TO COMMENT CLICK HERE
GESTAPO USA
TO SERVE AND PROTECT SOME OF US
apr 21, 2018
MICHAEL WOOD: We have a culture that from the beginning has been disproportionate and been oppressive to persons of color, and women, and other minorities. We have a system in which criminal justice is an oxymoron. We have a society that trumps up the second amendment as this big right that we have and that right is to have this weaponry so cops can be killed. That’s literally the purpose of the second amendment. And we have state sanctioned murder all over the country with a blue wall of silence and justice not being done. So I’m completely baffled by why anyone is surprised by all of this.
Fatal Force
1129+ people
have been shot and killed by police in 2017.
headlines
*The Only Black FBI Agent In Minnesota Faces Prison For Exposing Bureau’s White Male Culture, Hostility Towards Black, Muslim Communities(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CALIFORNIA CLERK CALLS COPS ON BLACK MAN WHO ASKED FOR REFUND — AND HE’S BEATEN TO A PULP AT JAIL(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Sheriff of America’s Deadliest Police Force Caught on Camera Admitting Killing Suspects Is ‘Better Financially’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*He Spent 6 Years In Prison After Police Framed Him for Murder Now He’ll Receive $10M Settlement(ARTICLE BELOW)
*HOMELAND SECURITY CONSIDERS BLACK CLOTHING AND CARPOOLS EVIDENCE OF ‘ANARCHIST EXTREMISTS’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Federal agents detain 28 undocumented immigrants at a tent rental business in southern Florida(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Lying Is a Fundamental Part of American Police Culture(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ELEVEN SECONDS. THAT'S HOW LONG AFTER COPS FIRST GLIMPSED STEPHON CLARK UNTIL THEY SHOT HIM 20 TIMES(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Tape shows police chief facing hate crime rushing to scene of his alleged attack
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Police fired at unarmed Black man 20 times because he was holding a cell phone
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A Private Mercenary Firm Is Making Millions Off Tragedy in Houston, Puerto Rico and Standing Rock(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Texas cop indicted for lying about racially motivated beating previously killed a black man in front of his three children
A Fort Worth Police officer now indicted for hitting a black man and then lying to investigators about the circumstances was previously involved in a high-profile police killing.
*Grifter California deputies allegedly ripped off elderly woman then put her on a plane to the Philippines(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The FBI — ‘Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity’ — Still Working on Diversity
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*These Cities Saw the Most Immigration Raids During Trump's First Year in Office
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GESTAPO usa FUNNIES(below)
The Only Black FBI Agent In Minnesota Faces Prison For Exposing Bureau’s White Male Culture, Hostility Towards Black, Muslim Communities
By David Love - atlanta black star
April 21, 2018
Since its early days, the FBI has had a history of targeting Black communities and other communities of color. Someone from within the ranks of the bureau, a Black FBI agent, faces prison time for acting as a whistleblower and breaking the law to expose racism by the feds.
Terry J. Albury, 39, a former FBI counterterrorism expert working in the Minneapolis field office, pleaded guilty in a federal court in St. Paul to one count of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information. Albury faces a sentence likely ranging from 37 to 57 months, with his fate ultimately resting in the hands of U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright, an African-American appointee of President Obama.
At issue are classified documents that Albury allegedly leaked to an unnamed news organization between February 2016 and January 31, 2017, concerning how the FBI assesses confidential informants, and a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country.” The whistleblower is also charged with failing to turn over a document “relating to the use of an online platform for recruitment by a specific terrorist group.” The information corresponds to stories published by The Intercept on secret FBI guidelines for potential informants. Albury reportedly knew it was illegal to share the information but was troubled by the manner in which the FBI treated minority communities, which he regarded as “suspicion” and “disrespect.”
His attorneys issued a statement saying Albury acted out of “conscience,” and was troubled by racism in the bureau, which he believed reflected a white-male-dominated culture and impacted the FBI’s interactions with communities of color.
“Terry Albury served the U.S. with distinction both here at home and abroad in Iraq. He accepts full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information. We would like to add that as the only African-American FBI field agent in Minnesota, Mr. Albury’s actions were driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI,” read the statement. “The situation became even more acute for him when, having previously served a tour for the FBI in Iraq, he was assigned to the counterterrorism squad and was required first-hand to implement FBI investigation directives that profiled and intimidated minority communities in Minnesota and other locations in which Terry served,” read the statement. The FBI Minnesota field office focused much of its work on the state’s large Somali-American community, which numbers 85,000 and is the largest Somali community in North America, if not outside of the African continent, and is the heart of the Somali diaspora. The community has become a target of violence from white domestic terrorists.
Some Somali men from Minnesota have faced charges and convictions for terrorism and joining ISIS. On the eve of the 2016 election, Donald Trump referred to the Somali immigrants as a “disaster” for Minnesota and the result of “faulty refugee vetting.” The Albury plea deal reflects the focus by the Trump administration and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to clamp down on leaks of classified government information, an effort which could ensnare journalists.
According to the secret FBI rules The Intercept published, the federal agency bypasses its own rules to send undercover agents and informants to monitor and sometimes influence the First Amendment-protected activities of groups such as religious institutions, political groups, schools, businesses, and clubs. The attendant threat to civil liberties evokes memories of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which infiltrated, discredited and disrupted civil rights organizations and their leaders.
Despite rules against racial profiling, the FBI — which has retained most of its racial profiling policies and even expanded profiling beyond race and ethnicity to include gender identification, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation — enjoys wide discretion in targeting people based on race and religion. The profiling policies reflect FBI pushback against any efforts made under former Attorney General Eric Holder to ban discrimination in counterterrorism investigations, according to The Intercept.
Under the secret FBI rules, the bureau coordinates with immigration enforcement authorities to locate informants who are no longer of use to the feds and deport them. Under this blurring of the lines between FBI and ICE, the bureau uses immigration status as leverage against potential Muslim recruits. This stands in contrast to the FBI’s insistence that informants’ participation is voluntary.
A throwback to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, agents in the U.S. are able to use methods to obtain informants and gather intelligence that are more commonly associated with foreign intelligence agencies. For example, FBI agents may use undercover identities, recruit minors, use covert means to recruit informants online, build a file on potential informants for purposes of coercing unwilling recruits, and allow informants to operate in foreign countries without notifying the host nation. The FBI rules also allow the feds to spy on journalists without informing the news organization being targeted or going to a judge for permission.
The FBI is the least diverse law enforcement agency in the federal government, reflecting the overall problem of Black and Brown underrepresentation among police forces and its impact on strained relationships in nonwhite communities. FBI special agents are more than 83 percent white, with Blacks, Latinos and Asians each in the single digits. Representation among Black agents has been in decline over the past few decades. Black and Latino agents have filed several lawsuits against the bureau alleging a “dual-track” system of employment in which whites hired and promoted whites almost exclusively. The FBI pledged to turn things around but has not done so.
The recent revelations from the former Black FBI agent amid accusations of racism contextualize the decision by the bureau to focus attention on so-called “Black Identity Extremists.” The bureau coined the phrase and prepared a report claiming said group is a domestic terror threat and a threat to law enforcement for targeting police officers. Black leaders, lawmakers and activists have accused the bureau of attacking the free speech rights of Black Lives Matter and criminalizing other peaceful anti-police violence activists and protesters and racial justice movements. This despite the predominance of white domestic terrorism in the United States, and the white extremist infiltration of law enforcement, of which the FBI is aware.
The specter of Hoover and COINTELPRO continues to haunt the FBI, with Agent Albury only fueling and vindicating suspicions toward the agency throughout the Black community.
Terry J. Albury, 39, a former FBI counterterrorism expert working in the Minneapolis field office, pleaded guilty in a federal court in St. Paul to one count of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information. Albury faces a sentence likely ranging from 37 to 57 months, with his fate ultimately resting in the hands of U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright, an African-American appointee of President Obama.
At issue are classified documents that Albury allegedly leaked to an unnamed news organization between February 2016 and January 31, 2017, concerning how the FBI assesses confidential informants, and a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country.” The whistleblower is also charged with failing to turn over a document “relating to the use of an online platform for recruitment by a specific terrorist group.” The information corresponds to stories published by The Intercept on secret FBI guidelines for potential informants. Albury reportedly knew it was illegal to share the information but was troubled by the manner in which the FBI treated minority communities, which he regarded as “suspicion” and “disrespect.”
His attorneys issued a statement saying Albury acted out of “conscience,” and was troubled by racism in the bureau, which he believed reflected a white-male-dominated culture and impacted the FBI’s interactions with communities of color.
“Terry Albury served the U.S. with distinction both here at home and abroad in Iraq. He accepts full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information. We would like to add that as the only African-American FBI field agent in Minnesota, Mr. Albury’s actions were driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI,” read the statement. “The situation became even more acute for him when, having previously served a tour for the FBI in Iraq, he was assigned to the counterterrorism squad and was required first-hand to implement FBI investigation directives that profiled and intimidated minority communities in Minnesota and other locations in which Terry served,” read the statement. The FBI Minnesota field office focused much of its work on the state’s large Somali-American community, which numbers 85,000 and is the largest Somali community in North America, if not outside of the African continent, and is the heart of the Somali diaspora. The community has become a target of violence from white domestic terrorists.
Some Somali men from Minnesota have faced charges and convictions for terrorism and joining ISIS. On the eve of the 2016 election, Donald Trump referred to the Somali immigrants as a “disaster” for Minnesota and the result of “faulty refugee vetting.” The Albury plea deal reflects the focus by the Trump administration and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to clamp down on leaks of classified government information, an effort which could ensnare journalists.
According to the secret FBI rules The Intercept published, the federal agency bypasses its own rules to send undercover agents and informants to monitor and sometimes influence the First Amendment-protected activities of groups such as religious institutions, political groups, schools, businesses, and clubs. The attendant threat to civil liberties evokes memories of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which infiltrated, discredited and disrupted civil rights organizations and their leaders.
Despite rules against racial profiling, the FBI — which has retained most of its racial profiling policies and even expanded profiling beyond race and ethnicity to include gender identification, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation — enjoys wide discretion in targeting people based on race and religion. The profiling policies reflect FBI pushback against any efforts made under former Attorney General Eric Holder to ban discrimination in counterterrorism investigations, according to The Intercept.
Under the secret FBI rules, the bureau coordinates with immigration enforcement authorities to locate informants who are no longer of use to the feds and deport them. Under this blurring of the lines between FBI and ICE, the bureau uses immigration status as leverage against potential Muslim recruits. This stands in contrast to the FBI’s insistence that informants’ participation is voluntary.
A throwback to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, agents in the U.S. are able to use methods to obtain informants and gather intelligence that are more commonly associated with foreign intelligence agencies. For example, FBI agents may use undercover identities, recruit minors, use covert means to recruit informants online, build a file on potential informants for purposes of coercing unwilling recruits, and allow informants to operate in foreign countries without notifying the host nation. The FBI rules also allow the feds to spy on journalists without informing the news organization being targeted or going to a judge for permission.
The FBI is the least diverse law enforcement agency in the federal government, reflecting the overall problem of Black and Brown underrepresentation among police forces and its impact on strained relationships in nonwhite communities. FBI special agents are more than 83 percent white, with Blacks, Latinos and Asians each in the single digits. Representation among Black agents has been in decline over the past few decades. Black and Latino agents have filed several lawsuits against the bureau alleging a “dual-track” system of employment in which whites hired and promoted whites almost exclusively. The FBI pledged to turn things around but has not done so.
The recent revelations from the former Black FBI agent amid accusations of racism contextualize the decision by the bureau to focus attention on so-called “Black Identity Extremists.” The bureau coined the phrase and prepared a report claiming said group is a domestic terror threat and a threat to law enforcement for targeting police officers. Black leaders, lawmakers and activists have accused the bureau of attacking the free speech rights of Black Lives Matter and criminalizing other peaceful anti-police violence activists and protesters and racial justice movements. This despite the predominance of white domestic terrorism in the United States, and the white extremist infiltration of law enforcement, of which the FBI is aware.
