Aug. 24: ‘Ferguson judge withdraws all arrest warrants before 2015’
“The municipal court judge in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday announced sweeping changes to the city’s court system, including an order to withdraw all arrest warrants issued in that city before December 31, 2014.
Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, who was appointed in June, also changed the conditions for pretrial release. According to a press release put out by Ferguson, all defendants will be given new court dates with alternative penalties like payment plans or community service.” (read more here)
Aug. 27, the Guardian: ‘William Chapman: state official will seek to prosecute officer who killed teenager’; Virginia state prosecutor will seek indictment from grand jury over death of unarmed black 18-year-old, who was shot dead by a white police officer in April
Charlotteobserver.com: No retrial for Jonathan Ferrell’s police murderer, Randall Kerrick, oh no. The jury was hung 8-5, so the judge had declared a mistrial.
”Jury foreman Bruce Raffe told the Observer that, of the eight jurors who favored acquitting the police officer, one was black, one Hispanic and six white. Of the four favoring conviction, two were black, one Hispanic and one white. Raffe said he believed Kerrick was not guilty.”
August 28: ‘As Trial Approaches, What Has Changed Since Freddie Gray’s Killing?’ TRNN visits Penn & North, a short distance from where Freddie Gray lived and died and this is what we witnessed’
From TRNN, Aug. 27: ‘Bullock Trial Begins Friday’; 18-year-old Allen Bullock broke a police car window during the Baltimore uprisings. Having turned himself in, he faces life in prison and a bail that is higher than those set for the six police officers charged in the killing of Freddie Gray’
From thefreethoughtproject.com, Aug. 27: ‘Father Says He Has Proof His Son Surrendered Toy Gun Before Being Killed by Police’
“While there are multiple conflicting accounts regarding this incident, Julian’s father Derek is claiming that the version of events police gave contradicts the sequence of events given by witnesses and his son’s fiancee. He also claims he has video evidence that his son had his arms up in an attempt to surrender. While he admits Julian had an air rifle with him initially during the encounter, He went on to say:
“He put it on the ground, got back up and put his hands in the air.”
Hoffman’s house has a video surveillance camera mounted at the front entranceway. Hoffman said the video is “proof” that his son had his hands up and surrendered before being shot”.
Reason.com: ‘Witness Video Appears to Contradict Official Version of Fatal Police Shooting of Unarmed California Man’; Cops say John Berry tried to hit them with his car before they shot and killed him but family and witnesses disagree’
“Early last month, deputies from the Los Angeles County shot and killed 31-year-old John Berry, who was drving his car. The authorities said Berry rammed a patrol car and then pinned a cop to another vehicle, and that deputies shot at Berry because they feared for that cop’s life. [snip]
Chris Berry, a federal police officer who works at a facility with two psychiatric hospitals, said he called the Lakewood sheriff’s station and asked that a mental evaluation team be dispatched. He was informed that deputies would be sent instead.
The deputies who arrived were immediately aggressive and escalated the situation, Chris Berry said. He said he watched as they unleashed pepper spray, shot his brother with a Taser at least four times and struck him with batons. His brother, he recalled, looked stunned and cried, “What did I do wrong?”
“They said he accelerated and crashed into the police car. That did not happen — I was there for the whole thing,” Chris Berry said. “But they have to say that because it justifies their aggressive actions.… I believe in my heart and I know Johnny wasn’t trying to hurt them.”
Chris Berry said that as a law enforcement officer, he is pained to be mixed up in what feels like a family fight. “I called one brother to help another brother and…” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence.”
From thedailybeast.com: ‘First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops, Thanks to a Lobbyist; North Dakota police will be free to fire ‘less than lethal’ weapons from the air thanks to the influence of Big Drone’
A complicated legislative story, but more states might follow, yes?
Not police, but the Injustice System: in the how rare, how wonderful category, ‘A Pennsylvania judge in Pennsylvania was just sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling “kids-for-cash.”
“The bribery scandal made headlines when Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was alleged to have taking $1 million in bribes from juvenile detention centers to fill their cells with children who came before him in court.” yes, just the tip of the iceberg, but good, nonetheless.
Via ksatcom: ‘EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Fatal deputy-involved shooting; Bexar deputies shot, killed man while responding to disturbance call’
His hands were in the air.
“Certainly what’s in the video is a cause for concern, but it’s important to let the investigation go through its course so that we can assure a thorough and complete review of all that occurred,” Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau said.
Pamerleau said the suspect allegedly injured an 18-month-old child and woman who were inside the home at the time. She said the deputies tried Tasers and shields to subdue the suspect, but were unsuccessful. “Two deputies attempted to arrest the individual and he resisted. They also used, tried to use, non-lethal force weapons to try and detain him and after a lengthy confrontation, both deputies fired shots,” Pamerleau said.”
Bakersfieldnow.com reports: Bakersfield police on shooting: Car jack looked like gun’, Aug 25, 2015
“Police say the officers got out of their car and approached the Subway. Alderman walked toward the front door and looked to be holding a rifle, according to police.
Alderman refused several orders to “drop the gun,” the police department said. (Jason Lee) Alderman “raised the object in the direction of the officers,” the police statement says.
Garrett was placed on paid administrative leave while the use-of-force is reviewed.
The Alderman family attorneys also have issues with Officer Garrett. They say he was involved in the fatal shooting of a police informant in 2013. Grubbs said that incident was ruled justified, and within policy guidelines.”
