From the ABQ Journal:
“An Albuquerque police officer and a former detective will be arraigned on charges of second-degree murder and lesser offenses in the shooting death of James Boyd in the Sandia foothills in March 2014.
Pro Tem Judge Neil Candelaria said Tuesday afternoon that he found probable cause officer Dominique Perez and former Detective Keith Sandy committed a crime by shooting Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man.
Candelaria said the officers will be arraigned at a later date.
His ruling came after six days of testimony at a preliminary hearing where prosecutors showed the evidence they had against the officers.
Sandy and Perez, along with their attorneys, left the courtroom out of a back door that led to a gated parking lot. They didn’t answer questions from reporters who covered the hearing.
Candelaria announced his decision on whether or not the officers will stand trial at 1:30 p.m. The judge had previously asked people on both sides of the case to avoid in emotional outbursts in the courtroom.
In their closing arguments, defense attorneys said the case should come to a close today with the judge ruling there is no probable cause that Perez and Sandy committed a crime. They said the officers were following their training when they shot Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man, after a three-hour standoff in the Sandia foothills.
“How can the state prosecute an officer for murder when the officer was following his training?” Sam Bregman, Sandy’s attorney, said during closing.
Randi McGinn, a special prosecutor appointed to try the case, said the officers can’t claim they acted in self defense because they created the danger that led to the shooting.Perez and Sandy shot Boyd after a failed arrest attempt on a steep slope in an Albuquerque open space area east of Tramway, where he had been illegally camping and allegedly threatened two responding officers with knives.”
Earlier today via David Correia’s Twitter account:
Part I of my storify of the pre-trial hearing is here.
Rest in Power, James Boyd. Thank you Kari Brandenburg for bringing murder charges in police assassinations for the first time while in office over fourteen years; and thank you Randi McGinn for making a good case in what should have been a slam-dunk.
[Updated] 9/15/2015: Dominique Perez was booked Monday morning just after 8 a.m. on second-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges.
Former officer Keith Sandy was booked Tuesday morning around 7:30 on second-degree murder and aggravated battery with great bodily harm charges.
Perez was released Monday and Sandy was released Tuesday. Each spent little time in jail.
Sandy listed his home address as the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, while Perez listed his as APD Main.
Monday, a judge set their trial dates for Aug. 15, 2016. The trial is expected to last three weeks. Sandy’s attorney said he will seek a change of venue for the trial, as the case has received major attention in the Albuquerque media market.
They both pleaded not guilty to the charges at their arraignment last Friday.
@OccupySantaFe Oct 27
‘Officer Perez fired from APD’ #JamesBoyd http://fb.me/4isM4vJQX
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
wsbtv.com says: “Only seven police officers around the country have faced murder charges for on-duty incidents since 2010. One was convicted of manslaughter and assault after a second-degree murder count was dropped. The rest are still in court proceedings.”
i’m not understanding the last paragraph; i obviously don’t grasp the difference between an indictment and an arraignment. help me out.
never mind; it must have been a reporter error; i’ll take it out.
The judge found probable cause to indict – the actual indictment comes from the prosecutorial/executive side. So, McGinn is allowed to carry forward with Brandenburg’s previous indictment suppressed by APD shenanigans.
At or after being indicted (charged) the accused gets arraigned (a hearing) on those charges. At arraignment the accused have a chance to respond with a plea and bail is set.
thank you kindly, lemoyne. i hope that i can learn to remember the difference, as i should have initially.
i’ll be back later; this is my Terror Tuesday (food) Tithing day, and i need to get back to being a chinese noodle factory.
(thanks to keegan for these others as well.)
‘Prison Guard ‘Beat Up Squad’ Is Blamed in New York Inmate’s Death’
‘Man Shot by SDPD Officer Held Pen, Not Knife’; A man who says he saw video of the shooting says the officer acted “hastily”
‘President Obama’s Department of Injustice’
Another police barbarity video, good gawd all-friday. ‘I Watched 14 Police Officers Take Down a One-Legged Homeless Black Man Outside Twitter HQ. And nobody could stop them‘.
i was tempted not to embed it, but be forewarned once again.
one potentially good step, and hopefully more states will follow:
“Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation prohibiting the use of grand juries in California in cases where police officers use lethal force, a response to distrust of the grand jury process following the deaths of unarmed black men in other states.