The specter of Hoover and COINTELPRO continues to haunt the FBI, with Agent Albury only fueling and vindicating suspicions toward the agency throughout the Black community.
California clerk calls cops on black man who asked for refund — and he’s beaten to a pulp at jail
Travis Gettys - raw story
19 APR 2018 AT 14:28 ET
William Colbert
A black California man was brutally beaten by police officers after a convenience store clerk claimed he had a gun — and the department has opened an internal affairs investigation into the violent arrest.
William Colbert stopped at the ampm market last month to buy an iced tea on his way home from a hospital, where he was treated for an allergic reaction to medication, reported the Merced Sun-Star.
The 39-year-old Colbert, a welder and pipe-fitter, got into a disagreement with the clerk over payment and asked the employee to put the money back on his credit card.
The two argued for several minutes before the clerk called police and accused Colbert of having a gun — which he denies.
Colbert was standing outside the store when police arrived because the clerk had locked him out, and he recognized the first officer as a classmate from Merced College.
That officer, Joseph Opinski, went inside the store to speak with the clerk.
The next officer to arrive, who Colbert identified as William McComb, then charged at the black man “like a bat out of hell” and took him into custody.
Colbert asked why he was being arrested if he hadn’t committed a crime, and he said at least two more officers “bum rushed” him and threw him face first into a puddle.
He tried lifting his face from the puddle to breathe, but said he was trying not to resist being placed into handcuffs because he was “afraid to fight for my life.”
Police placed him in the back of a patrol car, and Colbert admits to kicking the cruiser’s door before asking for the tight handcuffs to be loosened — and officers pulled him out and pressed their knees into his back.
“There should be no reason I come out of that cop car,” Colbert said.
He asked for medical attention, and McComb suggested he knew Opinski because he was a “snitch bitch gang member” — which Colbert said made him “irate.”
McComb stayed in the hospital room throughout Colbert’s examination, and he admits to calling police “cowards” and one officer a “b*tch” out of frustration.
He was taken to the Merced County Jail without handcuffs because he was wearing a splint on his thumb due to an injury from his arrest, and he and McComb were met there by a black officer he later identified as Brandon Wilkins.
Colbert said officers began “aggressively” shoving him behind during processing, and one officer stumbled as he stepped aside to avoid a shove — and Colbert said he went to the floor to avoid additional force.
Police then began kicking and punching him from behind, and an officer raked his arm with handcuffs, Colbert said.
Colbert’s mugshot shows his face bloody and bruised, with one eye swollen shut.
He was charged with resisting arrest, threatening an officer and battery on an officer.
Merced police launched an internal investigation, but they declined to comment on the case or release surveillance video of the altercation at the jail.
William Colbert stopped at the ampm market last month to buy an iced tea on his way home from a hospital, where he was treated for an allergic reaction to medication, reported the Merced Sun-Star.
The 39-year-old Colbert, a welder and pipe-fitter, got into a disagreement with the clerk over payment and asked the employee to put the money back on his credit card.
The two argued for several minutes before the clerk called police and accused Colbert of having a gun — which he denies.
Colbert was standing outside the store when police arrived because the clerk had locked him out, and he recognized the first officer as a classmate from Merced College.
That officer, Joseph Opinski, went inside the store to speak with the clerk.
The next officer to arrive, who Colbert identified as William McComb, then charged at the black man “like a bat out of hell” and took him into custody.
Colbert asked why he was being arrested if he hadn’t committed a crime, and he said at least two more officers “bum rushed” him and threw him face first into a puddle.
He tried lifting his face from the puddle to breathe, but said he was trying not to resist being placed into handcuffs because he was “afraid to fight for my life.”
Police placed him in the back of a patrol car, and Colbert admits to kicking the cruiser’s door before asking for the tight handcuffs to be loosened — and officers pulled him out and pressed their knees into his back.
“There should be no reason I come out of that cop car,” Colbert said.
He asked for medical attention, and McComb suggested he knew Opinski because he was a “snitch bitch gang member” — which Colbert said made him “irate.”
McComb stayed in the hospital room throughout Colbert’s examination, and he admits to calling police “cowards” and one officer a “b*tch” out of frustration.
He was taken to the Merced County Jail without handcuffs because he was wearing a splint on his thumb due to an injury from his arrest, and he and McComb were met there by a black officer he later identified as Brandon Wilkins.
Colbert said officers began “aggressively” shoving him behind during processing, and one officer stumbled as he stepped aside to avoid a shove — and Colbert said he went to the floor to avoid additional force.
Police then began kicking and punching him from behind, and an officer raked his arm with handcuffs, Colbert said.
Colbert’s mugshot shows his face bloody and bruised, with one eye swollen shut.
He was charged with resisting arrest, threatening an officer and battery on an officer.
Merced police launched an internal investigation, but they declined to comment on the case or release surveillance video of the altercation at the jail.
Sheriff of America’s Deadliest Police Force Caught on Camera Admitting Killing Suspects Is ‘Better Financially’
Michael Harriot - the root
Today 12:19pm
A recently discovered video of a California sheriff talking to law enforcement officers shows Kern County’s chief lawman explaining that killing citizens is better than wounding or injuring them because it costs less money and makes the family “go away.”
Although Kern County had a population of 875,000 people in 2015, its law enforcement officers were responsible for more deaths than any other county in America that year, according to the Guardian. During that year, Kern County deputies and Bakersfield, Calif., police killed 1.5 people for every 100,000 residents, more than three times the rate of Los Angeles County and 10 times the rate of the New York Police Department in 2015.
The Kern County Sheriff’s Department is led by Donny Youngblood, who has served as sheriff of the county for more than a decade. During his first campaign in 2006, Youngblood spoke to a group of police officers, telling the cops that shooting to kill was better financially for his department.
“You know what happens when a guy makes a bad shooting and somebody kills them?” Youngblood explained. “Three million bucks and the family goes away after a long back and forth.”
“When a deputy shoots someone in the streets, which way do you think is better financially—to cripple them or kill them—for the county?” Youngblood asked. When someone replied, “Kill them,” Youngblood responded, “Absolutely. Because if they’re crippled we get to take care of them for life. And that cost goes way up.”
The video was uploaded to Facebook by the Kern County Detention Officers Association on Monday and called for the sheriff to be replaced. The group told the Guardian that the full hour of video contains even more concerning quotes and said the group was “disgusted” by the video.
“But we have been disgusted with Donny Youngblood’s leadership for more than a decade,” said Chris Ashley, director of the KCDOA.
Youngblood is running for re-election against his chief deputy, Justin Fleeman, marking the first time that the sheriff has faced an opponent since taking office. Fleeman has been endorsed by all three unions of officers in Kern County’s Sheriff’s Department.
Shooting to kill is a tactic that has long been rumored to be a mantra of officers across the country. The “dead men tell no tales” philosophy is employed by cops because, frankly, it works.
In 2017, The Root examined over 10,000 cases between 2007 and 2017 and found only five incidents where police were convicted for on-duty killings.
During Youngblood’s time as sheriff, a Kern County deputy has never been charged with an on-duty police killing.
Although Kern County had a population of 875,000 people in 2015, its law enforcement officers were responsible for more deaths than any other county in America that year, according to the Guardian. During that year, Kern County deputies and Bakersfield, Calif., police killed 1.5 people for every 100,000 residents, more than three times the rate of Los Angeles County and 10 times the rate of the New York Police Department in 2015.
The Kern County Sheriff’s Department is led by Donny Youngblood, who has served as sheriff of the county for more than a decade. During his first campaign in 2006, Youngblood spoke to a group of police officers, telling the cops that shooting to kill was better financially for his department.
“You know what happens when a guy makes a bad shooting and somebody kills them?” Youngblood explained. “Three million bucks and the family goes away after a long back and forth.”
“When a deputy shoots someone in the streets, which way do you think is better financially—to cripple them or kill them—for the county?” Youngblood asked. When someone replied, “Kill them,” Youngblood responded, “Absolutely. Because if they’re crippled we get to take care of them for life. And that cost goes way up.”
The video was uploaded to Facebook by the Kern County Detention Officers Association on Monday and called for the sheriff to be replaced. The group told the Guardian that the full hour of video contains even more concerning quotes and said the group was “disgusted” by the video.
“But we have been disgusted with Donny Youngblood’s leadership for more than a decade,” said Chris Ashley, director of the KCDOA.
Youngblood is running for re-election against his chief deputy, Justin Fleeman, marking the first time that the sheriff has faced an opponent since taking office. Fleeman has been endorsed by all three unions of officers in Kern County’s Sheriff’s Department.
Shooting to kill is a tactic that has long been rumored to be a mantra of officers across the country. The “dead men tell no tales” philosophy is employed by cops because, frankly, it works.
In 2017, The Root examined over 10,000 cases between 2007 and 2017 and found only five incidents where police were convicted for on-duty killings.
During Youngblood’s time as sheriff, a Kern County deputy has never been charged with an on-duty police killing.
He Spent 6 Years In Prison After Police Framed Him for Murder Now He’ll Receive $10M Settlement
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
April 10, 2018
Jamal Trulove, who appeared on Vh1 reality show “I Love New York,” spent six years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit. (Photo via National Registry of Exonerations)
A San Francisco man walked away $10 million dollars richer Friday after a federal court jury awarded him damages in a wrongful murder conviction that landed him behind bars.
Jamal Trulove, 33, accused four San Francisco police officers of framing him in the death of a friend at a public housing development in 2007, the San Francisco Gate reported. An eight-member jury affirmed Trulove’s suspicions on Friday, unanimously finding that the two lead inspectors on the case, Maureen D’Amico and Michael Johnson, fabricated evidence against the defendant and withheld evidence that might have helped him prove his innocence.
Trulove spent six years in prison before his murder conviction was tossed out, according to the newspaper.
“It’s about time,” said Kate Chatfield, one of Trulove’s attorneys. “Justice is not (merely) being acquitted for a crime you did not do. This was finally justice.”
The jury found no wrongdoing by a third inspector or the crime-scene investigator in the case. All four officers are retired now, however, and the city will pay the damages.
Trulove was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for the murder of his friend, Seu Kuka, who was fatally shot in the back. A neighbor who testified claimed she saw Trulove chase down Kuka and shoot him after a heated argument. She assured officers he was the shooter after Trulove starred as a guest on the Vh1 reality show “I Love New York.”
An appeals court would overturn Trulove’s conviction in 2014 and a re-trial resulted in a jury acquittal the following year. The reality TV star filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city after his release, in which he accused officers of coercing witness Priscilla Lualemaga, then 24, to identify him.
According to District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, officers showed Lualemga several photos of potential suspects, including Trulove, soon after Kuka’s murder. Johnson, one of the lead inspectors, reportedly pointed to a clipboard and asked the witness, “Are you sure it wasn’t Jamal Trulove?” Lualemaga said she was unsure, the judge said.
Johnson later showed her Trulove’s photo, along with other folks who she had already dismissed as suspects.
An appeals court would overturn Trulove’s conviction in 2014 and a re-trial resulted in a jury acquittal the following year. The reality TV star filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city after his release, in which he accused officers of coercing witness Priscilla Lualemaga, then 24, to identify him.
According to District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, officers showed Lualemga several photos of potential suspects, including Trulove, soon after Kuka’s murder. Johnson, one of the lead inspectors, reportedly pointed to a clipboard and asked the witness, “Are you sure it wasn’t Jamal Trulove?” Lualemaga said she was unsure, the judge said.
Johnson later showed her Trulove’s photo, along with other folks who she had already dismissed as suspects.