Via HuffPo, Aug. 25: ‘Iconic Ferguson Photo Subjects Are Being Charged A Year Later; A pastor, a “peace poet,” a legal observer and a student muralist also head to court’
“ST. LOUIS COUNTY — Two young men featured in iconic photos taken during the Ferguson, Missouri, protests of August 2014 are among a whole swath of demonstrators and observers whom St. Louis County authorities chose to prosecute nearly a full year later.
Others who were recently charged by the St. Louis County Counselor’s office include a pastor, a “peace poet,” a young student muralist and a legal observer. At least three professional journalists (including one of the authors of this story) also recently found out they would have to appear in St. Louis County Municipal Court.”
There are others, of course, charged now with ‘interfering with police’. Jackboots galore.
Aug. 28, ‘Man Shot by SDPD Officer Held Pen, Not Knife’; A man who says he saw video of the shooting says the officer acted “hastily”
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‘.
Somehow, though, for me the wretched treatment of so many “in police custody” are especially grievous and inhumane, and show either such callous disregard, or willful malevolence, and most often with complete impunity, as with the ‘Beat Up Squads’, or Freddie Gray’s nickel ride.
From the Paper of Record: Prison Guard ‘Beat Up Squad’ Is Blamed in New York Inmate’s Death’.
The Guardian: ‘Young black man jailed since April for alleged $5 theft found dead in cell’; Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, had been held in Virginia jail without bail for nearly four months, accused of stealing a Mountain Dew, Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake’
“Jamycheal Mitchell, who had mental health problems, was discovered lying on the floor of his cell by guards early last Wednesday, according to authorities. While his body is still awaiting an autopsy, senior prison officials said his death was not being treated as suspicious.
“As of right now it is deemed ‘natural causes’,” Natasha Perry, the master jail officer at the Hampton Roads regional jail in Portsmouth, said of his death in an interview. Perry said there were no obvious outward signs of injury to the 24-year-old’s body. Portsmouth police are looking into the death. [snip]
Officials said that after his arrest, Mitchell was taken to Portsmouth city jail, where he stayed for almost three weeks before being transferred across the city to the regional jail on 11 May.
Ten days after that, the court clerk said, Judge Morton Whitlow ruled Mitchell was not competent to stand trial and ordered that he be transferred to Eastern State hospital, a state-run mental health facility in Williamsburg, for treatment.
The clerk said that typically in such cases “we do an order to restore the defendant to competence, send it to the hospital, and when the hospital has a bed, we do a transportation order, and he’s taken to the hospital.” Whitlow reiterated the order on 31 July and was due to review the case again on 4 September, according to the clerk.
But the hospital said it had no vacancy and the 24-year-old was therefore detained in jail until his death on 19 August, according to Adams, Mitchell’s aunt, who said she had tried to assist the hospitalisation process herself but was left frustrated.”
NY DailyNews: ‘EXCLUSIVE: Diabetic inmate needing insulin dies after suffering for 14 hours as Rikers Island guards do nothing
“A diabetic Rikers Island inmate in desperate need of insulin slowly died over 14 hours as correction officers did nothing — even after the man collapsed and vomited, bombshell documents show.
Internal investigations by the Department of Correction and New York State Commission of Correction place the death of Carlos Mercado squarely on the shoulders of correction officers.”
Yes, please accept no responsibility yourselves you craven faceless bureaucrats. Rikers is such a gem of a jail.
Or in jail lobbies, like Marvin Booker, street preacher, killed by police in a Denver jail. Or this:
Updated 9/2/2015
From mercurynews.com: ‘San Jose: Dead inmate’s injuries appear to be result of blunt force trauma’
“The inmate, identified Tuesday in a court document as Michael James Tyree, also had bruises that appear to be the result of similar blunt-force injury, the sources said. At the time he died, Tyree was waiting for a transfer to a mental health facility.
At the time of his death, he was being housed on the sixth floor, in the protective custody unit. Several inmates who were also housed there reported seeing the three correctional officers go into his cell and then hearing him scream, “don’t,” “please, stop,” “help,” and “I’m sorry,” before falling silent after the officers left, according to a relative of one of the inmates.
One source with knowledge of the investigation said the officers did not report their use of force to jail authorities immediately as required, or seek medical care for him. Only after Tyree’s body was discovered during a routine cell check at least an hour later did they say the confrontation occurred because he refused to take his medication.”
The pre-trial hearing for police charged with Freddie Gray’s death began today. Via abcnews2.com: ‘Freddie Gray pre-trial hearing: 7 things to know’
What person of noteworthy power will step up and say: ‘Stop the Killing, Stop the Hideous Brutality’?
Will Campaign Zero end brutality and assassinations by law enforcement as so many seem to believe? Or are the demands ‘respectability politics’? ShadowProof recently asked for opinions, and I’d direct you to Tweets by @dhammicmarxist,
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
speaking of ‘respectability politics’, i read a transcript at the real news network that (ahem) demonstrated that brother cornell west anointed bernie sanders ‘a prophetic politician‘, an oh, yes, we’ll have to hold his feet to the fire (as he’d said about his endorsements of obama…twice, as i recall). and this:
“My endorsement of Brother Bernie is not a downplaying of the immorality of the ugly Israeli occupation of Palestinians…” among the other caveats mentioned.
the roots action guy on trnn has a petition to demand that the bern answer questions about his FP plans, militarization, yada, yada…some people seem to want to make bern ‘a better candidate’.
more irony: the popular resistance newsletter came in early this morning, and without any apparent satire giddily announced that ‘the first ever native american had been appointed by obama as ambassador to the UNHRC. the piece cited the fact that:
“Harper is an attorney who was one of the lawyers behind a landmark class action lawsuit brought by Native Americans against the federal government. President Barack Obama first nominated him in June 2013.
