS responders, neighbors and witnesses. Investigators also reviewed hours of security footage, autopsy reports and material collected by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

    The investigation states early on, and reiterates later in the report, that “as unbiased collectors of fact, the [Sheriff’s Department] investigative team has not, and will not, render any opinion of the legality of the officers’ actions. Rather those decisions are in the sole purview of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office (CCPO) and/or the Department of Justice.”

    More at the link, with lots and lots more details on the shooting, events prior to it, and the aftermath.

    Here’s a few twitter comment excerpts: This seems like intelligent, cautious police work–off-roading 15 mph through a park with kids in it. #TamirRice
    So, it was Timothy Loehmann who tackled #TamirRice’s sister. With his sprained ankle. #Hero
    This was the 911 caller in the #TamirRice case. A man drinking a beer at the park.

    Witness accounts in Tamir Rice investigation paint vivid picture of events

    Below is a summary of what was learned from some of those who talked to investigators, according to the 224-page sheriff’s report made public Saturday by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office.

    FBI agent – A registered paramedic, he was in the area investigating a bank robbery when he went to the scene and became the first person to administer medical care. Tamir was able to tell him his name. When city paramedics arrived and prepared to take Tamir to the hospital, a Cleveland firefighter told him to get off the ambulance because he was not cleared to work with the city.

    911 caller – The man was at the park that day drinking a beer and waiting for a 2:30 p.m. bus. A person he later learned was Tamir was acting “gangster” by pulling a gun in and out of his waistband and pointing it. He placed the 911 call and left the area, not learning until late that night or the next day about the shooting.

    Call taker – Constance Hollinger, a 19-year veteran dispatcher for Cleveland, took the 911 call. She refused, on the advice of her attorney, to answer questions specific to the call regarding Tamir.

    Cleveland firefighter – Firefighter Patrick Hough drove the ambulance to the hospital, with Tamir’s mother seated in the front. Said she threatened police and firefighters at the scene and along the way to the hospital. The firefighter said he was unaware at the time that police were involved in the shooting.

    EMS paramedic – Aaron Nicholson was in the back of the ambulance with Tamir, who was not responsive en route to MetroHealth Medical Center.

    Tamir’s best friend – A boy who described himself as being best friends with Tamir provided Tamir with the airsoft-type pellet gun in exchange for a cell phone. He had removed the orange tip while trying to repair the pellet gun and was unable to put it back on. He told Rice to be careful because the pellet gun “looked real.”

    Nearby resident – The woman noticed Tamir playing basketball at Cudell from her W. 98th Street home. Then, about 30 minutes later while entering a friend’s car about 300 feet from the shooting, she heard, “Bang, bang” and then “Freeze… show me your hands,” then another bang. Authorities say there were just two shots.

    Cudell acquaintance – The boy saw Tamir and another person shooting at trailers earlier on the of the day of the shooting. He did not see the shooting but heard two gunshots together and then another.

    Off-duty officer – William Cunningham worked off-duty at Cudell on Saturdays. He watched Tamir’s sister run toward the gazebo. Officer Loehmann stopped her from entering the scene but did not slam her to the ground. It was Cunningham’s idea to handcuff Tamir’s sister and put her in the back of the police car because she was screaming out of control.

    Arriving detective – Cleveland police detective Dan Lentz arrived with the FBI agent. He spoke with Tamir’s sister while she was detained in the police car, and reported Tamir’s brother had arrived and started a disturbance.

    Responding officers – Officer Ricardo Roman arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting and noticed what he thought was “a black automatic handgun” on the ground. Other officers interviewed made references to a firearm, including Lou Kitko, who said it appeared to be a semi-automatic handgun, and officer Tom Griffin, who put a bag over what he thought was an authentic firearm to protect it from the elements.

    Basketball league supervisor – Joe Wise, supervisor for the Old Tymers basketball team, saw a “young man” point a gun at the ground when he arrived at Cudell on the day of the shooting. But since no one else was present, he was not alarmed. The shooting occurred later.

    Cleveland Recreation Center manager – Ronald Fields, who knew Tamir, was not at the center during the time of the shooting. He later assisted investigators by providing names of people who knew Tamir. He also assisted detectives in obtaining surveillance video.

    Almira Elementary School student – The boy had known Tamir for about a year. Earlier on the day of the shooting, he observed Tamir and another boy shooting at tires of cars.

    Girl seen on video – The girl was seen on video walking with Tamir in front of the gazebo, but does not recall seeing Tamir in possession of a weapon.