Proponents of Senate Bill 227 argued the grand jury process is too secretive and allowed prosecutors to avoid decision-making responsibility in politically charged cases.”
That Perez and Sandy are going to trial is important. Whether they will be convicted of anything at all is a whole nother matter simply because police acting in their official capacity are rarely convicted of anything, no matter what they do, and highly paid consultants and “trial experts” like Lewinski and Grossman are part of the reason why. We’ve seen how they perform. They’re snakes. But typically they win.
It’s the way the system is set up. It protects itself, and it protects Power. It does not protect crazy people like James Boyd, nor does it protect much of anyone else who might be outside the narrow confines of Those Who Matter.
I suspect the trial will turn into a demonstration of who matters and who doesn’t. Who suffers consequences. Who doesn’t.
The video and audio evidence we’ve already seen strongly suggests that these two mooks went to the foothills with the intention of using lethal force no matter what Boyd did. They knew who he was, they knew his history, and from their perspective, it was a good day for him to die. They claim they were just following their training, so killing whoever didn’t submit sufficiently promptly to whatever was demanded of them — even if the “subject” didn’t know what that was, as Boyd apparently didn’t know what was being demanded of him (that he submit to arrest, not that he come down from the hillside) — was apparently part of APD training at the time, and that’s a big reason why APD’s kill rate was so high.
I doubt Perez and Sandy will be convicted. But if McGinn sticks with her program, the trial may open up a lot of avenues that will eventually force changes in use-of-lethal-force policies well beyond Albuquerque.
Let’s hope, anyway.
The other trials of officers who resort to violence and lethal force so frequently may help bolster an eventual “no-kill” policy that spreads nationwide.
Taking into account decades of observing APD and policing in general your last paragraph is a pipe dream.
OT but related, all protesters arrested in the Ferguson demos are being charged with crimes that have already been identified as not crimes but the show must go on.
How many people has APD killed since last July?
Notice a difference in the kill rate since then?
The trend to more police killings must be reversed, and it will take concerted action, including court trials, to achieve the necessary policy changes.
The fact that officers are now being charged and bound for trial like Perez and Sandy for killing and brutality after so many years of almost complete impunity is significant in itself.
We still haven’t seen convictions. But if they start coming, policies which have enabled and protected violent policing will change. Pipe dream or no.
i’d figured judge candelaria might bind one or both over for trial for ‘aggravated assault’, so i am surprised, himself having been a cop and all. the lies by the experts and the cops having ‘feared for their lives’ was just rubbish, but if they can convince a jury of that, then that’ll be all she wrote. the photos of the experts standing on the high platform to demonstrate boyd’s ‘superior advantage being uphill with those (pocket) knives was simply kangaroo, and yet… i am the slightest bit encouraged (fool that i yam).
“How can the state prosecute an officer for murder when the officer was following his training?”
Is the state going to prosecute itself for poor training? Might it be that all good germans take jobs that don’t torture their consciences so much, leaving the weak-conscienced constrained by “training”?
i don’t begin to know how to answer any of your questions, but in any event, they are clearly rhetorical. but i will add a few pieces of news:
‘“It does look bad:” Video shows Kenosha officer’s “unjustified” use of force’
“Kenosha police say at first, they did not get a citizen complaint about this incident. Instead, they say the investigation started when a supervisor was doing a routine check of dashcam video. He saw something that led him to pull up the incident report. [snip]
“Most officers do the right things for the right reasons. In this case, we found there were policy violations. He didn’t do the right things for the right reasons and he was disciplined for it,” said Hetlet.”
and yet…
‘Video shows apparent beating of teens by Kenosha officers, chief says videos don’t tell the whole story’, Posted 10:09 pm, May 26, 2015
“He wanted them to pick up a garbage can that he did not knock over,” Hogan said. (their mother)
Police say one teen became disorderly.”
Reblogged this on Nevada State Personnel Watch.
So what does it take to get the killing to stop?
The demand has to come from the right source, and the demand has to become a requirement, not an option.
Many police forces have so far resisted the demand. In many cases, they just haven’t heard it. They have no idea that anybody — who matters — wants the killing to stop. And they could be right. In fact, in many areas, it appears the Powers That Be are quite content to see the killing continue.