“I’m pleased that my colleagues have voted to appoint another historic first for Indian Country,” said Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in a statement. “As a longtime advocate for the civil rights of Native Americans, Keith will be a great Ambassador for our country.”
A member of the Cherokee Nation, Harper helped represent around 500,000 Native Americans who brought a class-action suit – Cobell v. Salazar – against the United States in the 1990s over alleged federal mismanagement of revenue from mines and oil wells owned by Native Americans.”
i suppose that they don’t have a clue that the two of them screwed said native americans out of likely 96% of the minerals trust account, eh? and don’t quite know that harper was in geneva helping to aid all the lies about spying, torture of immigrant children, epic numbers murdered by police, especially first americans and blacks, etc.
oh, and the deputy in dallas who kneed poor Joseph Hutcheson to death in the last tweet will be charged with some form of murder. cold comfort.
Yes. Cornel and Brother Bernie. He’s got some good credentials. Let Zeusse sell it. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/opinion-why-every-american-should-vote-for-bernie-sanders.html
I think Brother West was trying to help Bernie’s black problem. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/04/bernie-sanders-top-five-race-problems-the-whiteness-of-nominal-socialism/
Trying to counter the damage done to Bernie’s image among blacks by that BLM interruption or whateverthehellitwascauseididn’tpayanyattentiontoit.
Anyhow…Politics is good. Actually politics ain’t shit. Whoever we elect as president is basically going to be much different than the ones before. Whatever promises they make leading up to the election they are in no ways obliged to keep. Exhibit A: Obama. So why waste time trying influence them? That’s the wrong focus. The focus should be on the current occupant of the White House and his current AG. Both of whom happen to be black. National reform of the police is what is needed. Executive action.
Our natonal black organizations and our black congresspeople should be pushing for such action. And our celebrities and our pundits should be putting pressure on these congresspeople and black organizations to put presssure on the Prez. Let’s take him up on one of those offers he made that he never intended to follow through on. Let’s make him do it: Executive order for national reform of the police,
good to see you, nomad. crikey, zuesse sounds a lot like rebecca solnit, doesn’t he? ;-) i especially loved his math: why would bernie vote against the tidal wave for nothin’?
but yeah, he doe have some historical anti-wall street cred, and did do a couple interviews back in the days when we reckoned that new financial regs were guaranteed, as was a modern-day Peccora commission. well, we were burned, and Congress let us burn. yeah, those critters are the layer between the people and the oligarchs, aren’t they? revolving doors and all. oooopsie; sorry for the digression, but that was the time that i knew that capitalism would never be reigned in again.
which executive orders do you imagine he could make (not that he ever would)? he is all about cosmetic touches, like ordering that no police depts. can have *tracked* tanks, but the ones on wheels are okey-m-dokey. really, he does slay me. but hey! campaign zero’s overview says:
“Integrating recommendations from communities, research organizations and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, these policies aim to protect and preserve life.”
and that task force pdf report is 116 pages!!!! ;-) page 79 is funny, imo)
doggone it; earlier this morning a lightbulb went on in my head that concerned one key item that isn’t (or wasn’t) in their policy demands section. but…that light went out.
What I have in mind is something on the scale of WPA, New Deal, War on Poverty. A massive transformation of the police culture every bit as extensive as those earlier executive actions.
Bring in a task force from Sweden to retrain every police department in America.
we can hope that swedish police are more egalitarian, then. but instead, US PD’s are often trained by the IDF, lol. come to think of it, the IDF trained the federales to kill the zapatista movement, as well. and who knows who else now that mexico is in full fascist state mode, eh?
oh, and i know you were jesting a bit about brother cornell helping bernie’s ‘black problem’, but it’s my understanding that preachers of the black prophetic tradition were all about social justice movements, not electoral politics. i have read discussions claiming that MLK ‘barnstormed for LBJ’, but i dunno the truth of it. he did, however, give his ‘three evils of society’ (hate/racism, greed, and materialism) speech at ‘the National Conference on New Politics August 31, 1967’, but i dunno that history.
Sorry for the double post. Wasn’t sure the first one took. Nope. Not joking about West trying to help Bernie’s black problem. That’s the only reason I can think of for the endorsement and its timing right after the BLM Bernie shaming event.
The sad thing about the idea of bringing cops from other nations to retrain American cops is that they could probably come from any developed country except Israel. They could come from any country where killing citizens for minor offenses is not standard operating procedure. Any civilized nation. The astronomical death rate of US citizens at the hands of police, particularly blacks, is an international embarrassment. As well as I crime against humanity.
i take your meaning about brother cornell’s timing as not coincidental, but why would he endorse him so magnificently (if we blow by all his caveats)? i do remember plenty of cornell west haters accusing him of lookin’ for a gig in the obama administration, then soured on him later.
but seriously, i can’t see new training as any sort of fix, given it’s nigh on to impossible to ‘untrain’ po-po who’ve run amok for so long. someone on a recent thread made the point that english bobbies may not shoot ‘suspects’, but beat the shit out of them instead. dunno those facts, myself.
thanks for bringing the moscow solidarity story. one of the things i do like about creating a Storify out of tweets is showing photos of global solidarity with this and a few other issues movements. and Black Lives marches across the US with so many people of different complexions; so heartening.
but, ah; i did finally remember the big issue that i hadn’t seen on the Campaign.zero demands page was: ‘no police can be vets!’. i did look at the issues page, and it does seem that there are more, or at least more hyperlinks to various city ‘best practice reforms’.
