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dec 3, 2019
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.
Why Cops Kill Black People: Research Suggests a Troubling Pattern of 'Retaliatory Violence'
Chauncey DeVega / Salon
The story of race in America is a story of change, and a story of things remaining the same. To measure our progress, or lack thereof, all we need to do is to look at how America's police treat the public, and look in turn at who fills the prison cells -- and all too often the cemeteries.
in the headlines
*HOW A ‘CABAL’ OF FBI AGENTS HELPED TRUMP WAGE HIS CONSPIRACY WAR ON CLINTON
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump Thinks He Can Get Away With Murder Because Police Do All the Time
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*I can ‘do anything I want, I’m a police officer’: Indiana cop fired after racially profiling black men in mall parking lot(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Alabama Police Reportedly Refusing to Release Video of Deadly Confrontation with Black Man Sitting In Van with Wife and Child(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘This was an execution’: Outrage as video shows California police officer shooting unarmed teen in back of head(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Maryland man paralyzed from the waist down after traffic stop ends with him being slammed to the ground(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, ACLU Settle on ‘Unbiased Policing Policy’ to Prevent Discriminatory Traffic Stops, Searches of Black Drivers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Minneapolis police union pushes ‘Cops for Trump’ T-shirts after department bars uniforms at political events(ARTICLE BELOW)
*North Carolina Detective Was Fired Over Claims That He Hit on Sexual-Assault Victims
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Out of control police department': Vallejo faces new claims of racial profiling and brutality(ARTICLE BELOW)
*HOW CHICAGO POLICE CREATED A FALSE NARRATIVE AFTER OFFICERS KILLED HARITH AUGUSTUS
*Cops slammed black man and arrested him over tinted windows on his ‘fancy car’: lawsuit(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FBI monitoring immigration activists as violent "extremists" — though there's been no violence(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GESTAPO USA FUNNIES(below)
How a ‘cabal’ of FBI agents helped Trump wage his conspiracy war on Clinton
December 2, 2019
By Tom Boggioni- raw story
According to a report from the Daily Beast, a “cabal” of FBI agents and former agents — led by a famous FBI investigator — waged an investigatory war on Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton that ultimately gave Donald Trump a helping hand in defeating the former Secretary of State in the 2016 presidential election.
In a deep dive into the history of former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom — who rose to fame as the lead investigator looking into the explosion and crash of TWA flight 800 on July 17, 1996 — the Beast’s Patricia Ravalgi reveals that Kallstrom went from conspiracy-debunker to conspiracy-monger when it came to the Clintons.
According to Ravalgi, Kallstrom has a long relationship with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, going back to the former New York City mayor’s U.S. Attorney days.
“By the late 1980s, Kallstrom was a well-known surveillance expert who designed the complex bugging operations during the famous New York Pizza Connection investigation and the John Gotti investigation. These were cases worked on by both Giuliani and Louis Freeh, both at the Southern District of New York at the time. Kallstrom was their leading wiretap guy, and the three of them bonded,” the reports states. “By the mid-1990s the distrust and dislike of Bill and Hillary Clinton that flowed from the FBI leadership down to the rank-and-file was well established. It had been in existence from the minute Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination to run against the incumbent, President George H.W. Bush. Rumors had begun circulating among federal agents that Hillary was rude and nasty to her Secret Service detail, and that she and her husband hated cops. There were women coming forward accusing Bill Clinton of harassment and rape. Hillary was accused of corruption at her old law firm in Arkansas.”
With Hillary Clinton plotting a presidential run, “Giuliani and Kallstrom were well-positioned to exploit” agency resentment against the Clintons , with the report stating: “Each man had tentacles still deep inside the Bureau, and as they looked for ways to stop Hillary a sort of cabal developed that included current as well as former FBI agents.”
According to the report, those FBI agents felt they had discovered the “kryptonite” that would bring Clinton down — her private email server.
“Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment and the question of what happened to some of the emails from the private server led to interminable Republican allegations and investigations in Congress trying to establish some criminal intent. ‘The emails!’ became a common refrain at Trump campaign rallies, often culminating in the chant, ‘Lock her up!'” Ravalgi writes.
Coupled with former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to announce an investigation into some newly discovered emails right before the election — and the New York Times front-page coverage of what would turn out to be a big nothing — the FBI handed Trump another assist.
As for Kallstrom, the report notes that he has long left the FBI and now shows up on Fox News where he provides fodder for the network’s Clinton obsession.
“Kallstrom used to be, like the fictional detective Joe Friday on the old TV series Dragnet, looking for ‘just the facts.’ But the hero of the TWA 800 investigation now spends his days spinning conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, appearing on Fox News programs calling her ‘corrupt and crazy’ and also referring to the former deputy director of his own FBI, Andy McCabe, as ‘corrupt.’ He has even called former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan ‘communists.’ Kallstrom repeatedly disparaged former FBI Director Robert Mueller,” Ravalgi explains. “Kallstrom also took to the airwaves to defend Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, bemoaning how badly treated they were by Mueller and the FBI, but that was before they were convicted of felonies.”
“Apparently Kallstrom has a high regard for his former law enforcement and intelligence community colleagues, but only those who are die-hard Trump supporters and Hillary-haters. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem to matter to him what you’ve done at the FBI or for your country, if you have anything bad to say about Trump—you’re scum,” she added.
More at: Once-Heroic Agents Help Trump Divide and Conquer the FBI
THE DEEPER STATE
In a deep dive into the history of former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom — who rose to fame as the lead investigator looking into the explosion and crash of TWA flight 800 on July 17, 1996 — the Beast’s Patricia Ravalgi reveals that Kallstrom went from conspiracy-debunker to conspiracy-monger when it came to the Clintons.
According to Ravalgi, Kallstrom has a long relationship with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, going back to the former New York City mayor’s U.S. Attorney days.
“By the late 1980s, Kallstrom was a well-known surveillance expert who designed the complex bugging operations during the famous New York Pizza Connection investigation and the John Gotti investigation. These were cases worked on by both Giuliani and Louis Freeh, both at the Southern District of New York at the time. Kallstrom was their leading wiretap guy, and the three of them bonded,” the reports states. “By the mid-1990s the distrust and dislike of Bill and Hillary Clinton that flowed from the FBI leadership down to the rank-and-file was well established. It had been in existence from the minute Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination to run against the incumbent, President George H.W. Bush. Rumors had begun circulating among federal agents that Hillary was rude and nasty to her Secret Service detail, and that she and her husband hated cops. There were women coming forward accusing Bill Clinton of harassment and rape. Hillary was accused of corruption at her old law firm in Arkansas.”
With Hillary Clinton plotting a presidential run, “Giuliani and Kallstrom were well-positioned to exploit” agency resentment against the Clintons , with the report stating: “Each man had tentacles still deep inside the Bureau, and as they looked for ways to stop Hillary a sort of cabal developed that included current as well as former FBI agents.”
According to the report, those FBI agents felt they had discovered the “kryptonite” that would bring Clinton down — her private email server.
“Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment and the question of what happened to some of the emails from the private server led to interminable Republican allegations and investigations in Congress trying to establish some criminal intent. ‘The emails!’ became a common refrain at Trump campaign rallies, often culminating in the chant, ‘Lock her up!'” Ravalgi writes.
Coupled with former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to announce an investigation into some newly discovered emails right before the election — and the New York Times front-page coverage of what would turn out to be a big nothing — the FBI handed Trump another assist.
As for Kallstrom, the report notes that he has long left the FBI and now shows up on Fox News where he provides fodder for the network’s Clinton obsession.
“Kallstrom used to be, like the fictional detective Joe Friday on the old TV series Dragnet, looking for ‘just the facts.’ But the hero of the TWA 800 investigation now spends his days spinning conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, appearing on Fox News programs calling her ‘corrupt and crazy’ and also referring to the former deputy director of his own FBI, Andy McCabe, as ‘corrupt.’ He has even called former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan ‘communists.’ Kallstrom repeatedly disparaged former FBI Director Robert Mueller,” Ravalgi explains. “Kallstrom also took to the airwaves to defend Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, bemoaning how badly treated they were by Mueller and the FBI, but that was before they were convicted of felonies.”