Part of the problem is the politicians whose focus is on practically everything but the killing. So long as that’s the case, the police have an out to keep killing whomever/whenever they want, “because there are so many intractable/insoluble social and economic problems to be solved… first.” Every single politician on the national stage who addresses the problem has so far taken that tack, that the issue of institutional racism is so complex with so many aspects that must be addressed, and here’s the plan for doing that. Oh yeah, the killing. Well, once the other problems are solved, the killing rate should start to fall, no?
Right. It’s bullshit.
The killing could stop tomorrow. It’s not a complex problem at all. But until the right people say “Stop it,” it won’t stop.
Apparently the right people did say “Stop it,” in Albuquerque. I know I keep mentioning this, and it’s because the fact that police killings in Albuquerque have plummeted in the past year still goes largely unnoticed, locally as well as nationally. Maybe if there is a splashy article in the New York Times, what’s happened to change the use of force policy — if not the culture of the APD — will get some traction and notice. And maybe then it can form the basis for policy changes all over the country.
The Boyd killing was the catalyst for changing the use of force policy in Albuquerque. The change didn’t come until after the scathing DoJ report on the unconstitutional policing and uses of force by APD, a report that might not have been released as soon as it was (after two years of foot-dragging) if not for the sustained protests in the streets that brought international attention to Albuquerque and its dismal record of police killings and brutality. That attention helped to drive many would-be visitors away — fearing for their lives, after all — which in turn affected the money-people who control city government. Of course it helped that the payouts to victims’ families and survivors reached $30 million, every dime of which came out of the city’s operating budget. Clearly a combination of national/international infamy and a noticeable crimp in the city’s budget due to payouts on behalf of victims of police killings and misconduct made a difference. That combination was what drove the “right people” to tell the police to stop it.
And for the most part they did.
That can happen elsewhere — in many other elsewheres — but it’s unlikely to happen so long as what happened in Albuquerque to change things continues to be unrecognized.
However, there is a movement within the police community itself to explore and adopt a revised set of use of force policies and training that could significantly reduce the killing — if not eliminate it. In other words, the message is getting through at least some quarters of the police community that the status quo — and the ever increasing kill-rates and protests — is not sustainable.
I’ve just started reading this report (84 pg pdf) “Re-engineering Training on Police Use of Force” that shows some promise on how police chiefs and their bosses are looking at the problem (!) and considering alternatives to the current practices.
So there is that.
It’s not enough, but it’s something…
you’ve laid out the case excellently, chéPasa, and i’m glad you keep hammering home the points that a) the right people have to tell police to stop the killing, and b) the ingredients that seem to have stopped the killings in albuquerque.
i admit that by now stopping the insane brutality, especially toward POC, is almost as important, given that no one knows who will live or die from the beat-downs. it does seem to potentially good that some police and their bosses are concerned enough to hold de-escalations and other less lethal trainings. let us know what you find, if you would please.
many departments had either been ordered to, or enact policy on their own to train cops to understand the issues and protocols to defuse situations involving the emotionally/mentally ill, but all too often the departments were out of compliance, even with their *own* paper policies.
re: the video above; i do not know how a person could avoid trying to stop cops engaged in that sort of vicious, but quite casual, destructive cruelty…reflexively. i know what would be sure to happen, but i wondered that same thing with the crowds watching police beat kelly thomas to death in fullerton.
Interesting…
I got through the 84 page PERF Report mentioned above (admission: I skimmed some of it) and it’s pretty remarkable. It’s a report from a conclave of police chiefs, deputies, federal agents, DoJ reps, and so forth that happened last May. Topic was use of force and what to do about it.
Dozens if not hundreds of the men and women in charge of police forces — or their deputies — were in attendance, and surprisingly (or maybe not) it seemed like most of them agreed with the protesters, that police use of force, particularly lethal force, but all force really, is out of hand, and these “incidents” that keep getting in the news are destroying the reputation and integrity of police forces all over the country and something positive has to be done to change it. Some saw it just as “optics” but most seemed to see the problem of use of force as running deeper than appearances. Police are doing it wrong. They’re being trained to do it wrong. They’re being given deeply erroneous training and policy instruction, and people like Bill Lewinski (who is specifically named and denounced) are going around the country defending this crap.
It’s got to stop.
Here’s how:
Rule One: Preserve and protect the sanctity of all human life, including the lives of suspects/subjects/perpetrators. No one’s life is expendable or disposable.
Rule Two: Use force rarely, and only proportionally to the actual threat or resistance encountered, and use lethal force almost never.