Jamal Trulove, 33, accused four San Francisco police officers of framing him in the death of a friend at a public housing development in 2007, the San Francisco Gate reported. An eight-member jury affirmed Trulove’s suspicions on Friday, unanimously finding that the two lead inspectors on the case, Maureen D’Amico and Michael Johnson, fabricated evidence against the defendant and withheld evidence that might have helped him prove his innocence.
Trulove spent six years in prison before his murder conviction was tossed out, according to the newspaper.
“It’s about time,” said Kate Chatfield, one of Trulove’s attorneys. “Justice is not (merely) being acquitted for a crime you did not do. This was finally justice.”
The jury found no wrongdoing by a third inspector or the crime-scene investigator in the case. All four officers are retired now, however, and the city will pay the damages.
Trulove was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for the murder of his friend, Seu Kuka, who was fatally shot in the back. A neighbor who testified claimed she saw Trulove chase down Kuka and shoot him after a heated argument. She assured officers he was the shooter after Trulove starred as a guest on the Vh1 reality show “I Love New York.”
An appeals court would overturn Trulove’s conviction in 2014 and a re-trial resulted in a jury acquittal the following year. The reality TV star filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city after his release, in which he accused officers of coercing witness Priscilla Lualemaga, then 24, to identify him.
According to District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, officers showed Lualemga several photos of potential suspects, including Trulove, soon after Kuka’s murder. Johnson, one of the lead inspectors, reportedly pointed to a clipboard and asked the witness, “Are you sure it wasn’t Jamal Trulove?” Lualemaga said she was unsure, the judge said.
Johnson later showed her Trulove’s photo, along with other folks who she had already dismissed as suspects.
An appeals court would overturn Trulove’s conviction in 2014 and a re-trial resulted in a jury acquittal the following year. The reality TV star filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city after his release, in which he accused officers of coercing witness Priscilla Lualemaga, then 24, to identify him.
According to District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, officers showed Lualemga several photos of potential suspects, including Trulove, soon after Kuka’s murder. Johnson, one of the lead inspectors, reportedly pointed to a clipboard and asked the witness, “Are you sure it wasn’t Jamal Trulove?” Lualemaga said she was unsure, the judge said.
Johnson later showed her Trulove’s photo, along with other folks who she had already dismissed as suspects.
a department of fools and idiots!!!
Homeland Security considers black clothing and carpools evidence of ‘anarchist extremists’
Sarah K. Burris - raw story
04 APR 2018 AT 09:04 ET
Counterprotesters at white supremacist rallies are now being considered “anarchist extremists,” whether they are or not.
A Daily Beast report revealed the Department of Homeland warned local law enforcement that there might be clashes between white supremacists and antifascists (called “antifa”). The September 2016 report was then used by the Trump Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who protested at President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Citing “two violent clashes in 2016” in California, DHS noted that the anarchist extremists clashed with “lawfully protesting white supremacists at legally permitted rallies.”
They listed out ways in which law enforcement could target such “anarchist extremists” known for counterprotests, but the way in which they describe what an “anarchist extremist” is causing heads to turn. Some anarchists participate in the antifascist movement but so do some liberals, who support the existence of government.
DHS’s report cites “symbols often associated with anti-racist anarchist extremists” includes the letter “A” in a circle, but they also included other images associated with left-leaning movements. Three downward arrows in a circle, for example, originated in the 1930s in Germany to oppose the Nazi party. Another symbol is a crossed-out swastika and the “Good Night White Pride” symbol, which depicts a silhouette of a man kicking a Nazi.
They included a list of possible planned violence that law enforcement can use to “justify increased suspicion.” They could then use such suspicion to conduct warrantless pat-downs or inspection and seizure of property. The list includes things like carrying knives but also simply wearing dark clothing or bandanas. They cited anyone scouting a march route could be such an extremist as well as anyone carpooling to demonstrations.
ACLU Brennan fellow Vera Eidelman told the Daily Beast that such descriptions are “troubling and consistent with what we’ve seen of the FBI targeting and surveilling environmentalists, civil rights activists, and lumping them together based on a few incidents.”
She noted there is a tendency to sweep up huge groups of people even if they don’t share the ideology.
“The carpooling example is particularly interesting because all people are doing is pooling resources. You could argue that going with friends is part of the appeal,” Eidelman said, adding that the scrutiny might chill political activism by large groups.
A Daily Beast report revealed the Department of Homeland warned local law enforcement that there might be clashes between white supremacists and antifascists (called “antifa”). The September 2016 report was then used by the Trump Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who protested at President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Citing “two violent clashes in 2016” in California, DHS noted that the anarchist extremists clashed with “lawfully protesting white supremacists at legally permitted rallies.”
They listed out ways in which law enforcement could target such “anarchist extremists” known for counterprotests, but the way in which they describe what an “anarchist extremist” is causing heads to turn. Some anarchists participate in the antifascist movement but so do some liberals, who support the existence of government.
DHS’s report cites “symbols often associated with anti-racist anarchist extremists” includes the letter “A” in a circle, but they also included other images associated with left-leaning movements. Three downward arrows in a circle, for example, originated in the 1930s in Germany to oppose the Nazi party. Another symbol is a crossed-out swastika and the “Good Night White Pride” symbol, which depicts a silhouette of a man kicking a Nazi.
They included a list of possible planned violence that law enforcement can use to “justify increased suspicion.” They could then use such suspicion to conduct warrantless pat-downs or inspection and seizure of property. The list includes things like carrying knives but also simply wearing dark clothing or bandanas. They cited anyone scouting a march route could be such an extremist as well as anyone carpooling to demonstrations.
ACLU Brennan fellow Vera Eidelman told the Daily Beast that such descriptions are “troubling and consistent with what we’ve seen of the FBI targeting and surveilling environmentalists, civil rights activists, and lumping them together based on a few incidents.”
She noted there is a tendency to sweep up huge groups of people even if they don’t share the ideology.
“The carpooling example is particularly interesting because all people are doing is pooling resources. You could argue that going with friends is part of the appeal,” Eidelman said, adding that the scrutiny might chill political activism by large groups.
Federal agents detain 28 undocumented immigrants at a tent rental business in southern Florida
But one federal agent denies that this was an "immigration raid."
ESTHER YU HSI LEE - think progress
MAR 29, 2018, 12:01 PM
Federal agents detained 28 undocumented immigrants at a tent rental business in southern Florida Wednesday, according to multiple local reports. But a federal agent denied to ThinkProgress that this was an “immigration raid.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division served a search warrant to TentLogix and asked people for legal paperwork, according to a company employee who spoke with a local Fox News affiliate. A source within HSI told ThinkProgress that agents served the business with a search warrant as part of “a criminal case” and proceeded to identify everyone. During the course of identifying workers, federal agents “encountered” 28 undocumented immigrants and detained them for administrative arrest. Despite the arrest of these immigrants, the source denied that this was an “immigration raid” and would not confirm whether other people, including citizens, were taken because this was an “ongoing criminal investigation.”
“Special agents were executing a search warrant at the business and…took in 28 people identified to be in the country illegally,” ICE spokesperson Nestor Yglesias said. “They were taken into custody by ICE’s ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations].”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) federal agents with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency were also present. Authorities on scene told the local CBS news affiliate that the immigrants may not be deported due to the possibility of human trafficking. The people detained were taken away on a bus and are now being held at various places around the state.
One U.S. citizen employee told the CBS News affiliate that when he arrived at the company, immigration officials were already there and “some of his friends had their hands zip-tied and were forced to stand in a line.” He was let go after federal agents verified his legal status.
The HSI division is the main investigative agency within DHS that deals with issues like human trafficking, financial crimes, child exploitation, and document fraud. The federal agency does not solely arrest immigrants, but it does have the authority to enforce federal statutes related to immigration.
The arrests at TentLogix follow five days of enforcement action initiated by ICE’s ERO officers who arrested 271 immigrants in Florida, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico during Operation Cross Check last week.
“Arrested individuals who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, are subject to immediate removal from the country,” an ICE press release read. “The remaining individuals are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division served a search warrant to TentLogix and asked people for legal paperwork, according to a company employee who spoke with a local Fox News affiliate. A source within HSI told ThinkProgress that agents served the business with a search warrant as part of “a criminal case” and proceeded to identify everyone. During the course of identifying workers, federal agents “encountered” 28 undocumented immigrants and detained them for administrative arrest. Despite the arrest of these immigrants, the source denied that this was an “immigration raid” and would not confirm whether other people, including citizens, were taken because this was an “ongoing criminal investigation.”
“Special agents were executing a search warrant at the business and…took in 28 people identified to be in the country illegally,” ICE spokesperson Nestor Yglesias said. “They were taken into custody by ICE’s ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations].”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) federal agents with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency were also present. Authorities on scene told the local CBS news affiliate that the immigrants may not be deported due to the possibility of human trafficking. The people detained were taken away on a bus and are now being held at various places around the state.
One U.S. citizen employee told the CBS News affiliate that when he arrived at the company, immigration officials were already there and “some of his friends had their hands zip-tied and were forced to stand in a line.” He was let go after federal agents verified his legal status.
The HSI division is the main investigative agency within DHS that deals with issues like human trafficking, financial crimes, child exploitation, and document fraud. The federal agency does not solely arrest immigrants, but it does have the authority to enforce federal statutes related to immigration.
The arrests at TentLogix follow five days of enforcement action initiated by ICE’s ERO officers who arrested 271 immigrants in Florida, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico during Operation Cross Check last week.
“Arrested individuals who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, are subject to immediate removal from the country,” an ICE press release read. “The remaining individuals are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal.”
Lying Is a Fundamental Part of American Police Culture
Cops lie under oath so often they even have a nickname for the practice.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet
March 27, 2018, 11:05 AM GMT
Police officers lie under oath in court so often that they’ve even given the practice a nickname. “Behind closed doors, we call it testilying,” New York City police officer Pedro Serrano told the New York Times. “You take the truth and stretch it out a little bit.”
The term, the Times notes, came into common usage among cops about 25 years ago, but the issue of police perjury is far older, a problem African Americans have complained of for many decades. In rare instances, those with intimate knowledge have publicly acknowledged not only how rampant testilying is, but also how rarely cops caught in the act face consequences.
“Every lawyer who practices in the criminal courts knows that police perjury is commonplace,” former New York State criminal court judge, U.S. attorney and NYU law professor Irving Younger wrote in the Nation in 1967. “Policemen see themselves as fighting a two‑front war—against criminals in the street and against ‘liberal’ rules of law in court. All's fair in this war, including the use of perjury to subvert ‘liberal’ rules of law that might free those who ‘ought’ to be jailed. And even if his lies are exposed in the courtroom, the policeman is as likely to be indicted for perjury by his co‑worker, the prosecutor, as he is to be struck down by thunderbolts from an avenging heaven.”
More than 50 years after Younger’s broadside, a newly released Times study has turned up more than two-dozen instances of police lying in court since January 2015—and these confirmed cases “are almost certainly only a fraction” of the real total. The ubiquity of plea deals, which effectively halts cases before they’re weighed by a court, means “the possibility that an officer lied is seldom aired in public.” Even when false police testimony comes to public light, court papers are generally sealed and an officer’s misdeed protected from scrutiny. “[T]he cases identified by The Times reveal an entrenched perjury problem several decades in the making that shows little sign of fading,” the report notes.
The apparent goal of most perjurious officers in cases examined by the Times was to cover up unlawful searches, undertaken without reasonable suspicion and in violation of suspects’ constitutionally guaranteed rights. Predictably, the analysis also found numerous lies that “appear aimed at convicting people—who may or may not have committed a crime—with trumped-up evidence.” Those goals are underwritten by demands from police higher-ups to meet ever-increasing arrest quotas; an open secret of law enforcement. The Times also cites the general pressure officers face to identify suspects and close cases for purposes ranging from public relations to politics.