    Art teacher – Tamir’s art teacher at Marion-Seltzer Elementary School said Tamir loved art and that she had never had a problem with him at school. About a week before the shooting, Tamir had been involved in an altercation with another boy, that she did not know details of the incident.

    Rice neighbor – She described Tamir as very respectful of his mother, but did not know the family well.

    Includes a link to the documents.

    And Mother Jones on the document release, BREAKING: Tamir Rice Investigation Results Released by County Prosecutors

    The long-awaited findings of a probe into the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by a police officer in a Cleveland park last November, were finally released Saturday afternoon by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

    The publication of hundreds of pages of documents marks a significant milestone in the long and complicated search for answers surrounding the boy’s death. County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney’s office took over the investigation from the Cleveland police department in January. Then, five months later, the sheriff’s office handed over its findings to county prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, who has led the efforts since, and released today’s findings. Next, McGinty’s office will decide what additional investigation might be required, after which prosecutors will present evidence to a grand jury to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

    “The death of a citizen resulting from the use of deadly force by the police is different from all other cases and deserves a high level of public scrutiny,” McGinty said in a statement accompanying the trove of documents.

    Here are some of the major findings contained in today’s report. We’re making our way through the report now and will update this list:

    Sheriff’s investigators interviewed 27 people, including the officers who arrived after the shooting, the 911 caller, paramedics, friends of Rice, and workers at at the Cudell Recreation Center, which is near the site of Rice’s death.
    Officers Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shots, and Frank Garmback, who drove the squad car, have yet to speak to investigators, despite multiple attempts to interview Loehmann and Garmback since the Cleveland police department handed over the case in January.
    Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, also declined to speak with investigators.
    The 911 dispatcher who relayed the message to Loehmann and Garmback “refused to answer questions (per her attorney) about not relaying specific information related to the 911 call.” A county official familiar with the case confirmed to Mother Jones that the dispatcher did not answer questions as to why she failed to mention that Rice was possibly a “juvenile” and that his weapon was probably “fake.”
    According to witness interviews, it remains unclear whether Loehmann shouted commands at Rice from inside the police car before firing his gun. A weapons inspection showed that Loehmann fired two shots at the boy within one to two seconds of exiting the vehicle.
    One witness, who said she was about 315 feet from the scene, said she was getting into a car when she heard, “Pop pop…Freeze let me see your hands…Pop.”

    Saturday’s release comes days after community leaders in Cleveland filed affidavits asking a municipal judge to seek charges against the officers involved. The judge responded on Thursday saying he believed there was probable cause to bring charges including murder and involuntary manslaughter.

    Since Rice’s death on November 22, 2014, questions have mounted about why it has taken so long to investigate the incident. As Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a former Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor, told Mother Jones, “Half a year is an extremely long time,” especially given the video of the shooting, the details of the 911 calls, and “the questions raised about Officer Loehmann’s fitness for duty.”

  499. rq says

    New trend: Yes, the police officers are guilty, but no, we aren’t going to do anything about it

    A new trend—or better yet, a fresh derivative of an old trend—is emerging in cases of police violence and corruption. It masquerades as progress, but may actually be crueler than the old alternative. Across the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Baltimore, police are arresting, assaulting, and killing women and men without cause. Families and friends and protest communities then emerge to demand justice in these cases. Months-long investigations are then launched and then this new trend emerges: a legal body involved in the investigation will then determine that either the victim of the brutality was blameless or that the police committed a serious offense, but that’s where the case ends.

    In other words, because of a preponderance of evidence that simply cannot be ignored, investigative bodies, over and over and over again, are determining that police are committing grave offenses, but because of an unjust application of the law, they are completely let off. Families are let down, entire communities are outraged, and victims are given no recourse by a system that should be protecting them. Consequently, among those most affected by police brutality and violence, skepticism of the so-called justice system feels like it is reaching some type of breaking point.

    Below are five recent cases (among so many more) in which police misconduct was obvious. Four of them ended with lost lives and the other ended with a young man forever changed by police brutality. Each one has been exhaustively investigated, misconduct was found, but not one of the officers who perpetrated the misconduct is in jail.

    And that’s just a selection of recent cases.

    Punishing the poor: Michigan adopts law to take away families’ food assistance if kids miss school – I just what?

    The Republican governor of Michigan signed a law this week that makes families of students who miss school ineligible for government benefits designed to combat child poverty and hunger.

    On Thursday, Governor Rick Snyder inked his support for the “Parental Responsibility Act,” which cuts off Family Independence Program assistance for relatives of children in Michigan caught being absent without proper documentation.
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    “To break the cycle of poverty, kids need an education to position them for future success. We have to do everything we can to see that they are regularly attending school,” Snyder says of the legislation on his website.