All the rest is detail.
These men and women sitting around talking in Washington DC last May were basically trying to figure out how to meet the demand to Stop Killing Us.
One set of statistics mentioned several times was that in New York City, the use of firearms/lethal force by police had declined 90% since the ’80s. It was cut in half with a simple change of rules: “do not fire at moving vehicles.” In my view, NYPD is a corrupt and violent institution that should be disbanded, BUT these statistics are, as far as I know, correct, and they strongly suggest that police use of firearms and lethal force in general is way out of line with necessity, and by changing some policies and rules for use of force, it could be cut way, way down in a very short time.
These men and women were highly aware that what is legal for officers to do is not necessarily right. Prosecution without conviction or no prosecution at all after an officer involved killing does not make the officer’s actions right. In many cases, according to these men and women, what the officer did was wrong from the get. It was wrong because they escalated situations unnecessarily, they caused the situation to deteriorate to the point where lethal force might be legally justified, but was it was not necessary. This happens — at least from what was discussed — routinely. And it must stop.
I got the impression from the report that part of the problem is that Chiefs aren’t in control of their police forces. This may be a cop-out (so to speak) but there was much chatter about how things have been allowed to go their own way over the years, how police are evaluated on how many encounters/stops/confrontations they engage in, not on how well they interact with the public, how training and “culture” emphasize violence and gunplay over negotiation, intervention and de-escalation, yadda yadda. Practically every criticism of police behavior was brought up — and for the most part agreed with. Crisis intervention teams were seen as absolute necessities when dealing with homeless/mentally ill individuals who are otherwise so vulnerable to violence by police.
So this report is a clue to what’s going on in the upper echelons of the police community, what they’re talking about, how they see the problems of policing and what they need to do about them. They’re talking about fundamental changes in the use of force policies and training, and they even brought in police reps from UK and Scotland to discuss how they did their jobs (somehow!) without resort to firearms — except in very, very rare circumstances — or without (much) brutality. Surprisingly, what they do is rational, teachable and effective. Models exist for transformation of American police forces. Who’d a thunk?
On the other hand, I’m still an abolitionist!
I think you need to take these PR exercises as just more distraction to ease public outrage, We are trying very hard to improve, Ha Ha Ha.
The reference to the UK way of policing is a bad joke, they may not use guns on their victims but they get the job done by beating them to death systematically.
The Ferguson Chief made an unintentionally insightful statement a few days ago during the recent demonstrations, ‘They will not take the streets tonight’ ‘They’, citizens, have no right to the commons, so they are ‘taking’ the streets from those who do, the Masters, whenever they appear in public places.
i read a piece last night that was based on dotson’s statement/dare, and rather than make me furious, made me sad as all giddy-up (may just have been my mood).
i need to go water the garden and take care of other RL obligations and chores, but i’ll read it again when i have time, and will come back. that’s one hella justice system they’ve got goin’ there.
It’s a PR exercise only if nothing comes of it, but as we see, more than I might have expected has come of it already (practically a cascade of indictments of police for assault and murder; significant changes in use of force training and policies; the introduction of the notion of the sanctity of human life, etc.) and there’s undoubtedly more to come already in the pipeline.
And I’ll ask again: how many people has APD killed in the past year compared to previous years? What happened to reduce the numbers?
I can only conclude that a police reform movement from the inside is underway not just in Albuquerque but all over. Not enough of one and not fast enough, but the status quo is not sustainable, so something has to change.
I’m an abolitionist and don’t believe that American police forces can be reformed successfully, but we’re seeing some real efforts to do so just the same. The police reform efforts I’ve personally been involved in had some success, but there wasn’t enough progress in my estimation, and there’s been a lot of backsliding since the efforts we made to reform a very brutal (though not particularly lethal) police force in days of yore. It’s like it has to be done all over again.
The Brits have a lot to account for and I don’t cut them any slack — just the mention of them gets my Irish up — but their example is being cited as a model for how police can “do their jobs” without resort to lethal force or indeed any force at all in most cases. I’m well aware of the numerous exceptions to their general “no kill” and “no excess brutality” policies, but what the chiefs et al were talking about was how in most cases even the most scary (ooga-booga) situations for American police in which lethal force is used routinely are handled by British and Scottish police with aplomb and an utter lack of either physical force or lethal force. The point is that it can be done, and how to do it can be taught.