“Apparently Kallstrom has a high regard for his former law enforcement and intelligence community colleagues, but only those who are die-hard Trump supporters and Hillary-haters. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem to matter to him what you’ve done at the FBI or for your country, if you have anything bad to say about Trump—you’re scum,” she added.
More at: Once-Heroic Agents Help Trump Divide and Conquer the FBI
THE DEEPER STATE
Trump Thinks He Can Get Away With Murder Because Police Do All the Time
BY Danny Katch, Truthout
PUBLISHED November 26, 2019
When Donald Trump declared that he wanted not only Ukraine but also China to investigate Joe Biden on October 4, all hell broke loose. A political class jaded by daily White House provocations was roused by this brazenly authoritarian call for international assistance in bringing down the president’s top-polling opponent, and the impeachment drive suddenly kicked into high gear.
That same night, Joshua Brown, an African American man who had recently helped win a rare murder conviction against a police officer, was murdered in the parking lot of his Dallas apartment building. Dallas police officials claimed that Brown’s death was unrelated to his witness testimony against their officer Amber Guyger, and that what actually happened was that Brown was selling marijuana in his parking lot — days after his name and face had been all over the news — and was killed by three other Black men in a drug deal gone wrong.
For many observers, the official police account rang about as true as Trump’s claims about the size of his inauguration crowd. But even if Brown’s death really had nothing to do with his testimony against Guyger, the understandable and widespread perception that it did will likely dissuade others from testifying against police. Like presidential threats to the integrity of the next election, Joshua Brown’s murder, therefore, should be considered a crisis of democracy and the rule of law — different in kind but not severity. In fact, in mainstream conversations, it’s barely been considered at all, drowned out by impeachment news.
The point here is not that we should focus on Joshua Brown instead of Donald Trump but to see how deeply they are connected. Many of us find ourselves continually and involuntarily shocked that Trump has been able to stay in office despite his many well-documented crimes and irrationalities. But why are we shocked? Since the advent of the camera phone we’ve been witness to dozens of police officers with far less power than the president getting away with all manner of criminal and immeasurably harmful behavior.
Of the roughly 1,000 documented police killings that take place every year in the U.S., fewer than 1 percent result even in an arrest — and convictions are even more rare. Even those few exceptions prove the larger rule. Guyger’s conviction — for the absurd and indefensible killing of an unarmed neighbor in his own apartment — surprised many people, because an ordinary cop can usually do the very thing it was so jarring to hear a presidential candidate boast about: Shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it (provided it’s 5th Avenue in Harlem and not the Upper East Side).
Trump has no doubt brought something new and dangerous to the modern American presidency, and it’s useful to look at comparable corrupt strongmen around the world like India’s Narendra Modi and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as we try to comprehend his role. But while Trumpism is part of an international trend, its roots are squarely domestic– and in many ways rooted in American policing.
For all the media coverage of blue-collar workers in a handful of midwestern counties, you would never know that Trump’s first and primary union backing came from the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Border Patrol Council. This is Trump’s real non-wealthy base, and while he’s failing to keep promises of bringing back good factory jobs, he’s absolutely delivering on his pledges to “unshackle” abusive police departments from federal oversight and immigration agents from just about any standards of basic morality.
Perhaps one reason why so few in the political class draw these connections is that, as privileged people not normally subject to the imperious impunity of local law enforcement, politicians and pundits experience Trump’s authoritarianism as something entirely new. But families and community members of police victims have long known the bullying and gaslighting that has now grown so familiar to all under Trumpism. When Trump says that Black people love his racist comments about Baltimore, when police claim that the man with a knife was an immediate threat to multiple officers surrounding him with guns, the point is not to convince the skeptics but to make them understand that there’s nothing they can do about it.
Victims of police misconduct are also well acquainted with the Trumpian technique of smearing the reputations of accusers. “He was no angel,” The New York Times infamously wrote about Michael Brown after he was killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. “No angel” is a phrase one can easily picture Trump saying to describe a woman accusing him of sexual assault, or a member of Congress looking to investigate his corruption. Trump’s partner in crime, Rudy Giuliani, in fact used similar words in 2000 when as New York City mayor he unsealed the entirely irrelevant juvenile records of Patrick Dorismond to show that the police murder victim “isn’t an altar boy.”
Dorismond’s murder was one of many that fueled protests against police violence in New York City under Giuliani. Michael Brown’s 2014 murder led to an uprising in Ferguson that inspired a much larger nationwide movement under the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” The minimalist slogan conveyed that the country’s entire legal system needed wholesale change just to make those three simple words a reality. Rather than take up this challenge, the Democrats in power at the time simply repeated the slogan and moved on, a ridiculous posture that looked progressive only in contrast with that of many Republicans, who actually opposed the three words.
Now Trump is president and he’s brought the “Blue Lives Matter” crowd’s sneering contempt for legal niceties into the White House. Police and ICE agents are even more empowered to commit abuses. The Ferguson community is alarmed and suspicious over the deaths of six protesters in the past three years. And now Joshua Brown has been killed just days after the verdict of the police officer he helped convict. As we worry whether Trump will stay in power and create an authoritarian nightmare, we should ask ourselves whether the dystopia is already here — and Trump is not the creator but the creation.
That same night, Joshua Brown, an African American man who had recently helped win a rare murder conviction against a police officer, was murdered in the parking lot of his Dallas apartment building. Dallas police officials claimed that Brown’s death was unrelated to his witness testimony against their officer Amber Guyger, and that what actually happened was that Brown was selling marijuana in his parking lot — days after his name and face had been all over the news — and was killed by three other Black men in a drug deal gone wrong.
For many observers, the official police account rang about as true as Trump’s claims about the size of his inauguration crowd. But even if Brown’s death really had nothing to do with his testimony against Guyger, the understandable and widespread perception that it did will likely dissuade others from testifying against police. Like presidential threats to the integrity of the next election, Joshua Brown’s murder, therefore, should be considered a crisis of democracy and the rule of law — different in kind but not severity. In fact, in mainstream conversations, it’s barely been considered at all, drowned out by impeachment news.
The point here is not that we should focus on Joshua Brown instead of Donald Trump but to see how deeply they are connected. Many of us find ourselves continually and involuntarily shocked that Trump has been able to stay in office despite his many well-documented crimes and irrationalities. But why are we shocked? Since the advent of the camera phone we’ve been witness to dozens of police officers with far less power than the president getting away with all manner of criminal and immeasurably harmful behavior.
Of the roughly 1,000 documented police killings that take place every year in the U.S., fewer than 1 percent result even in an arrest — and convictions are even more rare. Even those few exceptions prove the larger rule. Guyger’s conviction — for the absurd and indefensible killing of an unarmed neighbor in his own apartment — surprised many people, because an ordinary cop can usually do the very thing it was so jarring to hear a presidential candidate boast about: Shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it (provided it’s 5th Avenue in Harlem and not the Upper East Side).
Trump has no doubt brought something new and dangerous to the modern American presidency, and it’s useful to look at comparable corrupt strongmen around the world like India’s Narendra Modi and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as we try to comprehend his role. But while Trumpism is part of an international trend, its roots are squarely domestic– and in many ways rooted in American policing.
For all the media coverage of blue-collar workers in a handful of midwestern counties, you would never know that Trump’s first and primary union backing came from the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Border Patrol Council. This is Trump’s real non-wealthy base, and while he’s failing to keep promises of bringing back good factory jobs, he’s absolutely delivering on his pledges to “unshackle” abusive police departments from federal oversight and immigration agents from just about any standards of basic morality.