    Michigan League for Public Policy President Gilda Jacobs tells MLive that nearly three out of four cash assistance recipients are children, with an average age of seven. “With more than half a million Michigan children living in poverty,” Jacobs says, “and the needs of too many families unmet, our state should be doing everything possible to lift them up, not push them deeper into economic crisis.”

    Under Michigan’s new law — which codifies more formally a policy the state’s Department of Health and Human Services adopted in 2012 — families that receive food subsidies will have their benefits docked if a child misses school. Family members may still continue to use roads, accept military salaries, or otherwise benefit from state tax expenditures — as long as said benefits are not specifically targeted at poor people. If a family has multiple children and only one child is deemed “truant” by the state, all of the kids can go hungry or find other ways to pay for food.

    As written, the law prescribes no punishment for parents of truants who do not receive government benefits for low-income families.

    Because this will help children attend school.

    Major Questions Remain Unanswered in Boston Killing of Alleged ISIS Beheading Plotter

    Last week in the Boston area, a 26-year-old black Muslim man was shot and killed by agents of the FBI and Boston Police Department (BPD). As we documented the following day, major media outlets immediately, breathlessly and uncritically repeated law enforcement claims (often anonymous ones) about what happened: that the dead man, Usaamah Rahim, was on the verge of executing an “ISIS-inspired” or “ISIS-linked” plot to behead random police officers, in a conspiracy with at least two others. When Rahim was walking to work near a CVS drugstore at roughly 7:00 a.m., the officers approached Rahim simply to question him about this plot; in response, he pulled out a “machete” or “military-style knife” that he refused to drop, forcing the officers to shoot him dead.

    There were all sorts of obvious, glaring questions about these claims, yet they were largely ignored in favor of ISIS in Massachusetts! hysteria and melodramatic talk of beheadings. That is a profoundly disturbing aspect of this incident: the police can now accost someone in the street who, by all accounts, was doing nothing wrong at that moment, kill him, and then just scream “ISIS” and “Terrorist” and “beheading” enough times and no real questions will be asked.

    To persuade journalists to accept their claims, the FBI and BPD insisted there was a surveillance video that would resolve doubts about what happened, claiming that “video surveillance confirmed the officers’ account.” But they didn’t publicly release the video, instead spending almost two full weeks softening and manipulating the public mind by making repeated claims about what the unseen video demonstrated.

    The video was finally released on Monday. To call it a joke is to be generous. The camera is 50 yards away from the incident. The lens is obscured with rain drops. The human figures are barely decipherable. No weapons are seen, including any wielded by Rahim. While it does show that Rahim wasn’t shot in the back as his brother originally suggested (and now acknowledges he was misinformed), it shows little else. In sum, it’s virtually impossible to know what happened from this highly touted video, other than the fact that Rahim appears to have been walking peacefully when he was approached by multiple individuals, wearing no police uniforms, in a threatening, military-style formation: […]

    Indeed, this video raises more questions than it answers, and the entire incident itself is plagued with all sorts of unresolved doubts about what happened here:

    (1) Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the police’s version of the shooting itself is actually truthful. Is it really that surprising — or blameworthy — that someone who is accosted this abruptly and aggressively by five men not wearing uniforms would feel threatened? An unwillingness to drop his knife would just as likely be a byproduct of being provoked (deliberately or unwittingly) with threatening behavior as it would some pre-existing behead-the-police plan. If one wanted to provoke Rahim into some shooting-“justifying” defensive behavior, approaching him this way would be a great way to do it.

    (2) Related to that point: let’s accept for the sake of argument the FBI’s claim that Rahim was on the verge of executing an ISIS-linked plot to behead police officers, and they knew this because they had him under 24-hour intensive surveillance, including electronic surveillance of his calls and emails.

    Why didn’t they obtain an arrest warrant so they could apprehend him, or a search warrant to find his alleged co-plotters? If they had such clear evidence of his plot, why wouldn’t they have done that? Why risk a public confrontation in which bystanders could be endangered in order to “question” him? If he hadn’t wielded a knife, and had denied any intent to attack police officers, was it their intention to just let him go on his way? The FBI/BPD’s claim — we had proof he was an ISIS-inspired terrorist about to unleash a terror plot — is totally inconsistent with their behavior in how they approached him and with their claimed reasons for doing so.

    (3) One of Rahim’s alleged co-conspirators, his nephew David Wright, has been arrested and charged. But he’s not charged with conspiring to kill police officers or carry out terror attacks, only with one count of “obstruction” for allegedly suggesting that Rahim destroy his cell phone. If Rahim had conspirators in his terror plot as the FBI continuously alleged, why haven’t any of them been arrested or charged?