These are facts. Even more of note (to me at any rate, as I’ve been saying this for years) is that the rate of police homicide can be cut in half almost overnight by some very simple changes in policy, and the rate can be reduced by 90% or more through some additional policy changes and rigorous enforcement of new rules. It has been done in NYC and other cities (again not cutting NYPD any slack — but their kill-rate is substantially lower than other American big cities because their policy practically forbids police to kill or even use firearms in most cases).
I want the killing to stop and I want the practice of violent policing to end. We aren’t there yet, not really even close — as more and more instances of violent policing and inappropriate use of lethal force are highlighted — but things are changing.
Better it should be.
i applaud your rigor in reading it, and thank you, amigo. yes, it’s very remarkable that so many in that group were in agreement as to the police “culture of lethal (and other unnecessary force) response” being wrong. ‘Preserving the sanctity of life’ with the addition of ‘including the subjects’ is a bit unintentionally humorous, remembering the dude (Dale?) in the private security video who maintained that cops should *only* think about the safety of the community, and not themselves (no more “scared-to-death cops”, iow).
Ryan Reilly at Huffpooh read the report, and these are a couple of things he came away with:
“”Some officers, with the best intentions, think that their job is to go into a situation, take charge of it, and resolve it as quickly as you can,” Wexler wrote. “Sometimes there is a feeling of competitiveness about it. If an officer slows a situation down and calls for assistance, there is sometimes a feeling that other responding officers will think, ‘What, you couldn’t handle this yourself?'”
he then brought the graph on how little training is in de-escalation, how much in shooting/defensive tactics, but is con/legal about what to do to make one’s kill “good”?
“There has been a “fundamental change in how the American people view the issue of police use of force” since protests in Ferguson last year, Wexler wrote. Videos, he said, have played a big role in that shift.
“Over the past year, the nation has seen, with their own eyes, video recordings of a number of incidents that simply do not look right to them,” Wexler wrote. “In many of these cases, the officers’ use of force has already been deemed ‘justified,’ and prosecutors have declined to press criminal charges. But that does not mean that the uses of force are considered justified by many people in the community.”
…which is a key ingredient, i believe, and the videos seem to have changed people’s ‘confidence in police, but that POC are on the receiving end all too often, according to polls, not that polls mean much.
‘6 Police Officers Across the US Were Charged with Murder This Week, Proving Strength of Protests’ is interesting, too, and begins:
“After months of sustained #BlackLivesMatter protests, there have been a seemingly unprecedented six indictments of police in the last four days. This signals a stunning departure from the long trend of non-indictments, most notably in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Tony Robinson.
The uptick in police indictments is not unique to this week, either. In fact, the rate of indictments has increased by 5 times over the course of the last 5 months, according to data compiled by criminal justice professor Philip Stinson. [snip]
The six indictments that took place since Monday include two former East Point, Atlanta officers charged with murdering an already handcuffed black man. Two Albuquerque police were indicted for killing a homeless man who had surrendered. A former Fairfax, Virginia officer was charged with murder for shooting a man who’d had his hands up—in his own home. Just today, a Maryland officer was charged with attempted murder for shooting an unarmed suspect who had already surrendered. Following his surrender, the police officer called him a “piece of shit” and shot him in the groin.
This week’s indictments follow a number of other high-profile police indictments: that of South Carolina officer Michael T. Slager for shooting a 50-year-old black man, Walter Scott, in the back; and University of Cincinnati officer Ray Tensing for shooting an unarmed black man, Sam DuBose, during a traffic stop.”
noting that indictments rarely lead to *convictions*, but hey, Timothy McGinty, whassup with prosecuting officers garmback and loehmann in the execution of tamir rice?
These cases all make me want to explode, but that SF vid with the one-legged man really stretches the limits, and confirms my belief that the “eye for an eye” formulation was intended to be applied to people like those cops, who seem to understand nothing about human interactions except force and the fear of force.