In one case cited by the Times, Bronx police officer Sean Kinane lied about watching drug dealers conduct street deals just before he swooped in to make an arrest. When a suspect’s lawyer made it known there was video of the incident, Kinane recanted, stating only that he “misspoke when [he] was in grand jury,” without further explanation. The officer has since been elevated to a new position within the force.
In another example, plainclothes officer Christopher Thomas testified he’d seen a man attempt to hide a gun in his car as the officer approached the vehicle. That turned out to be a falsehood, which Thomas quickly retracted when made aware of the existence of video footage. Now a “sergeant in a narcotics unit,” Thomas later “stated to the A.D.A. that he did not know why he had testified to those facts before the grand jury” according to an email from prosecutors.
Some officers seem to have lied not to cover up their disregard for a suspect's constitutionally granted rights, but for more petty and vainglorious reasons. Dornezia Agard, a plainclothes Brooklyn officer, claimed in court that as she approached a man, he knelt behind a parked van and threw down a “hard metal object” that turned out to be a gun. Prosecutors later discovered Agard hadn’t even been among the first law enforcement arrivals to the scene. “The prosecutors did not address why Officer Agard claimed to be a witness,” the Times notes, “or why the other officers present seem to have allowed her to process the arrest.”
The report isn’t the first to feature the NYPD as a case-in-point for questions around officer trustworthiness. A 2015 WYNC examination of more than 1,000 civil and criminal court records found “more than 120 officers with at least one documented credibility issue over the past 10 years.” Almost none of the officers faced anything beyond the mildest of penalties for their misconduct, and “at least 54 went on to make more than 2,700 arrests after the date their word was challenged.” The pattern is just a sliver of the mountain of evidence indicating a culture of corruption in New York policing. Earlier this month, a Buzzfeed News report found between 2011-2015, nearly 320 NYPD employees “who committed offenses serious enough to merit firing were allowed to keep their jobs.” Nearly 50 of those "lied on official reports, under oath, or during an internal affairs investigation.”
But it would be naive to pretend the NYPD is the only department where perjury appears commonplace. The Baltimore police scandal has revealed widespread wrongdoing within the city’s Gun Trace Task Force, including police theft of “more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians,” according to the Washington Post. (Among the most sinister revelations was that some cops, on advice from team sergeant Wayne Jenkins, drove around with fake guns in their possession to plant on unarmed suspects they shot.) The Baltimore Sun described the case as “evidence [of a] dysfunctional police department in which officers confidently lied in official paperwork and in court to cover their tracks without fear of repercussions.”
Following a judicial order demanding its release, newly elected Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner recently made public a cheat sheet listing 66 current and former police officers whose well-established track records of falsehoods made them unreliable witnesses. The inventory was a hand-me-down from the office of outgoing district attorney Seth Williams. “The former aides who drew up the list saw it as an in-house reference sheet for frontline prosecutors to consult as they went over lists of potential police witnesses for cases,” per the Philly Inquirer. “It ultimately was seen as a tool to eliminate testimony from officers who might lie on the witness stand.”
A pattern of police lies and corruption was confirmed by a 2016 Chicago Tribune investigation that turned up numerous examples of “police officers shading the truth in subtle ways or outright lying from the witness stand.” The Tribune found:
"...more than a dozen examples over the past few years in which police officers, according to judges, gave false or questionable testimony—but experienced few, if any, repercussions. Over four years, from February 2012 to February 2016, 11 Chicago police officers had disciplinary charges brought against them for writing a false report or making a false statement. None of the cases, though, was for false testimony in court, according to police disciplinary records."
Police lying is as old as policing itself, and like all culturally ingrained customs, it will not disappear without the sustained intervention of outside forces. That is especially true in law enforcement, an institution governed by its own insular codes of silence, conduct and reprisal for speaking out. The U.S. government has never been deeply invested in seeing justice done, but the Obama administration had begun taking the most tentative of steps in the right direction by investigating abuses of major police departments around the country. But in his first speech after taking office last year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised to halt those reviews, just one aspect of his Justice Department’s complete lack of interest in protecting civil rights, particularly those of marginalized people. The decision was inspired by the same tired, “few rotten apples” excuse that brands most of the current DOJ's policies toward policing. “Law enforcement, as a whole, has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable actions of a few of their bad actors,” Sessions stated, ignoring the data and numbers on police abuse that had prescribed the investigations in the first place. "They felt they have become targets. Morale has suffered.”
Elsewhere, as silver linings go, among the few upsides of the ubiquity of cameras in the pockets of unwitting citizens and on cops’ bodies is that police lies have been revealed in many cases where they would otherwise have gone unquestioned. But what good is all that footage if it fails to result in punishment for lying and otherwise corrupt cops, as we’ve seen with countless videos documenting egregious police abuses and murder that juries have seemingly ignored? The counterintuitive result of so much surveillance is that even if the country, not to mention the internet, is watching, it rarely matters where justice is concerned. The refusal of juries to convict or even indict cops in the face of the most damning evidence only reinforces, particularly for folks of color, the demoralizing fact that police have endless system accessories for remaining above the law. That message basically adds up to a national carte blanche for cops to do as they wish without repercussions. One anonymous 10-year veteran of the NYPD told the Times as much.
“There’s no fear of being caught,” he said. “You’re not going to go to trial and nobody is going to be cross-examined.”
The term, the Times notes, came into common usage among cops about 25 years ago, but the issue of police perjury is far older, a problem African Americans have complained of for many decades. In rare instances, those with intimate knowledge have publicly acknowledged not only how rampant testilying is, but also how rarely cops caught in the act face consequences.
“Every lawyer who practices in the criminal courts knows that police perjury is commonplace,” former New York State criminal court judge, U.S. attorney and NYU law professor Irving Younger wrote in the Nation in 1967. “Policemen see themselves as fighting a two‑front war—against criminals in the street and against ‘liberal’ rules of law in court. All's fair in this war, including the use of perjury to subvert ‘liberal’ rules of law that might free those who ‘ought’ to be jailed. And even if his lies are exposed in the courtroom, the policeman is as likely to be indicted for perjury by his co‑worker, the prosecutor, as he is to be struck down by thunderbolts from an avenging heaven.”
More than 50 years after Younger’s broadside, a newly released Times study has turned up more than two-dozen instances of police lying in court since January 2015—and these confirmed cases “are almost certainly only a fraction” of the real total. The ubiquity of plea deals, which effectively halts cases before they’re weighed by a court, means “the possibility that an officer lied is seldom aired in public.” Even when false police testimony comes to public light, court papers are generally sealed and an officer’s misdeed protected from scrutiny. “[T]he cases identified by The Times reveal an entrenched perjury problem several decades in the making that shows little sign of fading,” the report notes.
The apparent goal of most perjurious officers in cases examined by the Times was to cover up unlawful searches, undertaken without reasonable suspicion and in violation of suspects’ constitutionally guaranteed rights. Predictably, the analysis also found numerous lies that “appear aimed at convicting people—who may or may not have committed a crime—with trumped-up evidence.” Those goals are underwritten by demands from police higher-ups to meet ever-increasing arrest quotas; an open secret of law enforcement. The Times also cites the general pressure officers face to identify suspects and close cases for purposes ranging from public relations to politics.
In one case cited by the Times, Bronx police officer Sean Kinane lied about watching drug dealers conduct street deals just before he swooped in to make an arrest. When a suspect’s lawyer made it known there was video of the incident, Kinane recanted, stating only that he “misspoke when [he] was in grand jury,” without further explanation. The officer has since been elevated to a new position within the force.
In another example, plainclothes officer Christopher Thomas testified he’d seen a man attempt to hide a gun in his car as the officer approached the vehicle. That turned out to be a falsehood, which Thomas quickly retracted when made aware of the existence of video footage. Now a “sergeant in a narcotics unit,” Thomas later “stated to the A.D.A. that he did not know why he had testified to those facts before the grand jury” according to an email from prosecutors.
Some officers seem to have lied not to cover up their disregard for a suspect's constitutionally granted rights, but for more petty and vainglorious reasons. Dornezia Agard, a plainclothes Brooklyn officer, claimed in court that as she approached a man, he knelt behind a parked van and threw down a “hard metal object” that turned out to be a gun. Prosecutors later discovered Agard hadn’t even been among the first law enforcement arrivals to the scene. “The prosecutors did not address why Officer Agard claimed to be a witness,” the Times notes, “or why the other officers present seem to have allowed her to process the arrest.”
The report isn’t the first to feature the NYPD as a case-in-point for questions around officer trustworthiness. A 2015 WYNC examination of more than 1,000 civil and criminal court records found “more than 120 officers with at least one documented credibility issue over the past 10 years.” Almost none of the officers faced anything beyond the mildest of penalties for their misconduct, and “at least 54 went on to make more than 2,700 arrests after the date their word was challenged.” The pattern is just a sliver of the mountain of evidence indicating a culture of corruption in New York policing. Earlier this month, a Buzzfeed News report found between 2011-2015, nearly 320 NYPD employees “who committed offenses serious enough to merit firing were allowed to keep their jobs.” Nearly 50 of those "lied on official reports, under oath, or during an internal affairs investigation.”
But it would be naive to pretend the NYPD is the only department where perjury appears commonplace. The Baltimore police scandal has revealed widespread wrongdoing within the city’s Gun Trace Task Force, including police theft of “more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians,” according to the Washington Post. (Among the most sinister revelations was that some cops, on advice from team sergeant Wayne Jenkins, drove around with fake guns in their possession to plant on unarmed suspects they shot.) The Baltimore Sun described the case as “evidence [of a] dysfunctional police department in which officers confidently lied in official paperwork and in court to cover their tracks without fear of repercussions.”
Following a judicial order demanding its release, newly elected Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner recently made public a cheat sheet listing 66 current and former police officers whose well-established track records of falsehoods made them unreliable witnesses. The inventory was a hand-me-down from the office of outgoing district attorney Seth Williams. “The former aides who drew up the list saw it as an in-house reference sheet for frontline prosecutors to consult as they went over lists of potential police witnesses for cases,” per the Philly Inquirer. “It ultimately was seen as a tool to eliminate testimony from officers who might lie on the witness stand.”
A pattern of police lies and corruption was confirmed by a 2016 Chicago Tribune investigation that turned up numerous examples of “police officers shading the truth in subtle ways or outright lying from the witness stand.” The Tribune found:
"...more than a dozen examples over the past few years in which police officers, according to judges, gave false or questionable testimony—but experienced few, if any, repercussions. Over four years, from February 2012 to February 2016, 11 Chicago police officers had disciplinary charges brought against them for writing a false report or making a false statement. None of the cases, though, was for false testimony in court, according to police disciplinary records."
Police lying is as old as policing itself, and like all culturally ingrained customs, it will not disappear without the sustained intervention of outside forces. That is especially true in law enforcement, an institution governed by its own insular codes of silence, conduct and reprisal for speaking out. The U.S. government has never been deeply invested in seeing justice done, but the Obama administration had begun taking the most tentative of steps in the right direction by investigating abuses of major police departments around the country. But in his first speech after taking office last year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised to halt those reviews, just one aspect of his Justice Department’s complete lack of interest in protecting civil rights, particularly those of marginalized people. The decision was inspired by the same tired, “few rotten apples” excuse that brands most of the current DOJ's policies toward policing. “Law enforcement, as a whole, has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable actions of a few of their bad actors,” Sessions stated, ignoring the data and numbers on police abuse that had prescribed the investigations in the first place. "They felt they have become targets. Morale has suffered.”
Elsewhere, as silver linings go, among the few upsides of the ubiquity of cameras in the pockets of unwitting citizens and on cops’ bodies is that police lies have been revealed in many cases where they would otherwise have gone unquestioned. But what good is all that footage if it fails to result in punishment for lying and otherwise corrupt cops, as we’ve seen with countless videos documenting egregious police abuses and murder that juries have seemingly ignored? The counterintuitive result of so much surveillance is that even if the country, not to mention the internet, is watching, it rarely matters where justice is concerned. The refusal of juries to convict or even indict cops in the face of the most damning evidence only reinforces, particularly for folks of color, the demoralizing fact that police have endless system accessories for remaining above the law. That message basically adds up to a national carte blanche for cops to do as they wish without repercussions. One anonymous 10-year veteran of the NYPD told the Times as much.