Perhaps one reason why so few in the political class draw these connections is that, as privileged people not normally subject to the imperious impunity of local law enforcement, politicians and pundits experience Trump’s authoritarianism as something entirely new. But families and community members of police victims have long known the bullying and gaslighting that has now grown so familiar to all under Trumpism. When Trump says that Black people love his racist comments about Baltimore, when police claim that the man with a knife was an immediate threat to multiple officers surrounding him with guns, the point is not to convince the skeptics but to make them understand that there’s nothing they can do about it.
Victims of police misconduct are also well acquainted with the Trumpian technique of smearing the reputations of accusers. “He was no angel,” The New York Times infamously wrote about Michael Brown after he was killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. “No angel” is a phrase one can easily picture Trump saying to describe a woman accusing him of sexual assault, or a member of Congress looking to investigate his corruption. Trump’s partner in crime, Rudy Giuliani, in fact used similar words in 2000 when as New York City mayor he unsealed the entirely irrelevant juvenile records of Patrick Dorismond to show that the police murder victim “isn’t an altar boy.”
Dorismond’s murder was one of many that fueled protests against police violence in New York City under Giuliani. Michael Brown’s 2014 murder led to an uprising in Ferguson that inspired a much larger nationwide movement under the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” The minimalist slogan conveyed that the country’s entire legal system needed wholesale change just to make those three simple words a reality. Rather than take up this challenge, the Democrats in power at the time simply repeated the slogan and moved on, a ridiculous posture that looked progressive only in contrast with that of many Republicans, who actually opposed the three words.
Now Trump is president and he’s brought the “Blue Lives Matter” crowd’s sneering contempt for legal niceties into the White House. Police and ICE agents are even more empowered to commit abuses. The Ferguson community is alarmed and suspicious over the deaths of six protesters in the past three years. And now Joshua Brown has been killed just days after the verdict of the police officer he helped convict. As we worry whether Trump will stay in power and create an authoritarian nightmare, we should ask ourselves whether the dystopia is already here — and Trump is not the creator but the creation.
I can ‘do anything I want, I’m a police officer’: Indiana cop fired after racially profiling black men in mall parking lot
November 17, 2019
By Tom Boggioni - raw story
A white police officer working for Lawrence Township in Indiana has been fired after he was filmed accosting two black men sitting in their car outside of a Nordstrom Rack and accusing them of being “suspicious.”
According to WTHR, Lawrence Township Deputy Constable Daryl Jones approached cousins Aaron Blackwell and Durell Cunningham on the north side of Indianapolis but was filmed on a cellphone that eventually led to him losing his job.
The cousins stated that Jones racially profiled them and tried to run their car plates.
After the officer demanded they show identification and threatened to jail them (“Get your driver’s license out now or I will lock you up”), they protested as he told them, “Because you’re suspicious.”
As the two continued to maintain that had done nothing wrong, the officer loudly blurted, “I’ve got my rights to do anything that I want to do, I’m a police officer.”
The Daily Mail reports that Jones was dismissed from his job with Lawrence Township Chief Constable Terry Burns stating, “He was terminated last night when the video was brought to my attention. I did see the video and made the decision immediately and that pretty speaks of my reaction.”
According to WTHR, Lawrence Township Deputy Constable Daryl Jones approached cousins Aaron Blackwell and Durell Cunningham on the north side of Indianapolis but was filmed on a cellphone that eventually led to him losing his job.
The cousins stated that Jones racially profiled them and tried to run their car plates.
After the officer demanded they show identification and threatened to jail them (“Get your driver’s license out now or I will lock you up”), they protested as he told them, “Because you’re suspicious.”
As the two continued to maintain that had done nothing wrong, the officer loudly blurted, “I’ve got my rights to do anything that I want to do, I’m a police officer.”
The Daily Mail reports that Jones was dismissed from his job with Lawrence Township Chief Constable Terry Burns stating, “He was terminated last night when the video was brought to my attention. I did see the video and made the decision immediately and that pretty speaks of my reaction.”
Alabama Police Reportedly Refusing to Release Video of Deadly Confrontation with Black Man Sitting In Van with Wife and Child
By Lauren Floyd - atlanta black star
October 30, 2019
A Black woman advocating for justice in her husband’s death is accusing Alabama law enforcement officials of fabricating important aspects of the deadly encounter Sunday.
Cherelle Fletcher said in a Facebook post Monday she was in her family’s van when she watched Madison police kill her husband Dana Sherrod Fletcher in front of their 8-year-old daughter.
“AT NO POINT WAS HE ARMED. HE WAS UNARMED DURING THE ENTIRE TIME,” the woman said in the post. “HE WAS UNARMED!”
Law enforcement officers said Monday that Fletcher, 39, pointed a gun at Madison police officers and that video footage shows Fletcher fighting officers and holding the gun in his hand, according to The Birmingham News.
The Madison County sheriff’s office, however, which is investigating the incident, refused to release video footage of the encounter, the newspaper reported.
Authorities alleged officers were investigating a suspicious person call at about 4:30 p.m. when they encountered Fletcher at Planet Fitness, the authorities said.
The person who made the call reportedly said Fletcher and a woman were inside the business videoing people and asking personal questions, The Birmingham News reported.
Cherelle Fletcher said in her post she had just left the gym after exercising when an officer came to the passenger’s side of her van.
She was in the driver’s seat and her husband, on the passenger side, was about to close his door, Cherelle said.
“The officer refused to come on my side of the vehicle to talk and tried to stop my husband from closing his door,” she said. “When my husband tried to close his door repeatedly, the officer continued to tell him not to try to close it, grabbed the door, and grabbed my husband.
“Another officer sicked a dog on Dana while sitting in the passenger seat.”
Cherelle said at the same time, another officer came to her door “pointed a gun at me and broke my driver window with a police stick then pulled me out of the van while i was trying to get my daughter.”
“At no point did my Dana have a weapon on him,” Cherelle said.
Although Planet Smoothie owner Mike Bick reportedly told authorities he saw Dana Fletcher running in the incident, Cherelle said that’s not possible.
“Dana’s body lay right next to the van when he was shot, right by the passenger door,” she said. “Had he ran, he would not have been still right next to the vehicle when he was shot.
“I saw the officers shoot him and I saw his body on the ground covered in blood right next to the passenger door he was trying to close.”
Bick gave a different account to local TV station WZDX.
“Police officers showed up, knocked on the window,” Bick, told the station. “He would not open the door. We could hear them tapping on it two, three times. Finally they broke the window. We heard them yell to him to ‘stop, stop’ and after the third time we heard the gunfire.”
Bick also told WZDX that he believes the family had been living out of their van.
Cherelle, however contended that her family was only at Planet Fitness so she could work out.
“We had every right to be there just like any other paying member of the facility,” she said.
She said her daughter was injured in the incident and “went face first into the pavement and busted her lip and hurt her right leg.”
“Thankfully she’s still alive,” the mother said. “Why the police were there in the first place is still unclear to me.”
Cherelle Fletcher said in a Facebook post Monday she was in her family’s van when she watched Madison police kill her husband Dana Sherrod Fletcher in front of their 8-year-old daughter.
“AT NO POINT WAS HE ARMED. HE WAS UNARMED DURING THE ENTIRE TIME,” the woman said in the post. “HE WAS UNARMED!”
Law enforcement officers said Monday that Fletcher, 39, pointed a gun at Madison police officers and that video footage shows Fletcher fighting officers and holding the gun in his hand, according to The Birmingham News.
The Madison County sheriff’s office, however, which is investigating the incident, refused to release video footage of the encounter, the newspaper reported.
Authorities alleged officers were investigating a suspicious person call at about 4:30 p.m. when they encountered Fletcher at Planet Fitness, the authorities said.
The person who made the call reportedly said Fletcher and a woman were inside the business videoing people and asking personal questions, The Birmingham News reported.
Cherelle Fletcher said in her post she had just left the gym after exercising when an officer came to the passenger’s side of her van.
She was in the driver’s seat and her husband, on the passenger side, was about to close his door, Cherelle said.