(But wait, Boyd was white . . .) (ducking and covering again lol)
i’ll let the ‘but he was white’ slide, given that he was indeed two of the other Expendable Class designations that we note over and over…(groan x 2)
on edit: but see? i shoulda gone with: ACK! he was?
dunno if you clicked into link, but apparently *someone* allegedly had called the po-po to report that someone was brandishing sticks on the sidewalk. turned out that the ‘sticks’ were his fooking crutches which they took away from him. part of what was afoot was that he was tryin’ to get em back. reminded me of dear street preacher marvin booker killed inside the denver PD for trying to retrieve his only pair of shoes ahead of charging him for…mental illness.
but srsly, how do people not just free the poor man? not that cops were involved, but three times in my more agile days i jumped in to break up beatings and fights, not that i wasn’t foolish and lucky not to have had my clock wiped from it. it’s just that sometimes ya don’t have time to think of the consequences.
more? ‘2 Cops Shoot Unarmed Man, Third Cop Stands Over his Bleeding Body, Shoots Him in the Groin’; the third one will face trial because:
“According to State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the officers ordered 46-year-old Michael Johansen to show his hands. Fearing for their safety, officers Leary and Smith claim that Johansen was reaching toward his waist when they opened fire on him. After being struck with multiple bullets, Johansen collapsed onto the floor with his upper body inside the store and his feet on the outside steps.
As Leary and Smith covered Johansen with their service weapons still aimed at him, Cagle walked in and stood over him with his gun drawn. Johansen looked up and asked, “What did you shoot me with, a beanbag?”
Cagle responded, “No, a .40-caliber, you piece of shit,” before shooting him in the groin.
“Johansen was no longer considered a potential threat, as witnesses did not see Johansen make any aggressive or threatening movements,” State’s Attorney Mosby asserted.
Although the other officers justified shooting Johansen because they believed he was holding a “shiny object” and reaching for his waist, no weapon was found at the scene. After receiving medical attention at a local hospital for his gunshot wounds, Johansen was charged with second-degree burglary, fourth-degree burglary, and theft of less than $1,000. His trial is scheduled for September9
James Boyd enjoyed White privilege most of his Middle Class life. Even after he fell out of his White support structure he was treated leniently, with jail time not prison, when he broke a woman cop’s nose.
The fact that the two Pigs brought long guns to this murder seems to me to show intent as some recordings from before the incident also indicate.
The print version of an Abq Free Press interview with Special Prosecutor Randi McGinn made a few points that bear repeating:
And to a later question about fear for her safety:
PDF of ABQ Free Press Vol II, Issue 10, May 20, 2015 – see pg3 left side
Police forces are all the concresence of fear…. or is it excresence? And the fear-mongering goes way beyond the shenanigans of electoral politics to include fundamentalist moralizing and ‘if it bleeds it leads’ and more. Unsurprising that fear for their own safety is always the excuse for and defense of homicidal actions by the police.
bless her brave heart. can we just go with… ‘putrescence’?
Reblogged this on Grandtrines and commented:
But will this actually go anywhere? Or will it tend to disappear, the way the Curtis Reeves movie theater murder has? http://www.curtisreevestrial.com/
welcome to the café, grandtrines. are you speaking about this curtis reeves who Stood His Ground against Assault by Popcorn? holy hell.
i’ll just leave these here; remember: holding down alt while pressing the + key will enlarge the middle tweet. a bit short of ‘stop killing us’.
and yes, wayoutwest; sandy was recorded on state police radio saying he was going to shoot boyd in the nutz with a shotgun, iirc, but he denied it a the pre-trial heaaring. a state police po-po said what he heard was “i’m going to shoot him with a taser”.
New release today from We Are the Protestors at:
http://www.joincampaignzero.org
This looks like a complete and thorough policy prescription.
The Hill report said it was from Black Lives Matter, but this definitely is a different group much more willing to meet with the presidential candidates than #BLM™.
Deadspin article that got me deeper into this … ok, ok kept me up most of the night chasing links so I saw the Hill article right after it came out.
And another WordPress blog — The South Lawn — interesting, leftist and Southern – It’s all about the grassroots y’all!
i find this disturbing, lemoyne. in your join campaign zero link, and internal to ‘community demands’ goes to a page something about ferguson demands. in my post ‘hilarious’, i’d linked to the demands from the ferguson action team, which included:
“We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And the Murder Of Black, Brown & All Oppressed People
Every 28 hours a black person in the United States is killed by someone employed or protected by the government of the United States”, or as i believe i’d noted: Stop Killing Us!