    (4) Early reports claimed that there was a third conspirator beyond Rahim and Wright. The FBI affidavit filed against Wright repeatedly references a “third person” who plotted with Rahim and Wright and met with them.

    Yet there has been no further mention of this “third person,” and apparently no arrest of him. Why not? Is that third person an FBI informant? Is this yet another case where the director and prime mover of a scary “terror plot” is in fact the FBI itself, through the FBI-directed “third person”?

    (5) What basis exists for the highly inflammatory claim that Rahim was “linked to” or “inspired by” ISIS? The only evidence cited was that he followed and “liked” some ISIS-related material on social media. Is that now sufficient for being publicly depicted by the U.S. media as an ISIS operative and treated as such by gun-wielding agents? Note that the Obama DOJ is currently trying to add 20 years onto a prison term of a Florida imam based on the “Islamist” books he possessed.

    But if he reacted badly to being accosted on the street by officially-unidentifiable individuals, then it’s his owndamn fault he got killed?
    There’s actually a lot more to read about the case, at the link, that does nothing to diminish my concern that the police acted rashly (to make an understatement) in this situation.

    Rachel Dolezal Once Told A Student She Did Not Look Hispanic Enough For A Class Activity

    The student said that the incident occurred within the first three weeks of an introductory course on race and culture. Dolezal introduced an activity she called “Fishbowl,” in which one student sat in front of the class as others were invited to ask them questions about their racial and cultural experiences.

    In the first round of Fishbowl, the student said Dolezal sought out a volunteer of Hispanic background to be questioned.

    The student, who told BuzzFeed News that she identifies as Hispanic, grew up in a Spanish-speaking country, speaks the language fluently, and, while she has light skin, believes she has a “pretty solid experience of what it’s like to be Spanish.” She raised her hand to participate.

    “I think we should ask another student,” the student recalled Dolezal saying in class.

    The student asked why she could not participate.

    “Rachel said I didn’t look Hispanic,” she said, and that her instructor “doubted that I could share experiences of racial or ethnic discrimination because I didn’t have the appearance of looking Hispanic.”

    Dolezal instead selected another Hispanic-identified student to sit before the class.

    “I didn’t think much of it at the time,” the student said, “but now I wish I had said something, especially now that her race is the one people are questioning.”

    More at the link, incl. students who had positive learning experiences with Rachel Dolezal.

    Misidentification of Tamir Rice as adult responsible for emergency intubation being impossible. Which means there’s a lot more to the implication of perceiving black children as adults as just the erasure of their childhood.

    There Have Only Been 9 Days This Year When Police Didn’t Kill Someone, seen before in tweet format.

    America remains number one — at least as far as law enforcement using deadly force is concerned. According to data provided by Mapping Police Violence, there were only nine days this year in which a law enforcement officer failed to kill someone.

    The vast majority of days saw at least one officer-involved killing, while others saw multiple. Another source that compiles news stories about the deaths of people at the hands of law enforcement, KilledByPolice.net, reports that the 2015 total stood at 512 dead as of Friday, June 12 (not counting the suspect who was killed in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday morning during an armed assault on police headquarters).

    Not all of these killings were unjustified; sometimes people are shot and killed while endangering others. But the statistics do shed some light on just who tends to be targeted during officer-involved shootings, and the implications are disturbing.

    The Guardian wrote that as of June 10, “49.6% of people were white, 28.2% were black and 14.8% were Hispanic/Latino. According to the 2013 census, the US population is 62.6% white, 13.2% black and 17.1% Hispanic/Latino.” Just over one-fifth (21.6%) of the victims were unarmed.

    The growing body of evidence confirms previous accountings that revealed how much more likely black people in the U.S. are to find themselves shot by an officer than their white fellow citizens. According to statistics compiled by Mapping Police Violence, in 2014, black people were approximately 2.83 times as likely as white people to be shot and killed by a police officer.

    This and that else at the link, incl. some graphs.

  500. rq says

    Protesters locking traffic at 3rd and Pine in downtown #LongBeach #Justice4Feras Protests everywhere.

    Louisville. Video reveals deadly incident between armed man, officer

    One man is dead and a Metro Police officer is on administrative leave following a shooting Saturday afternoon. LMPD Chief Steve Conrad said the officer, who he did not identify, was responding to a report of a woman assaulted in the 300 block of West Oak St. The officer saw a man matching the suspect description and approached him, said Conrad.

    Moments later the officer fired two shots at the man. He was taken to University Hospital where he died from his injuries. Conrad said the officer shot the man twice in self-defense because he tried to attack the officer with a flag pole.