“The officer refused to come on my side of the vehicle to talk and tried to stop my husband from closing his door,” she said. “When my husband tried to close his door repeatedly, the officer continued to tell him not to try to close it, grabbed the door, and grabbed my husband.
“Another officer sicked a dog on Dana while sitting in the passenger seat.”
Cherelle said at the same time, another officer came to her door “pointed a gun at me and broke my driver window with a police stick then pulled me out of the van while i was trying to get my daughter.”
“At no point did my Dana have a weapon on him,” Cherelle said.
Although Planet Smoothie owner Mike Bick reportedly told authorities he saw Dana Fletcher running in the incident, Cherelle said that’s not possible.
“Dana’s body lay right next to the van when he was shot, right by the passenger door,” she said. “Had he ran, he would not have been still right next to the vehicle when he was shot.
“I saw the officers shoot him and I saw his body on the ground covered in blood right next to the passenger door he was trying to close.”
Bick gave a different account to local TV station WZDX.
“Police officers showed up, knocked on the window,” Bick, told the station. “He would not open the door. We could hear them tapping on it two, three times. Finally they broke the window. We heard them yell to him to ‘stop, stop’ and after the third time we heard the gunfire.”
Bick also told WZDX that he believes the family had been living out of their van.
Cherelle, however contended that her family was only at Planet Fitness so she could work out.
“We had every right to be there just like any other paying member of the facility,” she said.
She said her daughter was injured in the incident and “went face first into the pavement and busted her lip and hurt her right leg.”
“Thankfully she’s still alive,” the mother said. “Why the police were there in the first place is still unclear to me.”
‘This was an execution’: Outrage as video shows California police officer shooting unarmed teen in back of head
October 25, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
Shining new light on a 2017 police shooting that an internal investigation deemed “justified” and “within department policy,” horrific video released this week showed that a Fresno, California officer shot unarmed 16-year-old Isiah Murrietta-Golding in the back of the head as he attempted to flee.
The video was released by attorney Stuart Chandler, who is representing the teenager’s father in a lawsuit against the Fresno Police Department.
“The city was so adamant that the officer ‘feared for his life,'” Chandler told The Guardian on Thursday. “Why were they hiding the video? If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the video speaks a million words.”
Chandler also condemned the decision by one of the officers to handcuff Murrietta-Golding after his partner, Sgt. Ray Villalvazo, shot the unarmed teenager, who died in a hospital three days later.
“He’s unconscious and in the process of dying. What is the threat?” said Chandler. “They just saw him as an animal who had been shot. They hunted a target. It’s inhumane.”
(VIDEO)
The video was released by attorney Stuart Chandler, who is representing the teenager’s father in a lawsuit against the Fresno Police Department.
“The city was so adamant that the officer ‘feared for his life,'” Chandler told The Guardian on Thursday. “Why were they hiding the video? If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the video speaks a million words.”
Chandler also condemned the decision by one of the officers to handcuff Murrietta-Golding after his partner, Sgt. Ray Villalvazo, shot the unarmed teenager, who died in a hospital three days later.
“He’s unconscious and in the process of dying. What is the threat?” said Chandler. “They just saw him as an animal who had been shot. They hunted a target. It’s inhumane.”
(VIDEO)
Maryland man paralyzed from the waist down after traffic stop ends with him being slammed to the ground
October 21, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
A Prince George’s County man is now paralyzed from the waist down after an altercation with police, Fox5DC reported this weekend.
According to the police, when they pulled over 24-year-old Demonte Ward-Blake for an “expired tag” Ward-Blake was argumentative and police said they smelled marijuana in the car. Medical marijuana is legal in Maryland and possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana was decriminalized in Maryland in 2014. Ward-Blake was found to have 3 grams of pot on him. Police still use the “smell of marijuana” as a justification for an illegal search, despite 33 states legalizing pot in some way in the U.S., and it’s become known as “sniff and search.”
Police told Ward-Blake to put his hands on the steering wheel after they discovered he was driving on a “suspended license,” and he argued with the officers. The officer, along with others who arrived on the scene, pulled Ward-Blake from the car while he struggled against them.
“Police say Ward-Blake was handcuffed and being searched when he allegedly hit one of the officers with his elbow while trying to get away,” the report claimed. While handcuffed, he tried to get away from the police.
Police then slammed him against the concrete road and curb, giving him a severe neck injury and paralyzing him. He was then taken to a Baltimore hospital for traumatic injuries.
While the police had a dashcam that was filming the incident, when they took Ward-Blake out of the car, they pulled him far enough away that he was just out of view on the dashcam video. The officers did not have body cameras. None of the physical altercations was captured on video as a result.
A video captured by Ward-Blake’s girlfriend shows the man after he was injured, unable to move, his legs and body immobilized and his head hanging. Police are seen opening his jacket, moving his body around and checking his pockets.
“Renee Ward said her son, Ward-Blake, had picked up his girlfriend’s 6-year-old daughter at school and was bringing her home when he was stopped by police on Wheeler Road,” NBC Washington reported. The family has started a GoFundMe for his medical expenses.
While Ward-Blake is still recovering from an all-day surgery, police issued a warrant for his arrest with a litany of charges.
The police reported that only one of the officers involved is on administrative leave pending an investigation.
“The ‘plain smell’ of marijuana alone no longer provides authorities with probable cause to conduct a search of a subject vehicle,” Pennsylvania Judge Maria Dantos ruled in one case, because it’s “no longer indicative of an illegal or criminal act,” the Associated Press cited last month. The judge went on to say that once a passenger presents their medical marijuana card, it was “illogical, impractical and unreasonable” for troopers to conclude a crime had been committed.
According to the police, when they pulled over 24-year-old Demonte Ward-Blake for an “expired tag” Ward-Blake was argumentative and police said they smelled marijuana in the car. Medical marijuana is legal in Maryland and possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana was decriminalized in Maryland in 2014. Ward-Blake was found to have 3 grams of pot on him. Police still use the “smell of marijuana” as a justification for an illegal search, despite 33 states legalizing pot in some way in the U.S., and it’s become known as “sniff and search.”
Police told Ward-Blake to put his hands on the steering wheel after they discovered he was driving on a “suspended license,” and he argued with the officers. The officer, along with others who arrived on the scene, pulled Ward-Blake from the car while he struggled against them.
“Police say Ward-Blake was handcuffed and being searched when he allegedly hit one of the officers with his elbow while trying to get away,” the report claimed. While handcuffed, he tried to get away from the police.
Police then slammed him against the concrete road and curb, giving him a severe neck injury and paralyzing him. He was then taken to a Baltimore hospital for traumatic injuries.
While the police had a dashcam that was filming the incident, when they took Ward-Blake out of the car, they pulled him far enough away that he was just out of view on the dashcam video. The officers did not have body cameras. None of the physical altercations was captured on video as a result.
A video captured by Ward-Blake’s girlfriend shows the man after he was injured, unable to move, his legs and body immobilized and his head hanging. Police are seen opening his jacket, moving his body around and checking his pockets.
“Renee Ward said her son, Ward-Blake, had picked up his girlfriend’s 6-year-old daughter at school and was bringing her home when he was stopped by police on Wheeler Road,” NBC Washington reported. The family has started a GoFundMe for his medical expenses.
While Ward-Blake is still recovering from an all-day surgery, police issued a warrant for his arrest with a litany of charges.
The police reported that only one of the officers involved is on administrative leave pending an investigation.
“The ‘plain smell’ of marijuana alone no longer provides authorities with probable cause to conduct a search of a subject vehicle,” Pennsylvania Judge Maria Dantos ruled in one case, because it’s “no longer indicative of an illegal or criminal act,” the Associated Press cited last month. The judge went on to say that once a passenger presents their medical marijuana card, it was “illogical, impractical and unreasonable” for troopers to conclude a crime had been committed.
Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, ACLU Settle on ‘Unbiased Policing Policy’ to Prevent Discriminatory Traffic Stops, Searches of Black Drivers
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
October 15, 2019
A central Mississippi sheriff’s office and the state American Civil Liberties Union branch are taking steps to address profiling and discriminatory stops by local police.
Under a proposed agreement in a racial bias lawsuit, the Madison County Sheriff’s Department would adopt a so-called “unbiased policing policy” and establish new rules for traffic checkpoints and police encounters with pedestrians, according to The Associated Press. Attorneys for the sheriff’s office, as well as the African-American plaintiffs, had the decree approved by a judge late September.
“The Court’s order today affirms the simple but fundamental proposition, that in America police must treat everyone the same regardless of race,” Joshua Tom, executive director of the ACLU Mississippi, said in a statement obtained by Atlanta Black Star. “The ACLU of Mississippi looks forward to playing its role in ensuring that MCSD agrees to the terms of the agreement.”
In 2017, the civil rights organization filed a lawsuit accusing officers in the predominately Black Jackson suburb of unconstitutionally targeting Black motorists and pedestrians and subjecting them to searches and seizures at disproportionate rates.
At the time of their complaint, the organization said Black people were nearly five times as likely as whites to be arrested in Madison County. The ACLU also noted that African-Americans account for just 38 percent of the county’s residents, but the sheriff’s department data showed Black residents made up more than 70 percent of citations and arrests between 2012 and 2017.
As part of the proposed agreement, the county sheriff’s department would require its officers to complete implicit bias training, as well as training on cultural diversity and citizen interactions. It would also require the office to track and document the race of those who are arrested.
The plan, which absolves the department of any “illegal” conduct, further states that citizens who come into contact with deputies must be treated in a “fair, impartial, equitable, and objective manner,” no matter their “race, ethnic background, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion,” and so on, AP reported.
Moreover, the agreement calls for the creation of a community advisory board that would serve as an intermediary body for complaints lodged against the sheriff’s department.
Lastly, traffic checkpoints could no longer be conducted within a quarter mile of certain housing complexes where the ACLU’s complaint claimed residents and visitors were disproportionately stopped and searched by police. In its lawsuit, the organization wrote that the plaintiffs had been “unconstitutionally stopped, searched, or arrested … sometimes violently, while they were merely walking to work, driving in their neighborhood, celebrating with family or just spending time in their own homes.”
Their new proposal asserts that police should “conduct checkpoints only for constitutionally acceptable purposes.”
“The settlement contains provisions that will help ensure effective policing coupled with compliance with the protections of the U.S. Constitution,” said attorney Jonathan Youngwood, who represented the plaintiffs along with the ACLU. “This positive resolution illustrates the power of effective federal litigation before an independent judiciary.”
Under a proposed agreement in a racial bias lawsuit, the Madison County Sheriff’s Department would adopt a so-called “unbiased policing policy” and establish new rules for traffic checkpoints and police encounters with pedestrians, according to The Associated Press. Attorneys for the sheriff’s office, as well as the African-American plaintiffs, had the decree approved by a judge late September.
“The Court’s order today affirms the simple but fundamental proposition, that in America police must treat everyone the same regardless of race,” Joshua Tom, executive director of the ACLU Mississippi, said in a statement obtained by Atlanta Black Star. “The ACLU of Mississippi looks forward to playing its role in ensuring that MCSD agrees to the terms of the agreement.”
In 2017, the civil rights organization filed a lawsuit accusing officers in the predominately Black Jackson suburb of unconstitutionally targeting Black motorists and pedestrians and subjecting them to searches and seizures at disproportionate rates.
At the time of their complaint, the organization said Black people were nearly five times as likely as whites to be arrested in Madison County. The ACLU also noted that African-Americans account for just 38 percent of the county’s residents, but the sheriff’s department data showed Black residents made up more than 70 percent of citations and arrests between 2012 and 2017.
As part of the proposed agreement, the county sheriff’s department would require its officers to complete implicit bias training, as well as training on cultural diversity and citizen interactions. It would also require the office to track and document the race of those who are arrested.
The plan, which absolves the department of any “illegal” conduct, further states that citizens who come into contact with deputies must be treated in a “fair, impartial, equitable, and objective manner,” no matter their “race, ethnic background, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion,” and so on, AP reported.
Moreover, the agreement calls for the creation of a community advisory board that would serve as an intermediary body for complaints lodged against the sheriff’s department.
Lastly, traffic checkpoints could no longer be conducted within a quarter mile of certain housing complexes where the ACLU’s complaint claimed residents and visitors were disproportionately stopped and searched by police. In its lawsuit, the organization wrote that the plaintiffs had been “unconstitutionally stopped, searched, or arrested … sometimes violently, while they were merely walking to work, driving in their neighborhood, celebrating with family or just spending time in their own homes.”
Their new proposal asserts that police should “conduct checkpoints only for constitutionally acceptable purposes.”
“The settlement contains provisions that will help ensure effective policing coupled with compliance with the protections of the U.S. Constitution,” said attorney Jonathan Youngwood, who represented the plaintiffs along with the ACLU. “This positive resolution illustrates the power of effective federal litigation before an independent judiciary.”
Minneapolis police union pushes ‘Cops for Trump’ T-shirts after department bars uniforms at political events
October 7, 2019
By Sky Palma - raw story
Just a day after the Minneapolis Police Department banned officers from wearing their uniforms while participating in political events, the Minneapolis police union is getting flak for coming out with a “Cops for Trump” T-shirt, the Star Tribune reports.
According to a post on union head Lt. Bob Kroll’s Facebook page, the shirts are going on sale today for $20 each, and are seemingly a response to the department’s new uniform policy.
“My members are outraged,” Kroll told Fox News on September 29. “A lot of them want to be there; they want to be in the backdrop, have an opportunity to meet him. He’s shown that he’s a very pro-law enforcement president.”
But according to Mayor Jacob Frey, the policy change has been in the works for a long time.
“Politics and the work of the Minneapolis Police Department are separate,” Frey told CBS Minnesota . “They are individuals within our department, certainly have a First Amendment right to support whichever party or whatever individual they choose.”
Nevertheless, Kroll says that he and his members will be at the Trump rally this Thursday to show their support for the President.
“We’re going to be there in full force, in T-shirts, letting people know that off-duty officers do have support for our president,” Kroll said.
According to a post on union head Lt. Bob Kroll’s Facebook page, the shirts are going on sale today for $20 each, and are seemingly a response to the department’s new uniform policy.
“My members are outraged,” Kroll told Fox News on September 29. “A lot of them want to be there; they want to be in the backdrop, have an opportunity to meet him. He’s shown that he’s a very pro-law enforcement president.”
But according to Mayor Jacob Frey, the policy change has been in the works for a long time.
“Politics and the work of the Minneapolis Police Department are separate,” Frey told CBS Minnesota . “They are individuals within our department, certainly have a First Amendment right to support whichever party or whatever individual they choose.”
Nevertheless, Kroll says that he and his members will be at the Trump rally this Thursday to show their support for the President.
“We’re going to be there in full force, in T-shirts, letting people know that off-duty officers do have support for our president,” Kroll said.
North Carolina Detective Was Fired Over Claims That He Hit on Sexual-Assault Victims
Jamie Ross - Reporter
Updated 09.27.19 6:43AM ET
daily beast cheat sheet
A North Carolina police detective was fired after being accused of sending inappropriate texts to women whose sexual-assault cases he had investigated, new documents show. Paul Matrafailo III was fired from the Fayetteville force in May, according to the newly released dismissal letter. In March, police received a complaint that accused Matrafailo of contacting a sexual-assault victim through Instagram and and said he “began a conversation with her that she felt was inappropriate.” Matrafailo was part of the team that investigated the victim’s 2016 case. In total, three women who had been sexually assaulted complained that Matrafailo had sent them inappropriate texts, with one woman saying he sent her messages about lingerie she was planning to buy. No criminal charges have been filed against Matrafailo, but an investigation is reportedly underway.
Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
Gemmel Moore died in 2017 in the home of LA activist accused of forcibly injecting men with deadly doses of drugs
Sam Levin in West Hollywood
the giardian
Wed 25 Sep 2019 22.47 EDT
Ed Buck, a Los Angeles man accused of forcibly injecting black gay men with fatal doses of drugs, targeted his victims for years without facing consequences, authorities have said.
For the mother of one victim, it was clear how he got away with his crimes: LA law enforcement ignored evidence, rejected the stories of the black gay men who tried to speak up, and turned away families fighting for justice.
“I’m a grieving mother, but they treated us like criminals,” LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I haven’t been able to recover.”
Buck, a 65-year-old political activist and Democratic donor, was arrested last week, with prosecutors saying he was a “violent sexual predator” who ran a drug den and had at least 11 victims. Authorities said he injected men with deadly doses of methamphetamine, including Moore, 26, who overdosed inside Buck’s West Hollywood apartment in July 2017.
If the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) and the LA county district attorney, Jackie Lacey, had taken Moore’s death seriously, and arrested and prosecuted him two years ago, Buck would not have been able to harm so many additional people, Nixon said.
“I didn’t ask for nothing special. I just wanted [Lacey] to do her job,” said Nixon, who lives in Texas and was in LA this week, meeting with black LGBT activists and lawyers who have investigated Buck for years and pushed for charges. “We had our proof. We gave her all of the evidence. I don’t know if she ignored it because it was black gay men, or because it was gay men, period. I got the runaround.”
Buck allegedly went after men who were struggling with homelessness and drug addiction, offering to pay them for sex and seeking to inject them. One victim told police he was known locally as “Doctor Kevorkian”.
Buck is accused of giving some men tranquilizers without their knowledge and drugging them while they were unconscious. Some said they woke up to discover they had been sexually assaulted. One victim said Buck threatened him with a power saw.
Timothy Dean, a second fatality, died of an overdose in Buck’s home in January 2019.
The arrest last week came after a third victim, a 37-year-old man identified as Joe Doe, overdosed non-fatally inside his West Hollywood home this month. In that case, Buck refused to render aid and thwarted the victim’s attempts to get help, forcing him to flee and call 911, police said.
The LA district attorney charged Buck with drug felonies related to that overdose, but the DA filed no charges in the deaths of Moore and Dean. In Moore’s case, federal prosecutors charged Buck with administering meth to a victim who died. Activists have advocated for murder charges.
“I wanted everybody to know what this man did to my child, so he couldn’t hurt anyone else’s kid or family member. I had to say something,” Nixon said, recounting her decision to speak publicly after her son’s death. “Timothy Dean’s death could’ve been prevented if they had listened to us. But they didn’t.”
‘They were not taken seriously’
Nixon said Moore was a jokester who loved to cook for others, especially chicken parmesan: “Gemmel had a lot of aspirations … He was adventurous. He was loving. He was caring. He was nurturing. He spoke his mind.”
She said her son told her about Buck in 2016, telling her “he was held in this man’s house for a few days and that he shot him up with something and he didn’t know what it was”. She urged him to report him to police, and he told her police wouldn’t help.
Jasmyne Cannick, an activist who has led the effort to get Buck arrested and conducted her own investigations into him, said that multiple victims tried to report Buck to the sheriff’s office and were “turned away”, adding: “Numerous other Joe Does were not taken seriously.”
“Because they were black gay men, the county didn’t care to listen to their stories. The county didn’t care to follow up,” said Hussain Turk, an attorney for Moore’s family.
The most recent overdose victim told reporters this week that he was homeless and trying to get his life back together. Advocates have been raising funds for him and other survivors and victims’ families and have argued that local authorities should be providing support to the victims and witnesses.
Nixon said there were numerous times officials mistreated her in the wake of her son’s death. The coroner’s office sent her a $300 bill for the cost of removing her son’s body from his home, she said: “Send it to Ed Buck. He killed my son. Why are you sending me the bill?”
She said the coroner also publicly released a report that failed to redact her home address, forcing her to move from her home: “I didn’t feel safe.” The DA’s office also turned her away when she showed up in person, she said.
A coroner’s office spokeswoman confirmed it bills for “transportation” and said the address was “public record”. A spokesman for Lacey said the DA’s office “is legally and ethically required and committed to only bring charges that have sufficient, admissible evidence” and that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue homicide charges.
Buck’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.
‘I need to see this through, then I can mourn’
Advocates gathered with Nixon at a West Hollywood auditorium on Wednesday and said the fight for justice was far from over.
Jerome Kitchen, a local activist, said people needed to stand up for the black LGBT community in LA: “There are a lot of Ed Bucks out here right in this community. They prey on us.”
He added: “White men have been given a free pass in society to do as they want … and inflict pain and hurt on minority communities. We are fighting back against that.”
Turk, the local attorney, said the problem of meth in the gay community had become a “public health epidemic” that was disproportionately affecting LGBT people of color.
Nixon said there were black gay men who thought “no one cares about them” and she wanted them to know there were people who were there for them: “You can never know the extent a mother would go for her child.”
She said she hadn’t had an opportunity to properly grieve for her son’s loss with the continuing fight to hold Buck accountable.
“I’m numb, to be honest. I just picture him here in California. I haven’t processed the fact that he’s dead. I need to see this through and then I can mourn,” Nixon said, adding: “When all the cameras go away, I have to deal with the fact that my child is not here. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. All I have left is memories. I’m dying on the inside. A piece of me died.”
For the mother of one victim, it was clear how he got away with his crimes: LA law enforcement ignored evidence, rejected the stories of the black gay men who tried to speak up, and turned away families fighting for justice.
“I’m a grieving mother, but they treated us like criminals,” LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I haven’t been able to recover.”
Buck, a 65-year-old political activist and Democratic donor, was arrested last week, with prosecutors saying he was a “violent sexual predator” who ran a drug den and had at least 11 victims. Authorities said he injected men with deadly doses of methamphetamine, including Moore, 26, who overdosed inside Buck’s West Hollywood apartment in July 2017.
If the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) and the LA county district attorney, Jackie Lacey, had taken Moore’s death seriously, and arrested and prosecuted him two years ago, Buck would not have been able to harm so many additional people, Nixon said.
“I didn’t ask for nothing special. I just wanted [Lacey] to do her job,” said Nixon, who lives in Texas and was in LA this week, meeting with black LGBT activists and lawyers who have investigated Buck for years and pushed for charges. “We had our proof. We gave her all of the evidence. I don’t know if she ignored it because it was black gay men, or because it was gay men, period. I got the runaround.”
Buck allegedly went after men who were struggling with homelessness and drug addiction, offering to pay them for sex and seeking to inject them. One victim told police he was known locally as “Doctor Kevorkian”.
Buck is accused of giving some men tranquilizers without their knowledge and drugging them while they were unconscious. Some said they woke up to discover they had been sexually assaulted. One victim said Buck threatened him with a power saw.
Timothy Dean, a second fatality, died of an overdose in Buck’s home in January 2019.
The arrest last week came after a third victim, a 37-year-old man identified as Joe Doe, overdosed non-fatally inside his West Hollywood home this month. In that case, Buck refused to render aid and thwarted the victim’s attempts to get help, forcing him to flee and call 911, police said.
The LA district attorney charged Buck with drug felonies related to that overdose, but the DA filed no charges in the deaths of Moore and Dean. In Moore’s case, federal prosecutors charged Buck with administering meth to a victim who died. Activists have advocated for murder charges.
“I wanted everybody to know what this man did to my child, so he couldn’t hurt anyone else’s kid or family member. I had to say something,” Nixon said, recounting her decision to speak publicly after her son’s death. “Timothy Dean’s death could’ve been prevented if they had listened to us. But they didn’t.”
‘They were not taken seriously’
Nixon said Moore was a jokester who loved to cook for others, especially chicken parmesan: “Gemmel had a lot of aspirations … He was adventurous. He was loving. He was caring. He was nurturing. He spoke his mind.”