NewsRevo keeps up on global struggles, and the focus lately is refugees.
https://twitter.com/NewsRevo
(i’ll remove one video.)
How do you change a culture? I don’t know but that’s what’s needed. There is no alternative.
i’ll reply at the end of the comment thread; it’s gettin’ thin up here. ;-)
and speaking of international embarrassment and more civilized nations, did you see this from last year?
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Ferguson protest in Moscow
Undernews
Embedded image permalink
Russian students at the US Embassy in Moscow
https://aislec.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/from-russia-with-love/
dang near forgot this humdinger: “‘All Lives Matter’ march draws thousands to Birmingham”
“Led by conservative activist and talk show host Glenn Beck, thousands of people chanting “All Lives Matter” marched the historic civil rights route from Kelly Ingram Park to Birmingham City Hall this morning.
“It’s about taking our church out in the streets,” Beck said. He said marchers came from as far away as China, Dubai and the Netherlands.
Actor Chuck Norris, a conservative activist known for his martial arts, action movies and TV show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” marched about two rows behind Beck. Alveda King, a niece of civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., marched in the front row. Bishop Jim Lowe, pastor of the predominantly black Guiding Light Church in Birmingham, co-organized the march with Beck and marched with him at the front. As a child, Lowe attended Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where the march started, a headquarters church for the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Lowe and his sisters were in the church when a KKK bomb blew up the church and killed four little girls on Sept. 15, 1963.
(video caption: Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck marched with over 20,000 supporters Saturday through the streets of Birmingham)
Good morning.
(I didn’t comment there, but just want to say that your Resistance Art post the other day was incredibly awesome and moving, as was the comment thread following it. I just didn’t have the physical or emotional wherewithal to weigh in there while the thread was ongoing, seems to be the norm for me all too often these days. Just wanted to register my appreciation for your very good work.)
On this post, I continue to be horrified, disgusted and outraged at all the bad police conduct you bring and we keep witnessing, and I think you know full well that I have long been radically anti-police in my personal sentiments, but with those provisos registered, I also feel that when we uncritically embrace inappropriate/inaccurate factual scenarios with tolerance, we are supporting propaganda techniques, which is also a bad thing.
So, I must point out that the Ferrell case (as also with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown) contains facts which arguably make those shootings legally justified, and so correctly deemed not to be capable of sustaining criminal conviction beyond a reasonable doubt (a very high standard of proof).
In Ferrell, when I originally heard the media summation of the facts, I was horrified and totally against the police. But after trial and viewing the video, I now know that Ferrell was in full charge mode against the shooter cop. that the cop’s DNA was found under Ferrell’s fingernails, and that Ferrell’s blood was found all over the cops clothing. Also, Ferrell weighed 185, and a commenter who trained with the cop says he weighed no more than 120 pounds. On these facts, the shooting was legally justified, IMO, but certainly not arising to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt for conviction on any rational analysis.
I only make this point because we have so many cases where the cop violence is totally and purely inexcusable that we don’t need to conflate with cases where the cop violent behavior was excusable. The serious consequence for doing so is that we lose our moral purity and risk being perceived as just another side using propaganda to win. Credibility is very important when making moral arguments, IMO. Why yield that credibility unnecessarily?
We will never, apparently, ever run out of cases where we can appropriately focus our undiluted rage. (sigh)
mornin’ RC. i’m glad you liked the resistance art post; i did, as well (for the most part). ;-)
do you disagree with the facts in the Tweet then? did the prosecution give reasonable alternatives for the cop’s dna under ferrell’s nails and blood on his clothes contra the defense attorney? i can imagine a couple scenarios, as he was said to be running toward the cops in relief, arms outstretched, from what folks have claimed the dashcam showed. why twelve shots, ten hits? but yes, even with slam-dunks, jurors can be convinced that cops ‘feared for their lives’.
‘moral purity’; hmmm, i reckon i’ll have to think about that one. i hope you got a boot out of glenn beck’s “all lives matter” march in birmingham. he even found a few Negroes of Note to join. ;-)
added: i’m sorry to hear of your declining wherewithal; i feel that, i do.
i couldn’t find evidence for why kerrick had been fired, but i did find this from a local abc affiliate:
“A police statement Saturday said the investigation showed the shooting was excessive and “Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.” or did he and his fellow po-po’s get caught testilying to IA?
anyway, i hope your health and energy improve a little every day.
but yes, so many cases of pure assassination, and cavalier disregard for life. so much brutality: it can end, but it must be forced to stop by the folks with the power over police departments, as seems to have happened (for now) in ABQ, maybe a bit in NYC.
If you watch that video, it was clearly a charge, not an attempted embrace. (Bewildering, I admit, but maybe angry cuz they shot a Taser at him and missed???)