    “At this point our Public Integrity Unit is conducting their investigation,” said Conrad. “Our officer will be placed on administrative leave. That is normal protocol.”

    Kenneth Williams, who said he saw the shooting, thought the use of deadly force was unjustified. “He was drunk. [The officer] could have maced him. He could have used his stun gun. He didn’t have to shoot that man. He wasn’t no threat.”

    The man hit the officer with a flagpole, so the officer shot him dead.

    Sean Toon, Who Called Cops On McKinney Pool Party Teens, Murdered Animals, who’s now been making media rounds as a defender of Casebolt’s actions.

    NYS Corrections Officer Shot, Killed Man in Attempted Robbery. Starting to think they don’t train police to do anything but shoot, lately.

    A New York State Corrections Officer has shot and killed a man who attempted to rob his motorcycle in Queens Saturday night, Police sources said.

    The officer, who was off duty at the time, was standing in front of 82-10 Rockaway Boulevardat with four other men around 10;30pm, when the robber with a gun in his hand approached them, and demanded keys to their motorcycles, In response, the corrections officer discharged his gun and shot the robber in his head.

    EMS responded to the scene and found the suspected robber in traumatic arrest. He was transported to Jamaica hospital and pronounced dead a short while later.

    The Officer is assigned to the Queens Borough corrections unit.

    NYPD is on the scene investigating the incident.

    Though the man had a gun in his hand, so maybe this time…

    Fort Wayne. Man shot by police; answered door with gun

    The Fort Wayne Police Department confirmed one man was dead after an officer-involved shooting Saturday night. FWPD confirmed that only one officer fired the shots, and that officer was not hurt.

    Police were dispatched out around 9:45 Saturday night on a disturbance call in the 2400 Block of St. Marys Avenue. When officers arrived, they were told a man left a house in the area and possibly had a handgun.

    Police then went to a house down the street in the 2500 Block of St. Marys Avenue. That’s where a man armed with a gun answered the door. Officers ordered the man to put the gun down several times. He refused, and shots were fired, hitting the man. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.

    FWPD doesn’t know if the man lived at the home where the shooting happened.

    The Indiana State Police, the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office, the Allen County Coroner’s Office and FWPD Internal Affairs are assisting in the investigation.

    “It’s very in depth. We want to make sure that it’s a very complete and thorough investigation. So, it will take a while,” FWPD spokesman Officer John Chambers said.

    FWPD Police Chief Garry Hamilton said the main focus of the investigation is being as clear as possible and taking into account every possible detail of the incident.

    “It’s not an incident we will sweep under the cobwebs. We want to be transparent as to our officers that are involved in the shooting. We’ve been doing this for years. This is before the Fergusons, before the Clevelands, before the Baltimore incidents. It’s something that we have done routinely and will continue to do so that we have a thorough investigation and we can pass it on to any federal agency if they wish to review the case, be it the FBI, to review the case and make sure that we are on board and we get everything correct,” Chief Hamilton said.

    Chief Hamilton also said the protocol stays the same regardless of the type of shooting.

    “Our sympathies go out to the family of the victim. We have to be professional in how we handle the situation. In the back of your mind, it does bother you, but you have a job to do and I expect my officers to be professional at all times and we’ll review everything,” Chief Hamilton said.

    Texas Teen Arrested at Infamous Pool Party Was Trying to Calm Manhandled Girl, but at least charges against him have been dropped.

    Adrian Martin found himself on the other end of McKinney, Texas, Police Cpl. David Eric Casebolt’s service firearm when he attempted to approach a distressed teenage girl who had just been forced to the ground by the same officer.

    The 18-year-old, who was later arrested, told WFAA-TV that he was scared when he saw the gun, but he does not regret attempting to approach and calm the younger girl.

    “I shift to the side a little bit to get her to look at me in the face and say, ‘Look, We’re going to call your mom. It’s all right,’ because she’s shouting, ‘Call my momma! Call my momma!’” Martin explained. That was when video footage taken of the incident Friday shows Casebolt drawing his weapon and the young man starting to run away.

    “Were his actions reasonable?” Martin’s attorney Heath Harris asked of his client’s response to the distressed girl. “Under the circumstances, I’d say they were reasonable.”

    “The only thing that made his actions different from anyone else is the unfortunate fact that he was bumped from behind, which brought him a little closer to the officer,” the lawyer added, saying that the officer overreacted. “But if you watch the video, you see he immediately backtracks and gains distance between the officer.”

    Charges against the teenager—which included interfering with police and evading arrest—have since been dropped.