She said her son told her about Buck in 2016, telling her “he was held in this man’s house for a few days and that he shot him up with something and he didn’t know what it was”. She urged him to report him to police, and he told her police wouldn’t help.
Jasmyne Cannick, an activist who has led the effort to get Buck arrested and conducted her own investigations into him, said that multiple victims tried to report Buck to the sheriff’s office and were “turned away”, adding: “Numerous other Joe Does were not taken seriously.”
“Because they were black gay men, the county didn’t care to listen to their stories. The county didn’t care to follow up,” said Hussain Turk, an attorney for Moore’s family.
The most recent overdose victim told reporters this week that he was homeless and trying to get his life back together. Advocates have been raising funds for him and other survivors and victims’ families and have argued that local authorities should be providing support to the victims and witnesses.
Nixon said there were numerous times officials mistreated her in the wake of her son’s death. The coroner’s office sent her a $300 bill for the cost of removing her son’s body from his home, she said: “Send it to Ed Buck. He killed my son. Why are you sending me the bill?”
She said the coroner also publicly released a report that failed to redact her home address, forcing her to move from her home: “I didn’t feel safe.” The DA’s office also turned her away when she showed up in person, she said.
A coroner’s office spokeswoman confirmed it bills for “transportation” and said the address was “public record”. A spokesman for Lacey said the DA’s office “is legally and ethically required and committed to only bring charges that have sufficient, admissible evidence” and that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue homicide charges.
Buck’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.
‘I need to see this through, then I can mourn’
Advocates gathered with Nixon at a West Hollywood auditorium on Wednesday and said the fight for justice was far from over.
Jerome Kitchen, a local activist, said people needed to stand up for the black LGBT community in LA: “There are a lot of Ed Bucks out here right in this community. They prey on us.”
He added: “White men have been given a free pass in society to do as they want … and inflict pain and hurt on minority communities. We are fighting back against that.”
Turk, the local attorney, said the problem of meth in the gay community had become a “public health epidemic” that was disproportionately affecting LGBT people of color.
Nixon said there were black gay men who thought “no one cares about them” and she wanted them to know there were people who were there for them: “You can never know the extent a mother would go for her child.”
She said she hadn’t had an opportunity to properly grieve for her son’s loss with the continuing fight to hold Buck accountable.
“I’m numb, to be honest. I just picture him here in California. I haven’t processed the fact that he’s dead. I need to see this through and then I can mourn,” Nixon said, adding: “When all the cameras go away, I have to deal with the fact that my child is not here. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. All I have left is memories. I’m dying on the inside. A piece of me died.”
'Out of control police department': Vallejo faces new claims of racial profiling and brutality
Behind the killing of Willie McCoy lies a pattern of discrimination and brutality exhibited by police, allege residents suing the city
Darwin BondGraham in Oakland
the guardian
Fri 20 Sep 2019 09.09 EDT
The Vallejo police department has been under intensifying scrutiny since the fatal shooting of Willie McCoy, the 20-year-old who had been sleeping in his car when police unleashed a barrage of 55 shots.
But behind the 6 March killing lies a pattern of racial discrimination and brutality routinely exhibited by police, allege a group of Vallejo residents who are suing the city. These incidents don’t make international headlines, but they amount to constitutional violations by the California city’s police force, say civil rights attorneys.
On Thursday, attorneys for the residents filed multiple new lawsuits that they hope will lead to a systematic reform program.
“Frankly we are disgusted with the city of Vallejo Police Department,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing three people who claim they were recently beaten and wrongfully arrested. “In our view, it is an out of control police department.”
Delon Thurston, a massage therapist, is one of those suing. She says she was driving home from work last October when a Vallejo police officer pulled her over for allegedly making “an abrupt left turn,” and then along with another officer “dragged” her out of her car and threatened her with a Taser. The officers then forcibly searched her body, touching her breasts and genitals, she alleges
“I honestly felt like it was a Sandra Bland moment,” Thurston said, referring to the 28-year-old black woman who died of apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop in 2015. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I had to breath all the way through it and be antagonized all the way to the station and I never got read my rights as they were pushing my face to the cement.”
Deyana Jenkins, another plaintiff, alleges that on 15 April a group of officers pulled her over at gunpoint for no apparent reason, then forced her from her vehicle and shocked her with a Taser before arresting her.
Jenkins is the niece of Willie McCoy. She said she feared that during her encounter with police, she would also be killed. “I was thinking, don’t do any sudden movements because I don’t want his to be the last moment of my life,” she said.
Adrian Burrell, meanwhile, alleges that he was standing on his porch on 22 January and filming a Vallejo police officer who had stopped his cousin Michael Walton and was holding Walton at gunpoint in the driveway. The officer, Ryan McLaughlin, then demanded Burrell stop filming and go inside. According to video taken by Burrell, when he declined to stop filming, McLaughlin handcuffed him and threw him against a wooden post where he hit his head.
“These are not new issues, these are decades old issues,” said Melissa Nold, an attorney who is also representing Jenkins, Thurston, Burrell, and several other Vallejo residents.
Nold, who grew up in Vallejo and still resides there, said it has been “an unwritten rule that the Vallejo Police Department is enforcing a policy that it’s illegal to be Black in Vallejo”.
She said the department’s culture of condoning brutality and racial profiling hasn’t changed because of a flawed internal affairs system that rarely disciplines officers.
“There’s been a long pattern of failing to discipline police officers when they engage in this 1950s-style policing where African American people, men and women, on their way home from work, are being stopped and questioned by officers on fishing expeditions.”
Nold said Jenkins, Thurston and Burrell have no criminal records and that officers were abusing their authority and breaking the law when they arrested them.
Burrell said he’s moved out of Vallejo because he fears being harassed by the police. A US Marine veteran, he is currently living in Palo Alto where he’s starting school at Stanford in a few days.
Vallejo’s city manager and mayor did not respond to questions about the new lawsuits, or the idea of having their police force placed under court oversight.
“The City of Vallejo has not received the lawsuits referenced today by a plaintiffs’ attorney,” Vallejo city attorney Claudia Quintana told the Guardian. “We cannot comment on pending litigation, but we will review any filings made and will then respond as required by court procedures. We are confident the fact-based litigation process will determine the truth in these cases.”
Earlier this year, Vallejo residents and civil rights attorneys, including Burris and Nold, asked California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Vallejo police and consider using his powers to reform the department. However it is unknown whether his office will act. “To protect its integrity, we are unable to comment on, even to confirm or deny, a potential or ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the Guardian.
Burris has succeeded before in having police agencies placed under federal court oversight, even without the help of the state attorney general or federal justice department. In 2000, he and another Oakland civil rights attorney, James Chanin, sued the Oakland police on behalf of 119 Black men who alleged the department engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations.
The city settled the case in 2003 by agreeing to have a court-appointed monitor watch over a list of institutional reforms. This reform effort is still ongoing and has cost Oakland millions, but the city’s police force went from having one of the highest rates of police shootings in the state, to one of the lowest.
Thurston said she hopes her lawsuit helps make the case for a systematic reform push so that things change in Vallejo.
“It’s gang-type of behavior that has to stop.”
But behind the 6 March killing lies a pattern of racial discrimination and brutality routinely exhibited by police, allege a group of Vallejo residents who are suing the city. These incidents don’t make international headlines, but they amount to constitutional violations by the California city’s police force, say civil rights attorneys.
On Thursday, attorneys for the residents filed multiple new lawsuits that they hope will lead to a systematic reform program.
“Frankly we are disgusted with the city of Vallejo Police Department,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing three people who claim they were recently beaten and wrongfully arrested. “In our view, it is an out of control police department.”