If he engaged the officer in anger, it was a legal shoot. Can pretty much put a period on that. I don’t know what the prosecutor said or didn’t say, and don’t see anything in the post that discusses the evidence, I just know that the physical evidence supported a conclusion that there was extensive physical contact. If you haven’t seen the charge on the video, you should; it sure don’t look friendly to me.
That is all I know for sure, but I watched it many times, wanting to damn the cop. (The family got a 2.5 million dollars settlement, I understand, before the trial, maybe the authorities just being prudent about CYA; bet they wish they had it back now lol.)
Reasonable doubt requirement will always make it hard for a jury to convict if there was an ongoing unwelcome assault type contact with an officer. Because, what if his gun got grabbed?? Even being as anti-cop as I am, I have to grant that leeway to the cop.
As far as who can stop the slaughters, I have little faith in any bureaucratic solution. Dead cops may be required to change things, to change police consciousness, a notion I can live with philosophically, but much easier (and more effective) if the targeted ones would more often be the slaughterers themselves. (Just a little due diligence, can ya?) I wonder much more often than I used to about whether we might actually be in the end times; wouldn’t it be an ironic hoot if the religious crazies had it right all along?
Sorry that we are both doing our share of suffering these days-all good wishes and energy to you, dear one.
oh, baloney; i clicked the wrong key and lost the whole comment. ah well, ‘best practices and trainings’, la la la. the jury asked for clarification about ‘voluntary manslaughter, jurors said ferrell was on trial (natch), the video didn’t show what happened when he was shot 10 times, but could be heard…what else? other cops never fired their tasers.
video is way too long to watch, but reporting on it is here.
other snippets i gathered:
“‘Prosecutor Adren Harris played the dashcam video in court Tuesday, saying there was plenty of time for Ferrell to be asked questions as he was walking toward Kerrick. Harris said Kerrick had non-deadly options at his disposal and abandoned all his training during the shooting.
Two years ago, Kerrick and other responding officers had identified Ferrell as a possible burglary suspect after a woman called 911 overnight to report a stranger was banging on her door and trying to kick it in.
State prosecutors say Ferrell had been injured after wrecking his car and was seeking help at the woman’s house when he was mistaken as a burglar. They argue Ferrell ran in Kerrick’s direction after fearing for his life when another officer deployed his taser, with red laser beams pointing at Ferrell’s chest.
Kerrick said he acted in self defense and that everything happened quickly.”
he changed his story several times, of course…i forget the rest. oh, well, it’s over. but to me one key thing was that the cops were convinced that he was a criminal when they saw him. period. ;-)
yeah, i get ta feelin’ rode hard ‘n put up wet some days, but: it must be good enough for who it’s for, yes? ;-) still, we grew some awesome amounts of in.cred.i.ble flowers this year. (mr. wd helped a lot, bless his heart.)
but, heck. ;-)
The video is all in this case-he charges like a football player trying to take out the opposing quarterback-don’t need to watch the whole video, just FF to the shooting part, a few seconds is the whole deal.
Not saying maybe the cop couldn’t have handled it different, just saying that the jury was well within its rights to say “not beyond a reasonable doubt on these facts.”
Believe me, when I first heard of this case when it happened, I wanted to see the cop burn; after the video, and the DNA and blood evidence, I can’t be sure that would be right.
There are so many cases where there is no doubt about the cop’s guilt, I hate to see people make icons of the ones who get shot with legal justification.
oddly, i couldn’t get it to FF, but i’ll take your word for it, as others say the same thing. can’t say the cops aren’t lyin’ about ‘goin’ for my gun’, as they always say that, esp. for cop cams. kerrick said that ferrell had reached behind him, waistband, etc.,then changed his story. beyond a reasonable doubt, no, i can see that. i don’t think he’s an icon, just another unarmed black man killed by police in very questionable circumstances. a hung jury doesn’t mean legal justification, though.
shouldn’t the killer kops who assassinated james boyd absolutely be found guilty? that one should be a slam dunk, but given the ‘expert witnesses’ like whozzit lewinski, defense may get them off, and that will sure rankle. i saw the stats on non-indictments, indictments, trials, and convictions over the past ten years, and they are sad and sick.
here’s NYC: 15 years. 179 NYers killed by NYPD. 3 indictments. 1 conviction. 0 jail time. talk about ‘sigh’. some cops are being arrested, but that seems to be more of a political decision at this point.
gotta go for now. oh, and i do think you might be interested in the n’awleans diary….
The legal system is very imperfect, even when/if it’s trying to get to the right result.
But Boyd, that should be the ultimate slam dunk. Still,. with the history we’ve got . . .
WASF.
I’ll read that NO diary next, already know it won’t make me smile. ;-(
BTW, Trayvon and Mike Brown are the ones wrongly iconized, IMO. Why not stick with Garner, Bland, Rice, Gray, and all the other “clean” cases, that’s my attitude. I just don’t believe much good can be built on a foundational lie. Weird, huh?
The law seems to serve those it’s intended to serve rather well, really. ;-)
“The Law is a ass.”
Mmmmm, well…er…please me to skitter right on by a discussion of trayvon and michael brown’s killings; i know we diagree.
I did just discover that there will be a *second* preliminary hearing for the cops charged with killing freddie gray. it will consider the change of venue, and be held on sept. 10.
i read an odd line on a trnn interview this morning saying that *another* issue could be if the trials are by jury or judge, but zero explanation. could you help me out on that?