“There’s no fear of being caught,” he said. “You’re not going to go to trial and nobody is going to be cross-examined.”
Eleven seconds. That's how long after cops first glimpsed Stephon Clark until they shot him 20 times
By Meteor Blades - daily kos
Friday Mar 23, 2018 · 8:15 AM PDT
It’s an all-too-familiar and sickening story. An unarmed black man has an encounter with the police and is soon dead or dying on the ground. That’s what happened to Stephon Alonzo Clark Sunday night in Sacramento, California. The 22-year-old father of two was shot to death in his grandparents’ backyard by two officers who fired 20 shots.
Afterward, instead of the gun they seem to have thought Clark was pointing at them or a “toolbar” he was allegedly using to break windows, they found only a white cell phone near his body. Community outrage has been building all week. Hundreds of demonstrators marched and chanted late Thursday afternoon on a freeway that bisects the downtown of the state’s capital city.
Demonstrators later showed up to form a human chain around the Golden 1 Center and blocked all but about 2,000 ticket-holders from entering the arena to watch the Sacramento Kings play the Atlanta Hawks. At around 7:40 PM PT, Kings officials said they would let nobody else in and urged fans outside the arena to go home. They said there will be information about refunds at a later time. The protesters departed before 9 PM PT and police announced that “no arrests” had been made. Anita Chabria, Benjy Egel and Nashelly Chavez reported:
The demonstrators shouted Clark's name and said, "Hands up. Don’t shoot!"
"Stephon couldn't be here to watch a game. These people aren't going to be here to watch this game," said Brrazey Liberty, a musician and activist with Black Lives Matter.
"This is an epic day for black Sacramento," he said. "We feel like we had a victory today. Today was ours."
It was a different story for Clark and his family. He was shot after police said someone had been seen breaking car windows and the door of an unoccupied house nearby. In the video below captured by one of the officer’s body cameras, the two cops, whose names the Sacramento Police Department says will be released in 9 or 10 days, are seen searching the neighborhood on foot, using their flashlights and the intense spotlight from a helicopter overhead.
On Wednesday, the SPD showed the family and some friends videos of the shooting taken from body cameras of both officers and the police helicopter. They subsequently released these to the public. What they show is, to put it mildly, highly disturbing.
During a brief foot chase alongside the house, one officer shouts “Show me your hands! Gun!” The two officers reach the corner where the backyard begins and see Clark under a patio covering on the other side. Again one of them shouts “Show me your hands! Gun! Gun! Gun!” and less than a second later both officers blaze away, delivering 20 shots from their semi-automatic pistols. Time elapsed from when they first encounter Clark until they begin shooting? Eleven seconds. Until he lies motionless on the ground? Twenty-one seconds.
Without approaching him, the two cops continue several times in the next few minutes to ask Clark to show his hands. He’s not moving. Each assures the other that he has not been shot, one of them reloads his pistol while the other keeps his weapon trained on Clark. They keep their pistols unholstered and do not go near him until other officers and paramedics arrive, about six minutes later. An attempt is made then to give Clark CPR, but if there was a chance of saving his life, it is gone by then.
In the grandparents’ house, the shots are heard, but it is only later that his grandmother sees his body lying where he fell in the backyard.
Alex Horton and Wesley Lowery report:
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own back yard?” his grandmother, Sequita Thompson, told the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon, now, they didn’t have to do that.”
The Sacramento Police Department said the man they believed was breaking windows was the same man the officers killed in a hail of gunfire, identified by the 911 caller as a thin 6-foot male wearing a black hoodie and dark pants.
Police have yet to identify Clark as the suspect or victim.
Thompson said she thinks the window-breaker was someone else, not Clark, whom she described as being shorter than 6 feet.
After viewing them, Clark’s aunt, Saquoia Durham said:
"As soon as they did the command, they started shooting. They said 'put your hands up, gun' and then they just let loose on my nephew,” said Durham.
"They didn’t give him a chance to put his hands up or anything, and then when they shot him down, they knew they messed up,” she said.
The two officers are on paid administrative leave while an investigation of the shooting is underway.
Afterward, instead of the gun they seem to have thought Clark was pointing at them or a “toolbar” he was allegedly using to break windows, they found only a white cell phone near his body. Community outrage has been building all week. Hundreds of demonstrators marched and chanted late Thursday afternoon on a freeway that bisects the downtown of the state’s capital city.
Demonstrators later showed up to form a human chain around the Golden 1 Center and blocked all but about 2,000 ticket-holders from entering the arena to watch the Sacramento Kings play the Atlanta Hawks. At around 7:40 PM PT, Kings officials said they would let nobody else in and urged fans outside the arena to go home. They said there will be information about refunds at a later time. The protesters departed before 9 PM PT and police announced that “no arrests” had been made. Anita Chabria, Benjy Egel and Nashelly Chavez reported:
The demonstrators shouted Clark's name and said, "Hands up. Don’t shoot!"
"Stephon couldn't be here to watch a game. These people aren't going to be here to watch this game," said Brrazey Liberty, a musician and activist with Black Lives Matter.
"This is an epic day for black Sacramento," he said. "We feel like we had a victory today. Today was ours."
It was a different story for Clark and his family. He was shot after police said someone had been seen breaking car windows and the door of an unoccupied house nearby. In the video below captured by one of the officer’s body cameras, the two cops, whose names the Sacramento Police Department says will be released in 9 or 10 days, are seen searching the neighborhood on foot, using their flashlights and the intense spotlight from a helicopter overhead.
On Wednesday, the SPD showed the family and some friends videos of the shooting taken from body cameras of both officers and the police helicopter. They subsequently released these to the public. What they show is, to put it mildly, highly disturbing.
During a brief foot chase alongside the house, one officer shouts “Show me your hands! Gun!” The two officers reach the corner where the backyard begins and see Clark under a patio covering on the other side. Again one of them shouts “Show me your hands! Gun! Gun! Gun!” and less than a second later both officers blaze away, delivering 20 shots from their semi-automatic pistols. Time elapsed from when they first encounter Clark until they begin shooting? Eleven seconds. Until he lies motionless on the ground? Twenty-one seconds.
Without approaching him, the two cops continue several times in the next few minutes to ask Clark to show his hands. He’s not moving. Each assures the other that he has not been shot, one of them reloads his pistol while the other keeps his weapon trained on Clark. They keep their pistols unholstered and do not go near him until other officers and paramedics arrive, about six minutes later. An attempt is made then to give Clark CPR, but if there was a chance of saving his life, it is gone by then.
In the grandparents’ house, the shots are heard, but it is only later that his grandmother sees his body lying where he fell in the backyard.
Alex Horton and Wesley Lowery report:
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own back yard?” his grandmother, Sequita Thompson, told the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon, now, they didn’t have to do that.”
The Sacramento Police Department said the man they believed was breaking windows was the same man the officers killed in a hail of gunfire, identified by the 911 caller as a thin 6-foot male wearing a black hoodie and dark pants.
Police have yet to identify Clark as the suspect or victim.
Thompson said she thinks the window-breaker was someone else, not Clark, whom she described as being shorter than 6 feet.
After viewing them, Clark’s aunt, Saquoia Durham said:
"As soon as they did the command, they started shooting. They said 'put your hands up, gun' and then they just let loose on my nephew,” said Durham.
"They didn’t give him a chance to put his hands up or anything, and then when they shot him down, they knew they messed up,” she said.
The two officers are on paid administrative leave while an investigation of the shooting is underway.
Tape shows police chief facing hate crime rushing to scene of his alleged attack
Martin Cizmar - raw story
23 MAR 2018 AT 18:23 ET
Chief Frank Nucera Jr. in a pink shirt rushing to the scene of his alleged attack/Screenshot
A New Jersey police chief facing a hate crimes trial for brutalizing a black teen is seen running to the scene of his alleged attack on a newly released video.
Frank Nucera Jr., 61, was chief of the Bordentown department until resigning before his arrest on hate crimes charges. The chief was captured making racist remarks in which he compared black people to ISIS and said he wanted to join a firing squad to “mow them down,” by another officer, who worked as an informant. Nucera stands accused of brutalizing a black teen who he has claimed he didn’t touch.
In records and video reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Nucera was seen running in a shirt and tie to confront an 18-year-old man. Once he got there, he allegedly slammed the teen’s head into a metal door jamb creating a “thud” that was heard by people in the area.
Nucera “had a penchant for showing up at routine calls, even when he was off duty,” according to the newspaper report.
In this case, he rushed to confront a man who allegedly refused to get out of the pool after failing to pay a $65 bill at the Ramada Inn. (video)
Frank Nucera Jr., 61, was chief of the Bordentown department until resigning before his arrest on hate crimes charges. The chief was captured making racist remarks in which he compared black people to ISIS and said he wanted to join a firing squad to “mow them down,” by another officer, who worked as an informant. Nucera stands accused of brutalizing a black teen who he has claimed he didn’t touch.
In records and video reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Nucera was seen running in a shirt and tie to confront an 18-year-old man. Once he got there, he allegedly slammed the teen’s head into a metal door jamb creating a “thud” that was heard by people in the area.
Nucera “had a penchant for showing up at routine calls, even when he was off duty,” according to the newspaper report.
In this case, he rushed to confront a man who allegedly refused to get out of the pool after failing to pay a $65 bill at the Ramada Inn. (video)
Police fired at unarmed Black man 20 times because he was holding a cell phone
The two officers fired at 22-year-old Stephan Clark 20 times, claiming they believed he had a gun.
MELANIE SCHMITZ - think progress
MAR 21, 2018, 12:32 PM
A unarmed Black man was shot by two police officers in Sacramento, California this weekend, after officers said they believed their lives were in danger because the man was holding a cell phone they thought was a gun.
Stephan Clark, 22, was in the backyard of his grandparents’ house, where he had been living, when officers approached him on Sunday. Police said they were responding to reports that a man had been breaking into cars with a “toolbar”; deputies in a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department helicopter had informed them that the suspect was allegedly hiding in a backyard and pointed them in Clark’s direction.
When officers confronted Clark, they saw the cellphone in his hand and opened fire, discharging their weapons at least 20 times.
“The officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them,” Sacramento police said in a statement afterward. “Fearing for their safety, the officers fired their duty weapons striking the suspect multiple times.”
Clark was pronounced dead at the scene. Police found a pair of headphones and a iPhone 6 Plus with a rose gold case and black card holder adhered to the back — which reportedly belonged to his girlfriend — but no gun.
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own backyard?” said Clark’s grandmother, Sequita Thompson, speaking with the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon now, they didn’t have to do that.”
Thompson added that she had been at home when the shooting took place, and said neither she nor her husband heard police issue any commands before opening fire.
“The only thing that I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, and I got to the ground,” she explained.
After being interviewed by police for several hours, officers finally delivered the tragic news: Clark had been shot. “I opened that curtain and he was dead. I started screaming,” she said.
Police have since stated that they plan to release footage from the sheriff’s department helicopter as well as the two body cameras the officers involved in the shooting were wearing.
Although officials have placed both officers on administrative leave for the time being, Black activists are already signaling that the incident should be viewed as a pivotal moment in the community.
“This is a moment of truth. … This is definitely where transparency, accountability, and justice are really going to be put in full display with this new regime of policing,” community activist Berry Accius told the Sacramento Bee. “I think a lot of us in the community have been told there will be a whole other way of how the police in Sacramento police the community, especially black and brown people, and this will be the test.”
So far, few activists outside the Black community have picked up on Clark’s case — a frustrating yet unsurprising development.