Delon Thurston, a massage therapist, is one of those suing. She says she was driving home from work last October when a Vallejo police officer pulled her over for allegedly making “an abrupt left turn,” and then along with another officer “dragged” her out of her car and threatened her with a Taser. The officers then forcibly searched her body, touching her breasts and genitals, she alleges
“I honestly felt like it was a Sandra Bland moment,” Thurston said, referring to the 28-year-old black woman who died of apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop in 2015. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I had to breath all the way through it and be antagonized all the way to the station and I never got read my rights as they were pushing my face to the cement.”
Deyana Jenkins, another plaintiff, alleges that on 15 April a group of officers pulled her over at gunpoint for no apparent reason, then forced her from her vehicle and shocked her with a Taser before arresting her.
Jenkins is the niece of Willie McCoy. She said she feared that during her encounter with police, she would also be killed. “I was thinking, don’t do any sudden movements because I don’t want his to be the last moment of my life,” she said.
Adrian Burrell, meanwhile, alleges that he was standing on his porch on 22 January and filming a Vallejo police officer who had stopped his cousin Michael Walton and was holding Walton at gunpoint in the driveway. The officer, Ryan McLaughlin, then demanded Burrell stop filming and go inside. According to video taken by Burrell, when he declined to stop filming, McLaughlin handcuffed him and threw him against a wooden post where he hit his head.
“These are not new issues, these are decades old issues,” said Melissa Nold, an attorney who is also representing Jenkins, Thurston, Burrell, and several other Vallejo residents.
Nold, who grew up in Vallejo and still resides there, said it has been “an unwritten rule that the Vallejo Police Department is enforcing a policy that it’s illegal to be Black in Vallejo”.
She said the department’s culture of condoning brutality and racial profiling hasn’t changed because of a flawed internal affairs system that rarely disciplines officers.
“There’s been a long pattern of failing to discipline police officers when they engage in this 1950s-style policing where African American people, men and women, on their way home from work, are being stopped and questioned by officers on fishing expeditions.”
Nold said Jenkins, Thurston and Burrell have no criminal records and that officers were abusing their authority and breaking the law when they arrested them.
Burrell said he’s moved out of Vallejo because he fears being harassed by the police. A US Marine veteran, he is currently living in Palo Alto where he’s starting school at Stanford in a few days.
Vallejo’s city manager and mayor did not respond to questions about the new lawsuits, or the idea of having their police force placed under court oversight.
“The City of Vallejo has not received the lawsuits referenced today by a plaintiffs’ attorney,” Vallejo city attorney Claudia Quintana told the Guardian. “We cannot comment on pending litigation, but we will review any filings made and will then respond as required by court procedures. We are confident the fact-based litigation process will determine the truth in these cases.”
Earlier this year, Vallejo residents and civil rights attorneys, including Burris and Nold, asked California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Vallejo police and consider using his powers to reform the department. However it is unknown whether his office will act. “To protect its integrity, we are unable to comment on, even to confirm or deny, a potential or ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the Guardian.
Burris has succeeded before in having police agencies placed under federal court oversight, even without the help of the state attorney general or federal justice department. In 2000, he and another Oakland civil rights attorney, James Chanin, sued the Oakland police on behalf of 119 Black men who alleged the department engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations.
The city settled the case in 2003 by agreeing to have a court-appointed monitor watch over a list of institutional reforms. This reform effort is still ongoing and has cost Oakland millions, but the city’s police force went from having one of the highest rates of police shootings in the state, to one of the lowest.
Thurston said she hopes her lawsuit helps make the case for a systematic reform push so that things change in Vallejo.
“It’s gang-type of behavior that has to stop.”
parked while black!!!
Cops slammed black man and arrested him over tinted windows on his ‘fancy car’: lawsuit
September 16, 2019
By Sky Palma - raw story
After Tennessee police pulled over Timothy Hamilton for having tinted windows that were too dark, he ended up in a jail cell. Now, Hamilton, who is black, is suing the Franklin Police Department for using what he claims was excessive force.
According to the Atlanta Black Star, the incident took place on September 2018 and Hamilton filed his suit in August. The incident began when Hamilton was sitting in his parked car in the parking lot of the church where he’s a member when officers cited him for the tinted windows. Officers allege that before Hamilton parked his car, he was parked illegally in the street while visiting a family member, and made an illegal U-turn when he left.
Hamilton’s suit alleged that police grabbed him “by his arms and jerked him back and forth” before slamming him on the hood of his vehicle. He was then arrested.
Police then brought in a K9 unit to search the car for drugs, but found nothing. They did however seized three cellphones, $1,300 in cash and two sealed packages addressed to Hamilton, which turned out to contain speakers, the Tennessean reports. Hamilton was ultimately charged with “improper passing; resisting stop, halt and frisk; and stopping, standing or parking outside a business or residential district.” Those charges were later dropped and expunged from his record.
Speaking to WZTV, Hamilton’s attorney said that the way his client was treated by police was completely unnecessary.
“All they had to do was tell him he violated traffic law and give him a ticket and go on, but that wasn’t their purpose, their purpose was to pick on a young man in a fancy car,” Richard Brooks said. “They said he can’t have this fancy car and be Black in Franklin unless he’s a drug dealer.”
According to the Atlanta Black Star, the incident took place on September 2018 and Hamilton filed his suit in August. The incident began when Hamilton was sitting in his parked car in the parking lot of the church where he’s a member when officers cited him for the tinted windows. Officers allege that before Hamilton parked his car, he was parked illegally in the street while visiting a family member, and made an illegal U-turn when he left.
Hamilton’s suit alleged that police grabbed him “by his arms and jerked him back and forth” before slamming him on the hood of his vehicle. He was then arrested.
Police then brought in a K9 unit to search the car for drugs, but found nothing. They did however seized three cellphones, $1,300 in cash and two sealed packages addressed to Hamilton, which turned out to contain speakers, the Tennessean reports. Hamilton was ultimately charged with “improper passing; resisting stop, halt and frisk; and stopping, standing or parking outside a business or residential district.” Those charges were later dropped and expunged from his record.
Speaking to WZTV, Hamilton’s attorney said that the way his client was treated by police was completely unnecessary.
“All they had to do was tell him he violated traffic law and give him a ticket and go on, but that wasn’t their purpose, their purpose was to pick on a young man in a fancy car,” Richard Brooks said. “They said he can’t have this fancy car and be Black in Franklin unless he’s a drug dealer.”
FBI monitoring immigration activists as violent "extremists" — though there's been no violence
Memo from FBI's Phoenix office claims "anarchist extremists" may seek "armed conflict," citing almost no evidence
IGOR DERYSH - salon
SEPTEMBER 6, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
An FBI document obtained by Yahoo News shows that the bureau is monitoring groups that protest the Trump administration immigration policies as “extremists.”
An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.
The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”
Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”
The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as “anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.
“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.
The evidence cited for the FBI's claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.
The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from "antifa" groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.
Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”
The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.
“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.
“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”
A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.
“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”
German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.
“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”
Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.
“Those are three very different groups,” he said.
This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.
Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”
Despite Wray's testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.
“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”
An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.
The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”
Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”
The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as “anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.
“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.
The evidence cited for the FBI's claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.
The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from "antifa" groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.
Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”
The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.
“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.
“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”
A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.
“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”
German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.
“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”
Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.
“Those are three very different groups,” he said.
This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.
Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”
Despite Wray's testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.
“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”
The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
June 4, 2019
By The Conversation - Raw Story
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.
There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.
I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.
Slave patrols
There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.
The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.
As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.
Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.
Jim Crow laws
Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.
For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.
The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.
For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spacesfor blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
Reverberating today
For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.
Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.
In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.
When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.
This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.
There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.
What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.
In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.
But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.
There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.
I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.
Slave patrols
There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.
The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.
As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.
Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.
Jim Crow laws
Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.
For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.
The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.
For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spacesfor blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
Reverberating today
For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.
Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.
In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.
When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.
This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.
There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.
What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.
In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.
gestapo usa funnies
Reasonable Force
The everyday assault on Blue Lives.
By Khalil Bendib ~ Other Words.com