Judge vs. jury trial is a big difference. Evidence will be much less regulated with a judge (he is considered to be able to overcome the risk of emotional and other prejudicial biases that would require that various evidence be excluded from a jury’s consideration).
Also, the judge is more likely to be system-friendly than a properly chosen jury, and, depending on how a given jurisdiction does judge selection, perhaps a case can be steered to a judge with known predispositions.
Sorry, gotta say, Brown was also charging, after a prior physical struggle, and Trayvon was pounding a beaten adversary’s skull on the ground, which you only do if you are trying to kill or seriously injure. Those two facts are gigantic and they absolutely govern those two cases, no matter what other distractions or irrelevancies or emotional biases are brought into the discussions. Sorry, reality rules sometimes.
thank you for that explanation; i guess i’d also meant to ask if in cases of murder/manslaughter, does every defendant in every state get to choose trial by judge or jury?
but no, i’ll still skip commenting on those two cases, as i know that we seem them differently, especially about the initial onsets of them.
Can always demand a jury trial for any felony. Prosecutors will almost always prefer judge trials.
Law on self-defense is dynamic, just like the actions; the one operating with an aggressive intent, outside of the fairly-construed “mutual combat” zone of behavior, immediately becomes the law-breaker, and the other immediately acquires the defense of “self’defense.” That is the law, stated as it’s ideal. Sometimes that primary aggressor role shifts from one party to another by their behavioral choices during the event. Sometimes hard to prove a particular part of that law/rule in a particular case where the evidence ain’t perfectly gathered and/or available, so reasonable doubt comes into play.
thank you. ‘felony’, yes. touching a cop is a felony, as well. arrggh.
please see the bottom of the thread, rc; we’re running out of nest space.
‘Baltimore judge: Charges against police in Gray case can go forward‘
“A Baltimore judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss charges against six police officers facing criminal charges in connection with the death of a black man seriously injured in their custody. He also refused to remove the prosecutor in the case. During a pretrial hearing, Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams denied a defense motion for the charges to be dropped against the officers in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who endured a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody on April 12 and died a week later.” (twelve defense attorneys, no less)
no one has reported anything about changing the venue, oddly enough; i suppose the defense never asked for it, against many predictions.
‘Freddie Gray case: Judge rules for separate trials‘
the names of the police, and their charges are at the bottom. the trials are scheduled to begin in October.
added 9/3/2015: the change of venue issue for the trials will be heard on sept. 10.
I thought that RC was just suffering from Bernie Cultus-Interruptus when he singled out the young Black women, who interrupted the love fest, for ‘special treatment’. Now we see a deeper conditioning with the sorting of dead Black men into those who deserved their summary punishment and those who were properly submissive before death.
We should only ‘iconize’ submissive dead black men not those hyper-aggressive, dangerous, even when unarmed, animalistic Black men who are frightening the defenseless white people and causing all the trouble.
i’ll let y’all hash that out, if ya don’t mind. ;-)
but i will add this recent first degree murder indictment of the cop who killed ‘a charging 18-yr-old’: ‘Virginia Cop Indicted In Murder Of Unarmed Black Teen; Stephen Rankin is charged with shooting William Chapman II in the face and chest outside a Walmart.’
might the grand jury been influenced by this(from June of this year)?: ‘Stephen Rankin: the military-trained officer who killed two unarmed men; Rankin shot dead 18-year-old William Chapman at a Walmart last month, four years after he was barred from patrols for killing another citizen. But he is a good fit for a police force that goes to great lengths to attract military men
(and his facebook page seems to have featured a photo of a serb hung by nazis; good patriotic fellah)
also, in the santa clara jailhouse killing of Michael James Tyree i’d featured in the OP jut below the Update: ‘3 Santa Clara County correctional deputies charged in death of inmate’
it’s a far more grisly killing than first reported. oh, the poor man. “Jail documents show a tentative court date has been set for September 8. The case now goes to the district attorney’s office.”
Please GFY if you can’t be any less stupid. I’m getting tired of your idiocies, like your incorrect assumption that I ever supported Bernie Sanders, or that I have any antipathy for POC in general. You can manufacture incorrect assumptions faster than anybody else I’ve encountered recently, but you’re not worth my time and effort to keep correcting you with the truth. Shape up or shut up when commenting about me, please. Thank you very much. Consider yourself “hashed.”
this is a seriously fascinating interview, with so many key ideas and histories that i can’t think which snippets to bring.
“What a Band of 20th-Century Alabama Communists Can Teach Black Lives Matter and the Offspring of Occupy’; On the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking history, Hammer and Hoe, author Robin D.G. Kelley discusses the lessons Alabama’s forgotten black communists can offer today’s activists’ by Sarah Jaffe
“Anyone who’s serious about socialism, or some kind of non-capitalist path for development, must address them not as separate issues but as issues that help us have a deeper analysis of how political economy works. Again I come back to Hammer and Hoe, because part of the critique of the New Deal was to say this great welfare state expansion was built on a racial hierarchy in which they were allowed to pay black workers in public works programs less money, or pay southern workers less money than northern. In other words, it’s a hierarchy structured by race, by class, by gender. Unless we understand how the structure works we’ll never be able to address the economic problems.
Is making a revolution simply about having a fairer state? Making sure that everyone has decent housing? Or is it about changing our relationships to one another so that you don’t need state violence to keep the machine operating? How do you actually create a culture in which you can actually have something like a beloved community, where the struggle for the community is part of the project of making change?