The deaths of unarmed Black teens and adults are frequently labeled with an asterisk — their names are part of a larger list of tragedies that are upsetting but “to be expected.” Most recently, after several Black residents in Austin, Texas were killed or injured in a series of package bombings, critics downplayed any talk of racial motivation, noting that two white men had also been injured after triggering an explosive tripwire left by the same suspect. Despite the fact that the suspect, a 23-year-old white man, had intentionally targeted Black and Latinx victims, the concern was swept under the rug by most of the mainstream media.
Clark’s death also comes as the debate over anti-gun violence efforts continues to build. In the wake of a high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead, gun control advocates, survivors, and the firearm lobby have gone back and forth over the idea of tightening restrictions and outlawing certain kinds of weapons and modifications. Across the nation, students have begun actively protesting the gun lobby, calling for change and staging mass school walkouts to bring attention to their cause. Celebrities and several high-profile individuals and companies have showed their support through donations and pledges to exhaustively pursue legislative efforts.
---
Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., bemoaned the lack of concern over 22-year-old Clark’s death specifically on Wednesday.
“#StephonClark. 22. Killed by police while holding a cell phone. Human. Flesh & blood. Born with a purpose,” she tweeted. “Some will try to reason; there is no humane reason. This continues to happen because, for 100s of years, the soul & sentiment of America have denied that #BlackLivesMatter.”
Stephan Clark, 22, was in the backyard of his grandparents’ house, where he had been living, when officers approached him on Sunday. Police said they were responding to reports that a man had been breaking into cars with a “toolbar”; deputies in a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department helicopter had informed them that the suspect was allegedly hiding in a backyard and pointed them in Clark’s direction.
When officers confronted Clark, they saw the cellphone in his hand and opened fire, discharging their weapons at least 20 times.
“The officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them,” Sacramento police said in a statement afterward. “Fearing for their safety, the officers fired their duty weapons striking the suspect multiple times.”
Clark was pronounced dead at the scene. Police found a pair of headphones and a iPhone 6 Plus with a rose gold case and black card holder adhered to the back — which reportedly belonged to his girlfriend — but no gun.
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own backyard?” said Clark’s grandmother, Sequita Thompson, speaking with the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon now, they didn’t have to do that.”
Thompson added that she had been at home when the shooting took place, and said neither she nor her husband heard police issue any commands before opening fire.
“The only thing that I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, and I got to the ground,” she explained.
After being interviewed by police for several hours, officers finally delivered the tragic news: Clark had been shot. “I opened that curtain and he was dead. I started screaming,” she said.
Police have since stated that they plan to release footage from the sheriff’s department helicopter as well as the two body cameras the officers involved in the shooting were wearing.
Although officials have placed both officers on administrative leave for the time being, Black activists are already signaling that the incident should be viewed as a pivotal moment in the community.
“This is a moment of truth. … This is definitely where transparency, accountability, and justice are really going to be put in full display with this new regime of policing,” community activist Berry Accius told the Sacramento Bee. “I think a lot of us in the community have been told there will be a whole other way of how the police in Sacramento police the community, especially black and brown people, and this will be the test.”
So far, few activists outside the Black community have picked up on Clark’s case — a frustrating yet unsurprising development.
The deaths of unarmed Black teens and adults are frequently labeled with an asterisk — their names are part of a larger list of tragedies that are upsetting but “to be expected.” Most recently, after several Black residents in Austin, Texas were killed or injured in a series of package bombings, critics downplayed any talk of racial motivation, noting that two white men had also been injured after triggering an explosive tripwire left by the same suspect. Despite the fact that the suspect, a 23-year-old white man, had intentionally targeted Black and Latinx victims, the concern was swept under the rug by most of the mainstream media.
Clark’s death also comes as the debate over anti-gun violence efforts continues to build. In the wake of a high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead, gun control advocates, survivors, and the firearm lobby have gone back and forth over the idea of tightening restrictions and outlawing certain kinds of weapons and modifications. Across the nation, students have begun actively protesting the gun lobby, calling for change and staging mass school walkouts to bring attention to their cause. Celebrities and several high-profile individuals and companies have showed their support through donations and pledges to exhaustively pursue legislative efforts.
---
Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., bemoaned the lack of concern over 22-year-old Clark’s death specifically on Wednesday.
“#StephonClark. 22. Killed by police while holding a cell phone. Human. Flesh & blood. Born with a purpose,” she tweeted. “Some will try to reason; there is no humane reason. This continues to happen because, for 100s of years, the soul & sentiment of America have denied that #BlackLivesMatter.”
A Private Mercenary Firm Is Making Millions Off Tragedy in Houston, Puerto Rico and Standing Rock
The company has bullied protesters and profited off recent hurricanes.
By Mehreen Kasana / AlterNet
March 20, 2018, 11:23 AM GMT
The practice of governments and security firms conducting wide-scale exploitation of major disasters, natural and otherwise, is nothing new. Last week, the Intercept reported on TigerSwan, a mercenary security firm that follows a similar disaster-capitalist model and has attacked the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement since 2016, at least. But that’s not all: TigerSwan has also been preying on relief needs in hurricane-hit areas like Houston and Puerto Rico since 2017.
So far, the mercenary firm keeps its media presence at a minimum level, attracting little attention from the press. This makes sense considering the depth and scale of its massive military-style operations, including suppressing anti-pipeline activists by infiltrating activist groups with informants, surveilling the movement and calling on law enforcement agencies to suppress activist organizing.
In spite of how shadowy the firm may sound, TigerSwan has the approval of the United States government. TigerSwan contracts with the U.S. military and the state department to offer its services to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. In May 2017, the Intercept published leaked internal documents from the firm in which TigerSwan officials likened NoDAPL activists to "jihadists" and called the movement an "ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component." Calling for a combined strategy of increased surveillance and security, the TigerSwan documents concluded that in order to suppress NoDAPL, the firm would need “aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements.”
Tara Houska, who directs campaigns for Honor the Earth, told Democracy Now! in May 2017 that TigerSwan's deliberate mischaracterization of the NoDAPLmovement carries dangerous implications for activists. "The movement was 'Water is life,'" Houska said. By drawing false parallels with extremist religious movements, Housak said TigerSwan emboldened a state-sanctioned response that was "incredibly violent, incredibly brutal."
As of February, TigerSwan has added savior to its role by creating maps calling Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey “billion dollar weather and climate disasters.” Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pamela Spees told the Intercept that there's reason to be concerned about TigerSwan's interest in these ravaged regions, as “you have this growing patchwork of private and state interests that are basically executing law enforcement and security functions in these settings."
This isn't the first time a mercenary firm has expressed interest in a hurricane-devastated region. After Hurricane Katrina, the firm Blackwater swooped into New Orleans and deployed heavily armed security guards to patrol the streets. Jeremy Scahill reported on the scene for the Nation and was told such operations are anything but over. A Blackwater member told Scahill, “This is a trend. You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.”
So far, the mercenary firm keeps its media presence at a minimum level, attracting little attention from the press. This makes sense considering the depth and scale of its massive military-style operations, including suppressing anti-pipeline activists by infiltrating activist groups with informants, surveilling the movement and calling on law enforcement agencies to suppress activist organizing.
In spite of how shadowy the firm may sound, TigerSwan has the approval of the United States government. TigerSwan contracts with the U.S. military and the state department to offer its services to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. In May 2017, the Intercept published leaked internal documents from the firm in which TigerSwan officials likened NoDAPL activists to "jihadists" and called the movement an "ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component." Calling for a combined strategy of increased surveillance and security, the TigerSwan documents concluded that in order to suppress NoDAPL, the firm would need “aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements.”
Tara Houska, who directs campaigns for Honor the Earth, told Democracy Now! in May 2017 that TigerSwan's deliberate mischaracterization of the NoDAPLmovement carries dangerous implications for activists. "The movement was 'Water is life,'" Houska said. By drawing false parallels with extremist religious movements, Housak said TigerSwan emboldened a state-sanctioned response that was "incredibly violent, incredibly brutal."
As of February, TigerSwan has added savior to its role by creating maps calling Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey “billion dollar weather and climate disasters.” Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pamela Spees told the Intercept that there's reason to be concerned about TigerSwan's interest in these ravaged regions, as “you have this growing patchwork of private and state interests that are basically executing law enforcement and security functions in these settings."
This isn't the first time a mercenary firm has expressed interest in a hurricane-devastated region. After Hurricane Katrina, the firm Blackwater swooped into New Orleans and deployed heavily armed security guards to patrol the streets. Jeremy Scahill reported on the scene for the Nation and was told such operations are anything but over. A Blackwater member told Scahill, “This is a trend. You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.”
Grifter California deputies allegedly ripped off elderly woman then put her on a plane to the Philippines
Martin Cizmar - raw story
17 MAR 2018 AT 22:09 ET
Two sheriff’s deputies in Sacramento County are on leave pending an investigation into allegations that they stole money from a 75-year-old woman with dementia, listed her home for sale and put her on a plane to the Philippines, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The alleged victim is Rosalie Santallan Achiu, who is described as “a frail military wife who loved to play cards and was fluent in several languages but seemed lost and afraid since her husband died more than a year ago.” The deputies under investigation are Stephanie Angel and a male colleague who was not named.
Neighbors noticed she disappeared, but had no idea where she went. Investigators from the sheriff’s department and a federal agency found her in the Philippines, living with relatives. The investigators also found “many unusual activities by both deputies, both on and off duty.”
Achiu met the deputies after calling for help dealing with a housemate and within weeks they had listed her house was listed for sale and opened a joint bank account with her, according to an attorney representing her family. They had her have the locks drilled out of her safety deposit box to take her jewelry. They were granted power of attorney and were named on her living will. Then, they allegedly ordered her a passport on RushMyPassport.com and sent her back to her home country, the Philippines.
“They just took her,” neighbor Jo Osborn told the Times. “That was crazy, and to find out she was sent to the Philippines, that’s really crazy.”
The alleged victim is Rosalie Santallan Achiu, who is described as “a frail military wife who loved to play cards and was fluent in several languages but seemed lost and afraid since her husband died more than a year ago.” The deputies under investigation are Stephanie Angel and a male colleague who was not named.
Neighbors noticed she disappeared, but had no idea where she went. Investigators from the sheriff’s department and a federal agency found her in the Philippines, living with relatives. The investigators also found “many unusual activities by both deputies, both on and off duty.”
Achiu met the deputies after calling for help dealing with a housemate and within weeks they had listed her house was listed for sale and opened a joint bank account with her, according to an attorney representing her family. They had her have the locks drilled out of her safety deposit box to take her jewelry. They were granted power of attorney and were named on her living will. Then, they allegedly ordered her a passport on RushMyPassport.com and sent her back to her home country, the Philippines.
“They just took her,” neighbor Jo Osborn told the Times. “That was crazy, and to find out she was sent to the Philippines, that’s really crazy.”
The FBI — ‘Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity’ — Still Working on Diversity
The nation’s top federal law enforcement agency is overwhelmingly white, and its top officials acknowledge that’s “a huge operational risk.”
by Topher Sanders - pro publica
March 16, 12:08 p.m. EDT
For the FBI, the longstanding failure to diversify its ranks is nothing short of “a huge operational risk,” according to one senior official, something that compromises the agency’s ability to understand communities at risk, penetrate criminal enterprises, and identify emerging national security threats.
Indeed, 10 months before being fired as director of the FBI by President Trump, James Comey called the situation a “crisis.”
“Slowly but steadily over the last decade or more, the percentage of special agents in the FBI who are white has been growing,” Comey said in a speech at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black school in Daytona Beach, Florida. “I’ve got nothing against white people — especially tall, awkward, male white people — but that is a crisis for reasons that you get, and that I’ve worked very hard to make sure the entire FBI understands.”