the compilation of Zero’s demands includes obama’s, and a couple other weak tea remedies if ya look at all of them, but still, this:
“Revise and strengthen local police department use of force policies
Revised police use of force policies should protect human life and rights. Policies should include guidance on reporting, investigation, discipline, and accountability and increase transparency by making the policies available online. This use of force policy should require officers to:
• use minimum force to apprehend a suspect, with specific guidelines for the types of force and tools authorized for a given level of resistance (Ex: Seattle PD Policy)
• de-escalate first (Ex: Seattle PD Policy)
• carry a non-lethal weapon (Ex: Seattle PD Policy)
• ban using force on a person for talking back or as punishment for running away (Ex: Cleveland PD Policy)
• ban chokeholds, hog-ties and transporting people face down in a vehicle (Ex: NYPD Policy)
• stop other officers who are using excessive force (Ex: Las Vegas Metro PD Policy)
and then the “Monitor how police use force and proactively hold officers accountable for excessive force” section.
where did “Stop Killing Us!” go?
Isn’t that something? They get a seat at the table (you know who Campaign Zero is, right? DeRay, Miss Packetti (sp?), Nettaaa and Sam Singyangwe) and bam just like that, their simple demand becomes transformed into a policy program such as… well, Hillary was telling those Negroes in NH (was it?) she wanted from them pronto.
In other words, “let you all negotiate,” hmmm?
My brain hurts.
yup, and i’d neglected to mention that miz packyetti (or what.ev.er)’s bio doesn’t include her actual name, Brittany Packnett, nor that she is the top honcho of Teach for Amerika in the area. you know, that org that minimally trains teachers to replace *more costly or uppity teachers* when the situation warrants, and iirc, or when they become for-profit Charter Schools™, thank you bill gates and other fookers.
jayzus christ in a canoe. Self-Kettling.or cooptation? take yer pick.
Yah, and their program tracks almost exactly with the White House’s task force recommendations and with the hoo-hah in the PERF report that I mentioned above. How. About. That?
I think they should be confronted straight out and be asked “what happened to ‘stop killing us????’
Looks to me like this is a coordinated pre-Labor Day roll out of a “plan” to stifle a certain segment of activists who have been, shall we say, a mite uppity.
given that you and i don’t Tweet, who might take that assignment? ;-)
i confess that by now i’ve lost track of who the truly uppity and non-Dem-coopted folks are by now, cuz i discount te ever-so-many protestations to the contrary.
and by the by, y’all can kiss my grits. i’ve had an art under oppression post up for more than a day and a half…and the sole comment i my own. pfffft. i labored long over it, so again: pfffffft.
oh, and i did click the ‘presidential task force whoozit, and after about seven minutes of it not loading, i told it to piss.off.
Haven’t had a chance to get to it yet, Mz Grits. Been a mite busy, yanno? But I will… (Looks to be awsomeness squared.) Is there no one else around here interested in… the art of resistance? Come come.
Speaking of, we managed to get into town for a bit today and spent quite a time at the Free Leonard Peltier booth which had dozens of his paintings (there were also some prints/posters, but it was mostly paintings.) All I can say is… wow. We couldn’t afford any of it, of course, but the one item we could afford was a combined wolf/raven image (two of Ms Ché’s spirit animals) surrounded by the motto: “Do right and fear no one” “Free Leonard Peltier.”
Still catching our breath…
xoxo :-P
miz grits
seriously, doctor yanno, i’d considered it likely that most folks only subscribe to particular diaries, and would come here by way of their email provider service.
but i had mentioned on the ‘hilarious’ thread the other day that most of recent commentariat seems rather immune to both music videos, as well as the revolving banners of my flowers, birds, and bee photos.
ack, the details graphics won’t enlarge like the page text here. you can click into the twitter page, then use the keys.
‘Cop Charged With Murder For Killing Unarmed, Compliant Man Standing In Doorway of His Home’
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/08/john-geer-cop-charged-finally/
As above: ‘Two former Ga. police officers charged with murder for stun gun death of handcuffed man’, WaPo
this version at countercurrent news has what i assume are photos of the two cops, both black. as many say, when a black cop dons the uniform, he becomes a tool of the white PTB all too often.
meanwhile: ‘Mistrial declared in case of N. Carolina cop who killed unarmed black man’
“Following four days of inconclusive deliberations, a North Carolina judge has declared a mistrial in the case of an officer-involved shooting an unarmed African-American man. Afterwards, protesters took to the streets to voice their displeasure.