That’s part of what I think the best elements of Occupy were trying to do, the best elements of Black Lives Matter: create new community.”
he speaks on transformative demands in alabama, and:
“I don’t know whether the refusal to make demands can lead to something even better. But one of the consequences is that you end up having a segment of the movement embrace the Obama administration’s agenda, which is that racial profiling is bad policing so we need more effective policing, body cameras for cops, better officer training, this sort of thing. We know from the history that none of that stuff really makes a difference. What we’re looking for is transformative changes, eventually the elimination of state violence and the police force itself.”
what he notes about violence being baked into the culture is spot on, reminding one of MLK’s ‘three evils’, and the necessity of crushing workers coming together or speaking out. he also mentions how fragile ‘white security’ really is, and we often note that while they are unaware, when they realize it, the epiphany can help lead to a better world.
anyhoo, aside from his comment on naomi klein’s book, it’s really worth reading, maybe even twice, imo.
Sounds interesting. Before I dive in I wanted to note this fascinating interview on subversives, revolutionaries, and anti-crapitalists in Southern history: Dixie Be Damned: a regional history of the South East through an Insurrectional Anarchist lens.
i kinda doubt i’ll listen to the hour-long interview, partly due to time, but also because i just don’t process auditory information well. but i did go get the page recommended, and whoa, nellie! breaking the prisoners out of compounds that the mine owners brought in a scabs! holy hell.
it’s all the more relevant to this related news from wednesday, that i just saw this morning. during a peaceful protest in LA, a group of BLM protestors tried to free a woman the police were apparently arresting for allegedly walking out on a restaurant bill (sources are quite varied on the incident), but this page has the video. remember jasmine richards? well, she was part of the group, and a few day later they snatched her out of a park, threw her in the hole, and set her bail and $125,000.
Thanks for the reference to this book. As it turns out, my local library has three copies available.
“What Communists want to do is nationalize your daughters.” HA HA. Prostitution should be entrepreneurial, like Gawd commands! Good ole fuckhead kristian-kracker-krapitalist propaganda!
“How do you actually create a culture in which you can actually have something like a beloved community”? Mostly undo what crapitalist culture done.
At least this advice being offered to ‘teach’ BLM is somewhat less paternalistic and arrogant than many of the earlier examples. Kelly still lacks the ability or desire to listen and understand why BLM rejects the old hierarchical organizing structures along with their talking-point demands. BLM doesn’t seem to be too concerned about groups such as Campaign Zero stealing their thunder, probably because they see them as useful fools and celebrities who dissipate the constant demand for ‘demands’.
I doubt many young people are going to flock to any 20th century Communist organization or embrace their ridged structures even if it is packaged in Kelley’s ‘surrealists’ 21st century positivism.
It’s telling that Kelley couldn’t bring himself to spell out the dedicated Commies worst fear, Anarchism, that is the term that best describes both BLM and Occupy.
A few days ago BLM reaffirmed their Anarchist credentials by flatly rejecting the phony outreach from the DNC and also repeated their dismissal of any rumor of their ever supporting any candidate in this election. Leaders of all stripes are undesirables and cheap words of support are not actions.
i can’t speak to anarchism being dedicated Commies’ worst fear, but i didn’t find it paternalistic at all.
yes, the ‘official’ #blm movement did issue that statement on august 30, although there are many other folks in related movements that they can’t really speak for. it was thus during the height of the Occupy movement, and a lot of time was spent on internecine squabbles, worthy ones, imo, on tactics, gender issues, demands lists, etc.
i’ll repeat that i’ve been agog, agape, and aghast at how many in the larger umbrella movement: love obama, holder, flotus, campaign zero, and bernie.
but i didn’t get any impression that kelly wanted the folks in the movement to be communists, but that they might benefit from their experiences and tactics in AL, and to consider his thesis about violence and political economy as so related, as well a the hierarchical class and gender issues. and that they might want to look at an egalitarian form of bottom-up democracy, as he mentioned the Zapatistas and other similar indigenous governments coming out of ‘states of emergency’.
it has indeed take some amount of time for men in the movement to educate themselves about police killings and brutality against women and lgbt as of key importance, which eventually evolved into the #sayhername movement.
I don’t follow the twitters so I don’t know how many individuals express these status quo attitudes and are affiliated with BLM. There is no loyalty oath or restrictions on personal beliefs dictated by the leadership that I am aware of and should these misguided people be purged or educated? A good tight Bolsheviki hierarchy and discipline might cleanse the aberrant thinkers from the masses but that would creates the same centralized authoritarian Statist organization that Soviet Russia developed.
Some of these people may be Party operatives and be attempting to direct the insurgency back to the democrat political path but the radical declaration by BLM rejecting that path and those who support it is what should be recognized.
The Alabama Commies that Kelley writes about may have been internationalists, well-organized and made transformative demands and they may have been pursuing true Communist goals but they were modeling on and connecting their Old Left organization to Soviet Russia that was many things but did not actually practice Communism or Socialism which Emma Goldman wrote about in detail.