It’s a charged moment for the FBI, one in which diversifying the force might not strike everyone as the most pressing issue.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the bureau’s competence and integrity. Many Democrats blame Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Comey’s decision to announce that the bureau was reopening its inquiry into her emails days before the election. Republicans, echoing Trump’s attacks, have alleged that the FBI’s investigation of the president’s ties to Russia is a politically motivated abuse of power.
With some 35,000 employees and an annual budget around $9 billion, the FBI has an array of hiring problems, of which diversity is but one. It needs first-rate linguists and technologists to fight terrorism, and now, with ever greater urgency, cyber-crimes, yet starting pay for an agent in, say, Chicago is only around $63,600. In 2015, a human resources official told the bureau’s inspector general’s office that the agency attracted 2,000 eligible candidates to a recruiting event for its Next Gen Cyber Initiative, but only managed to hire two of them.
Yet diversity remains a persistent problem, with a bitter history and, as the FBI official conceded, real operational downsides.
Almost 30 years ago, a group of black agents sued the FBI, alleging systemic discrimination by the bureau in the quality of assignments, performance reviews, rates of promotions and overall workplace culture. At the time, about one in 20 agents were black. The numbers were even smaller in the FBI’s senior ranks.
A federal judge ultimately concluded there was “statistical evidence” of discrimination at the FBI, and a settlement was reached in 1993 promising reforms. But the black agents were back in court five years later, asserting the FBI had failed to deliver on its promises, and in 2001, another settlement was achieved. That agreement for the first time mandated that an outside mediator be used to handle future discrimination complaints at the bureau.
Still, all these years later, the most recent statistics posted publicly by the FBI indicate the bureau remains far less diverse than the population it is drawn from. Black agents in 2014 made up a lower percentage of special agents than they did when the discrimination lawsuit was filed, dropping from around 5.3 percent in 1995 to 4.4 percent, according to the FBI website. About 13 percent of the U.S. population is black. And while nearly 18 percent of the U.S. population is Latino, Latinos made up just 6.5 percent of special agents.
ProPublica asked for the most current numbers behind the percentages for each race, but the bureau only provided white and nonwhite numbers.
Emmanuel Johnson, the lead plaintiff in the first discrimination suit brought by black agents in 1991, said he is not at all surprised to learn the bureau’s ranks are still overwhelmingly white, and he rejects what he said has been a common FBI lament: the difficulty of identifying quality, interested black applicants.
“I don’t believe it’s a recruiting problem, I believe it’s a hiring problem,” Johnson said. “It’s a very convenient excuse for the FBI — ‘Oh, we can’t find them.’ Well, I don’t believe that’s true. This is how the hiring system works, because it’s controlled by whites.”
The FBI says it has made some progress since Comey promised to better address the crisis. In the summer of 2016, the FBI set a target that 40 percent of its special agent applications come from people of color. The bureau hit the target when 43 percent of those applying in 2017 were minorities. So far this year, the bureau said, 47 percent of those who have applied are people of color. The bureau also will host between eight and a dozen recruiting events in 2018 focused on diversity.
ProPublica is taking a look at the FBI this year as the nation’s top law enforcement agency confronts questions about its effectiveness, independence and culture. As part of this effort, we spent several weeks speaking with black former agents and officials about the FBI’s attempts to diversify. Nearly all said they loved their careers in the bureau and would recommend the job to others. One said black agents themselves had historically done too little to assist in effective recruitment. But others said the ranks of the bureau still harbor old attitudes about race, and that anyone considering it as a career should do so with eyes wide open.
“There has always been a view that this is a white male organization and you guys — [minority agents] — are here primarily as an afterthought,” said Eric Bryant, a former special agent who retired in 2011 after nearly 25 years.
By the early 1990s, Johnson had been a special agent with the FBI for almost two decades. He’d worked a full range of cases: violent crime racketeering by the mob terrorism.
But in 1991, he took on a very different kind of case, one that would consume years of his life and career: He sued his employer. He and other black agents alleged that white agents with similar qualifications and experience were frequently promoted over black agents, while qualified black agents were repeatedly not promoted, often for vague reasons like “lacking personal skills.” When black agents were promoted, according to the lawsuit, it was to positions with less potential for future advancement.
Johnson, who served as an officer in the Marines prior to joining the FBI, said he was spurred to act after he read an article in an FBI bulletin that instructed supervisors to watch female and minority agents and employees more closely and to document any problems, so that if those agents were fired, the bureau could stave off any legal challenges.
Johnson said he went to his supervisors with the bulletin and questioned whether it represented how the bureau thought of minority agents. After that exchange, he said, his supervisors began criticizing his performance and creating a document trail.
“That’s what really pissed me off,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “These were the people who made the decisions. They proved that it was even worse than I thought.”
James Talley entered the FBI as special agent in 1991. Within a year, he was enlisted to recruit for the agency. In 1992, he said, a senior white agent told him how happy he was to see Talley, who is African American, at a recruiting event with black candidates. The white agent said that for years he had been unable to adequately handle the questions he faced when recruiting at black universities — questions Talley would soon face himself.
Did the FBI kill civil rights leaders?
Did the bureau infect African Americans with diseases?
“He was just happy that I would do it,” Talley said of the white senior agent. “Even though he was the guy in charge of basically the Eastern Seaboard.”
V.O. Little did some recruiting, too. Little retired from the bureau in 2017 after 26 years of service. For 17 years, in addition to his regular work, he also flew around the country talking to candidates at job fairs and conventions for black fraternities and sororities.
Little said his experience taught him that each field office — the bureau has 56 in the U.S. — plays a key role in recruiting. Field office recruiters decide which candidates can take the initial test to apply for the FBI. There is some national oversight of recruiting, Little said, but not a lot.
“So you could have a terrible recruiter in a field office,” Little said. “That recruiter may not be receptive to diversity.”
Little and others said the test itself could be a hurdle, as well as the overall length of the application process, which could last as long as a year. The bureau has recently revamped the test, swapping out a significant math portion for testing that focuses more on how candidates think and reason through problems.
The formal interview stage of the application process could present its own kind of Catch-22 problem, Little and others said. The three-person interview panels were often dominated by white men, perhaps not the best audience for applicants of diverse backgrounds with unique strengths and weaknesses. Talley acknowledged that white panelists might bring negative perceptions of black applicants to the interviews, but said that need not prove decisive. Black applicants ought to be impressive enough to conquer such stereotypes, he said.
Julian Stackhaus, who retired in 2000 after two decades with the bureau, was one of the original plaintiffs in the 1991 suit. He believed in the case, he said, but today says black agents share responsibility for their underrepresentation at the agency. He said if current black agents each made an effort to recruit just one black agent a year, the number of black agents would improve significantly over time.
“African-American agents, in my opinion, have been derelict in bringing in other African-American agents,” he said.
Talley, who said white agents at times seemed intimated by black youth, said retired agents such as himself should be better utilized by the bureau to help recruit. He suggested the bureau create a formal program because, even if current agents did a better job, there simply aren’t enough black agents in the bureau at any one time to get the job done.
“I think that would be more effective than having a white person who really doesn’t want to do it,” he said.
Former agent Edward Dickson actually helped to put together a plan that would do exactly what Talley suggested — the Special Agent Volunteer Initiative. Dickson said Comey approved the initiative a couple of years ago, but the bureau’s commitment was fleeting.
“It was not fully embraced and it was left to die on the vine,” he said. ”I don’t know what you could do to get it started again, and I don’t think they care. Nobody owned it, nobody invested in it and nobody of color was running it.”
Asked about that assertion, a spokesperson with the FBI stressed the agency is committed to increasing diversity among women and minorities.
“This is important, and it is a goal we are actively working to achieve,” Lauren Hagee said in an email. “We know we are best able to protect the nation when we look like and represent the communities we serve. We know diversity increases cultural competence. We also know that once we understand and leverage the full diversity of our workforce, our operations and investigative and analytical insight are more effective.”
The lawsuits brought by black agents over the years were chiefly handled by David Shaffer, a lawyer from Washington, D.C. Shafer said the problems endure.
“I still represent minority and female agents,” he said. “They’re still suffering. They still deal with the same stereotypes they were almost 30 years ago.”
Shaffer and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sought to bring another case against the FBI around 2010 on behalf of black agents who felt they were being discriminated against in their effort to be promoted to more senior positions. To avoid the suit, Shaffer said, the bureau would simply promote each agent who had sought his legal help, preventing them from putting together a class of plaintiffs.
“We had about three named plaintiffs to start with, and the FBI promoted them,” he said. “So we replaced them with more people that needed to be promoted and the FBI promoted them. We never got a chance to fix the system because the FBI wasn’t really interested in doing that. They just wanted to make the case go away.”
The FBI had no direct response to Shaffer’s comments.
In a 2016 speech at a diversity recruiting event at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, Comey spotlighted an FBI training initiative in which agents study the bureau’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and write essays about King. The bureau surveilled King and attempted, in Comey’s words, to “destroy” him during the civils rights movement.
Comey said he wanted new agents to “stare at a piece of our own history.”
“Our design there is to make people think deeply, to understand how the values that we aspire to hold were implicated in the way we acted with respect to Dr. King,” Comey said. “I can’t change history, but I can change the way people think about our values and embrace our values.”
Indeed, 10 months before being fired as director of the FBI by President Trump, James Comey called the situation a “crisis.”
“Slowly but steadily over the last decade or more, the percentage of special agents in the FBI who are white has been growing,” Comey said in a speech at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black school in Daytona Beach, Florida. “I’ve got nothing against white people — especially tall, awkward, male white people — but that is a crisis for reasons that you get, and that I’ve worked very hard to make sure the entire FBI understands.”
It’s a charged moment for the FBI, one in which diversifying the force might not strike everyone as the most pressing issue.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the bureau’s competence and integrity. Many Democrats blame Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Comey’s decision to announce that the bureau was reopening its inquiry into her emails days before the election. Republicans, echoing Trump’s attacks, have alleged that the FBI’s investigation of the president’s ties to Russia is a politically motivated abuse of power.
With some 35,000 employees and an annual budget around $9 billion, the FBI has an array of hiring problems, of which diversity is but one. It needs first-rate linguists and technologists to fight terrorism, and now, with ever greater urgency, cyber-crimes, yet starting pay for an agent in, say, Chicago is only around $63,600. In 2015, a human resources official told the bureau’s inspector general’s office that the agency attracted 2,000 eligible candidates to a recruiting event for its Next Gen Cyber Initiative, but only managed to hire two of them.
Yet diversity remains a persistent problem, with a bitter history and, as the FBI official conceded, real operational downsides.
Almost 30 years ago, a group of black agents sued the FBI, alleging systemic discrimination by the bureau in the quality of assignments, performance reviews, rates of promotions and overall workplace culture. At the time, about one in 20 agents were black. The numbers were even smaller in the FBI’s senior ranks.
A federal judge ultimately concluded there was “statistical evidence” of discrimination at the FBI, and a settlement was reached in 1993 promising reforms. But the black agents were back in court five years later, asserting the FBI had failed to deliver on its promises, and in 2001, another settlement was achieved. That agreement for the first time mandated that an outside mediator be used to handle future discrimination complaints at the bureau.
Still, all these years later, the most recent statistics posted publicly by the FBI indicate the bureau remains far less diverse than the population it is drawn from. Black agents in 2014 made up a lower percentage of special agents than they did when the discrimination lawsuit was filed, dropping from around 5.3 percent in 1995 to 4.4 percent, according to the FBI website. About 13 percent of the U.S. population is black. And while nearly 18 percent of the U.S. population is Latino, Latinos made up just 6.5 percent of special agents.
ProPublica asked for the most current numbers behind the percentages for each race, but the bureau only provided white and nonwhite numbers.
Emmanuel Johnson, the lead plaintiff in the first discrimination suit brought by black agents in 1991, said he is not at all surprised to learn the bureau’s ranks are still overwhelmingly white, and he rejects what he said has been a common FBI lament: the difficulty of identifying quality, interested black applicants.