The jury needed to reach a unanimous decision to convict Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall Kerrick of voluntary manslaughter when he shot and killed 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell, but the three most recent votes resulted in 8-4 decisions. While it was not officially revealed which way the jurors were leaning, the Charlotte Observer reported that the majority favored acquittal.
“The case will remain open per further proceedings,” Judge Richard Ervin said to end the trial.
The case itself revolved primarily around whether or not Kerrick, who is white, used excessive force when he fired 12 shots at Ferrell, hitting him with 10. The incident occurred back in September 2013, when Ferrell crashed his vehicle and made his way towards another house looking for help.
The individual at the house, fearing that Ferrell was trying to break in, called law enforcement and several officers arrived at the scene, including Kerrick. Ferrell allegedly ran towards the officers, who police said attempted to use Tasers to bring Ferrell down. When that did not work, Kerrick fired his weapon.”
scary Negro on a rampage! Shoot!
and woot! t’was rev sekou all along!
he’s also written a letter to members of the clergy (one or two sour notes, but so good otherwise): ‘The clergy’s place is with the protesters in Ferguson’
Peacekeepers or protesters?
“There are those who assert clergy have a specific role to play in Ferguson. That role is perceived to be unlike that of the protesters. For many the clergy role of “peacekeeper” is more of an acceptable station than that of “protester.” Some claim that our rightful place is to be above and beyond the protesters, distancing ourselves while serving as mediators between the police who teargas protesters and those protesters themselves.
Opening our doors to a besieged and denigrated community is the least we can do. The question before religious leaders is whether our houses of worships will leave doors open for the forces of the powerful or act as sanctuaries for the broader community. The church of the street and the communion of protest have drawn clear lines between the just and unjust. These urban protestants will not be seduced by slanted news stories, a corrupt judicial system or clergy who seek peace without justice. The gospel of magnanimity can be merely a rhetorical cover for cowardice. There can be no progress without protest. To call for reconciliation without justice is to desire the resurrection without the crucifixion. (much more here)
it seems that the rumors about some clergy siding with the police were true.
ah, so many high fives on #CampaignZero. critics should shut the up. even rebel_Z endorsed it, as well as most of the accounts in the movement i usually check in with. stfu, copwatch.
even candidates are endorsing it on the account, urging folks to vote vote vote! one tweet implied that ‘protesting has turned to listing demands’ or some such.
heh.
this is getting weird and ugly: from yesterday:
not far below is a storify by citizen b with tweets indicating the oathkeepers and ‘tactical shit’ ties to st. louis police unions,
the page link: https://storify.com/Citizen__B/talking-tactical-shit
‘Autopsy indicates officer shot unarmed teen William Chapman from distance; Eighteen-year-old was not close enough to police officer Stephen Rankin to pose a threat, says family lawyer, as report obtained by Guardian shows he was cuffed’
‘Inmates frozen to a fence; Suits by North Country prisoners claim reprisal resulted in frostbite and more’, albany timesunion.com
@georgejoseph94, @KeeganNYC, and @MichaelEDyson talk #BlackLivesMatter under surveillance: http://on.msnbc.com/1JnROgg
‘Police union slams circuit attorney over investigation into officer-involved fatal shooting’
“The head of the city’s police union slammed Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce on Saturday about her decision to conduct an investigation separate from the ongoing police inquiry into the killing of Mansur Ball-Bey by an officer this past week. Ball-Bey, 18, was shot in the back.
The killing, and the violent confrontation between police and protesters that followed, came less than two weeks after officers and protesters faced off on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing by then-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
Joyce’s decision is a departure from the usual protocol in which her office would wait until getting the results of the police investigation before conducting its own.’
according to shaun king, the officers haven’t even been asked to give statements yet.
#PeoplesMonday NYC yesterday featured ShutDowns at Macy’s and other venues; die-ins were held in Times Square, Union Square, i dunno where all. but the name they featured was murdered by police in New Orleans ten years ago. even though i’ve been watching ‘Treme’, a post-Katrina saga written by david simon and eric overmeyer, i wasn’t aware that Katrina blew into the gulf coast ten years ago this week. #HenryGlover on twitter.
the despicable story in 5 Fact posters:
https://instagram.com/p/6ymNPSPdN3BDTA9iNGrpkZD61c5ey5GHzJg5g0/
Rest in Power, Henry Glover.