“I don’t believe it’s a recruiting problem, I believe it’s a hiring problem,” Johnson said. “It’s a very convenient excuse for the FBI — ‘Oh, we can’t find them.’ Well, I don’t believe that’s true. This is how the hiring system works, because it’s controlled by whites.”
The FBI says it has made some progress since Comey promised to better address the crisis. In the summer of 2016, the FBI set a target that 40 percent of its special agent applications come from people of color. The bureau hit the target when 43 percent of those applying in 2017 were minorities. So far this year, the bureau said, 47 percent of those who have applied are people of color. The bureau also will host between eight and a dozen recruiting events in 2018 focused on diversity.
ProPublica is taking a look at the FBI this year as the nation’s top law enforcement agency confronts questions about its effectiveness, independence and culture. As part of this effort, we spent several weeks speaking with black former agents and officials about the FBI’s attempts to diversify. Nearly all said they loved their careers in the bureau and would recommend the job to others. One said black agents themselves had historically done too little to assist in effective recruitment. But others said the ranks of the bureau still harbor old attitudes about race, and that anyone considering it as a career should do so with eyes wide open.
“There has always been a view that this is a white male organization and you guys — [minority agents] — are here primarily as an afterthought,” said Eric Bryant, a former special agent who retired in 2011 after nearly 25 years.
By the early 1990s, Johnson had been a special agent with the FBI for almost two decades. He’d worked a full range of cases: violent crime racketeering by the mob terrorism.
But in 1991, he took on a very different kind of case, one that would consume years of his life and career: He sued his employer. He and other black agents alleged that white agents with similar qualifications and experience were frequently promoted over black agents, while qualified black agents were repeatedly not promoted, often for vague reasons like “lacking personal skills.” When black agents were promoted, according to the lawsuit, it was to positions with less potential for future advancement.
Johnson, who served as an officer in the Marines prior to joining the FBI, said he was spurred to act after he read an article in an FBI bulletin that instructed supervisors to watch female and minority agents and employees more closely and to document any problems, so that if those agents were fired, the bureau could stave off any legal challenges.
Johnson said he went to his supervisors with the bulletin and questioned whether it represented how the bureau thought of minority agents. After that exchange, he said, his supervisors began criticizing his performance and creating a document trail.
“That’s what really pissed me off,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “These were the people who made the decisions. They proved that it was even worse than I thought.”
James Talley entered the FBI as special agent in 1991. Within a year, he was enlisted to recruit for the agency. In 1992, he said, a senior white agent told him how happy he was to see Talley, who is African American, at a recruiting event with black candidates. The white agent said that for years he had been unable to adequately handle the questions he faced when recruiting at black universities — questions Talley would soon face himself.
Did the FBI kill civil rights leaders?
Did the bureau infect African Americans with diseases?
“He was just happy that I would do it,” Talley said of the white senior agent. “Even though he was the guy in charge of basically the Eastern Seaboard.”
V.O. Little did some recruiting, too. Little retired from the bureau in 2017 after 26 years of service. For 17 years, in addition to his regular work, he also flew around the country talking to candidates at job fairs and conventions for black fraternities and sororities.
Little said his experience taught him that each field office — the bureau has 56 in the U.S. — plays a key role in recruiting. Field office recruiters decide which candidates can take the initial test to apply for the FBI. There is some national oversight of recruiting, Little said, but not a lot.
“So you could have a terrible recruiter in a field office,” Little said. “That recruiter may not be receptive to diversity.”
Little and others said the test itself could be a hurdle, as well as the overall length of the application process, which could last as long as a year. The bureau has recently revamped the test, swapping out a significant math portion for testing that focuses more on how candidates think and reason through problems.
The formal interview stage of the application process could present its own kind of Catch-22 problem, Little and others said. The three-person interview panels were often dominated by white men, perhaps not the best audience for applicants of diverse backgrounds with unique strengths and weaknesses. Talley acknowledged that white panelists might bring negative perceptions of black applicants to the interviews, but said that need not prove decisive. Black applicants ought to be impressive enough to conquer such stereotypes, he said.
Julian Stackhaus, who retired in 2000 after two decades with the bureau, was one of the original plaintiffs in the 1991 suit. He believed in the case, he said, but today says black agents share responsibility for their underrepresentation at the agency. He said if current black agents each made an effort to recruit just one black agent a year, the number of black agents would improve significantly over time.
“African-American agents, in my opinion, have been derelict in bringing in other African-American agents,” he said.
Talley, who said white agents at times seemed intimated by black youth, said retired agents such as himself should be better utilized by the bureau to help recruit. He suggested the bureau create a formal program because, even if current agents did a better job, there simply aren’t enough black agents in the bureau at any one time to get the job done.
“I think that would be more effective than having a white person who really doesn’t want to do it,” he said.
Former agent Edward Dickson actually helped to put together a plan that would do exactly what Talley suggested — the Special Agent Volunteer Initiative. Dickson said Comey approved the initiative a couple of years ago, but the bureau’s commitment was fleeting.
“It was not fully embraced and it was left to die on the vine,” he said. ”I don’t know what you could do to get it started again, and I don’t think they care. Nobody owned it, nobody invested in it and nobody of color was running it.”
Asked about that assertion, a spokesperson with the FBI stressed the agency is committed to increasing diversity among women and minorities.
“This is important, and it is a goal we are actively working to achieve,” Lauren Hagee said in an email. “We know we are best able to protect the nation when we look like and represent the communities we serve. We know diversity increases cultural competence. We also know that once we understand and leverage the full diversity of our workforce, our operations and investigative and analytical insight are more effective.”
The lawsuits brought by black agents over the years were chiefly handled by David Shaffer, a lawyer from Washington, D.C. Shafer said the problems endure.
“I still represent minority and female agents,” he said. “They’re still suffering. They still deal with the same stereotypes they were almost 30 years ago.”
Shaffer and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sought to bring another case against the FBI around 2010 on behalf of black agents who felt they were being discriminated against in their effort to be promoted to more senior positions. To avoid the suit, Shaffer said, the bureau would simply promote each agent who had sought his legal help, preventing them from putting together a class of plaintiffs.
“We had about three named plaintiffs to start with, and the FBI promoted them,” he said. “So we replaced them with more people that needed to be promoted and the FBI promoted them. We never got a chance to fix the system because the FBI wasn’t really interested in doing that. They just wanted to make the case go away.”
The FBI had no direct response to Shaffer’s comments.
In a 2016 speech at a diversity recruiting event at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, Comey spotlighted an FBI training initiative in which agents study the bureau’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and write essays about King. The bureau surveilled King and attempted, in Comey’s words, to “destroy” him during the civils rights movement.
Comey said he wanted new agents to “stare at a piece of our own history.”
“Our design there is to make people think deeply, to understand how the values that we aspire to hold were implicated in the way we acted with respect to Dr. King,” Comey said. “I can’t change history, but I can change the way people think about our values and embrace our values.”
These Cities Saw the Most Immigration Raids During Trump's First Year in Office
Despite the protection of sanctuary cities, the number of arrests is climbing.
By Liz Posner / AlterNet
March 6, 2018, 11:11 AM GMT
Raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have increased drastically since Donald Trump moved into the White House. Across the country, 2017 saw 30 percent more ICE arrests than the previous year. A number of these high-profile arrests are particularly despicable, from news that ICE seized a woman after she reported her husband for domestic abuse, to the arrest of a handicapped girl just out of surgery.
For the past year, AlterNet has reported on ICE’s notable cruelty since Trump’s inauguration. Now the numbers are in, and they confirm that the stories of ICE targeting non-criminal individuals aren’t just one-off aberrations. ICE drastically increased arrests for undocumented individuals over the past year, many of whom posed no threat to their communities.
Pew Research Center tracked the cities that witnessed the most arrests in 2017:
For the past year, AlterNet has reported on ICE’s notable cruelty since Trump’s inauguration. Now the numbers are in, and they confirm that the stories of ICE targeting non-criminal individuals aren’t just one-off aberrations. ICE drastically increased arrests for undocumented individuals over the past year, many of whom posed no threat to their communities.
Pew Research Center tracked the cities that witnessed the most arrests in 2017:
Credit: Pew Research Center
Dallas, Houston and Atlanta experienced the most raids between January and December 2017. Pew writes: “ICE arrests were highest in the agency’s Dallas area (16,520), which also saw the largest increase in absolute numbers between 2016 and 2017 (up 6,886).”
Dallas’ undocumented population is not estimated to be nearly as large as New York’s, but right-leaning local politicians have made it easy for ICE to execute raids in the north Texas area, according to the Dallas Observer. ICE told the paper that its agents “enjoy nearly 100 percent cooperation.”
The situation is similar in Houston and Atlanta. CityLab writes that, “Despite former [Atlanta] Mayor Kasim Reed’s defense of sanctuary cities, Georgia state law requires cooperation with ICE—and some of the counties around Atlanta have been quite eager to help.”
New York City saw an enormous increase in arrests of undocumented immigrants, up 39% from 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other New York leaders have aggressively opposed Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and his shift away from Obama-era policies that mainly targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal records. New York and Los Angeles have the highest populations of immigrants without documentation in the country.
Other so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE requests saw significantly fewer arrests than obliging cities like Dallas. That’s why Baltimore, Buffalo and El Paso appear low on the Pew list. The sanctuary policies appear to be working in such cities.
On the other hand, in metro areas like Miami, which saw the greatest increase in ICE arrests in 2017 (up 76 percent from 2016), ICE ramped up the number of arrests after the city abandoned sanctuary policies when the Trump administration threated to cut federal funding.
Across the country, ICE has devoted immense time, energy and resources to hunting non-criminal individuals. In New Jersey, particularly in the Newark area, the number of non-criminal arrests more than doubled in 2017. In the Dallas region, Pew reports, non-criminal arrests rose 156 percent.
In 2017, 410 cities issued protective orders to combat ICE arrests in their areas—almost twice the number of localities that were eager to help the raids. As the standoff between sanctuary communities and the federal government continues, it looks like progressive local leadership will be the only barrier standing in the way of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
Dallas’ undocumented population is not estimated to be nearly as large as New York’s, but right-leaning local politicians have made it easy for ICE to execute raids in the north Texas area, according to the Dallas Observer. ICE told the paper that its agents “enjoy nearly 100 percent cooperation.”
The situation is similar in Houston and Atlanta. CityLab writes that, “Despite former [Atlanta] Mayor Kasim Reed’s defense of sanctuary cities, Georgia state law requires cooperation with ICE—and some of the counties around Atlanta have been quite eager to help.”
New York City saw an enormous increase in arrests of undocumented immigrants, up 39% from 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other New York leaders have aggressively opposed Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and his shift away from Obama-era policies that mainly targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal records. New York and Los Angeles have the highest populations of immigrants without documentation in the country.
Other so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE requests saw significantly fewer arrests than obliging cities like Dallas. That’s why Baltimore, Buffalo and El Paso appear low on the Pew list. The sanctuary policies appear to be working in such cities.
On the other hand, in metro areas like Miami, which saw the greatest increase in ICE arrests in 2017 (up 76 percent from 2016), ICE ramped up the number of arrests after the city abandoned sanctuary policies when the Trump administration threated to cut federal funding.
Across the country, ICE has devoted immense time, energy and resources to hunting non-criminal individuals. In New Jersey, particularly in the Newark area, the number of non-criminal arrests more than doubled in 2017. In the Dallas region, Pew reports, non-criminal arrests rose 156 percent.
In 2017, 410 cities issued protective orders to combat ICE arrests in their areas—almost twice the number of localities that were eager to help the raids. As the standoff between sanctuary communities and the federal government continues, it looks like progressive local leadership will be the only barrier standing in the way of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
gestapo usa funnies
Reasonable Force
The everyday assault on Blue Lives.
By Khalil Bendib ~ Other Words.com