Kelley never acknowledges these facts he just recommends that BLM should model their organizing on what the Russians called ‘useful idiots’. Another odd thing about this interview is that Kelley only mentions Clinton and never Obama when referring to BLM issues.
you really can blow some aggravating smoke, wayoutwest.
first, i do follow the accounts of a number of folks in the movement. they are not operatives, but some can have their heads turned a bit by say, being invited to the oval office. and they do become the de facto leaders, much as the media crowned cullors, tometti, and garza recently. for quite a long time, much was made of the fact that there *were no leaders*, and that it was a *leaderful movement*; eventually women and youth took the front of marches, which was fine to see, and that so many men finally saw as righteous, imo.
put your crap about the commie structural purges is just such fukkery it’s hard to read. and once again may i repeat: the movement has many, many different affiliated groups: million hoodies, handsup united, bay area solidarity, the blackout collective, ferguson action, chicago rising, and so many others.
but yes, now blacklivesmatter.com is creating a new site which will apparently be called ‘the black lives network. each chapter may coalesce under that name and site, it might make sense. but what the statement said is great, but again: folks may vote, not vote, vote dem, green, but yes, many in the movement are down with bern, obama, and holder, bafflinglyly enough.
but this paragraph i highlighted seems to have mentioned obama:
“I don’t know whether the refusal to make demands can lead to something even better. But one of the consequences is that you end up having a segment of the movement embrace the Obama administration’s agenda, which is that racial profiling is bad policing so we need more effective policing, body cameras for cops, better officer training, this sort of thing. We know from the history that none of that stuff really makes a difference. What we’re looking for is transformative changes, eventually the elimination of state violence and the police force itself.”
update: it seems that there may have been some sort of kerfuffle over the issue.
courtesy of keegan: ‘The Truth of ‘Black Lives Matter’, by NYT editorial board
sometimes a picture is worth 1300 words.
realitychecker, in d.g. kelly’s interview with sarah jaffee, he mentioned some history that echoed something you’d said earlier.
“Nonviolence as a political strategy was pretty common among progressive forces in the postwar period, for good reason. However, if you take the history of black freedom struggles, self-defense has been the first principle. It had to be—during Reconstruction something like 58,000 black people were killed. Akinyele Omowale Umoja has this great book called ‘We Will Shoot Back’ where he proves that in every county in Mississippi where you had organized armed self-defense they had less violence, fewer killings.”
now one shudders to think how that would play out now, but if true, it’s interesting a hell. he also said this in answer to the history of police turning blacks over to the KKK to take care of:
“RK: “One of the ways, at least in the 1930s and before that, that the state was able to avoid the expense of prosecution, the expense of detention and also allow for the reproduction of white supremacy on a mass basis was lynching. You think of lynching as terrorizing black communities, terrorizing Mexican communities, it definitely does that. But what it also does is consolidate a white working class investment in a notion of security in a juridical structure that allows them some semblance of citizenship. These are people who, when you really look at their daily life, barely have the privileges of citizenship except in lynching. They could participate even if it’s just as observer.”
those last two lines gave me the shivers.
i’d also meant to ask if you click into ‘shadowproof’ very often, as the few times i’ve booted up an article ot three whose titles i found of interest, they all had between zero and two comments. is that a feature now, or a bug?
also, please do give my bet to M.
“what it also does is consolidate [… an] investment in a notion of security in a juridical structure”
Yeah, you see, democracy promotion was a sham back then, too. The trauma of the conquered south was treated with an induced coma called “Jim Crow”.
How did it recover? The Second Industrial Revolution (AKA the Age of Synergy) and America’s opportunities in the World Wars led to the Great Migration. Once a profit could be made from that reserve labor, the enthusiasm for coma waned; once again crapitalist industry made “progress” possible.
Now, if crapitalist progress has dubious prospects and debt slavery loses all credibility, who would doubt a coma of police state security on a broader scale would become, um, unavoidable?
well, they ain’t done with negro farming, that’s for sure. ‘Billionaire Vultures Exploit Baltimore’s Poor, Take Black People’s Homes Over Unpaid Water Bills”
“As was reported in Think Progress, amid the economic devastation faced by struggling families in Baltimore, powerful hedge funds are buying up liens as small as $250 and $500, charging high interest, and taking their homes when they cannot pay. The liens are related to debts on things such as unpaid property taxes and delinquent water bills, and millions of dollars of property is being seized from the poor and placed in the hands of billionaires who support prominent politicians of both parties including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
A report from the advocacy group HedgeClippers, revealed Baltimore is one of the few cities where homes are auctioned off due to a failure to pay water bills, and allows residents to have their debts sold to speculators when they accumulate to only a few hundred dollars. In other cities, the threshold debt amount for a property to be subjected to a tax lien sale is much higher, including $1,000 for New York City, and $2,500 for Washington. Baltimore also stands alone in the exorbitant interest rates these speculators can charge poor homeowners—as much as 18 percent. If these homeowners cannot pay within two years, they lose their homes.”
oh, well, guess folks n NYC and Deecee should be happy with their deals. did they check detroit???
That’s the crapitalist de-ghetto-ization program. Sharecropping is a ways off.
Wall Street became the temple about a half century ago and the crapitalist lunatic-priests desperately tend their monstrous field of dreams …
would suggesting that ‘capitalism’ would suffice be nit-picking?
but Marsha coleman-obedayo on the 2015 fugitive slave act. tell it, sister!
“Under the ploy of fighting the surge of recent murders, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced last week that she will ask the DC City Council to significantly expand surveillance and police powers to track ex-offenders. The provisions, outlined in a Washington Post article will give police the power to “search individuals on parole or probation and immediately detain anyone found in violation of the terms of release.” If these recommendations are enacted it will amount to a 21st Century version of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (amended in 1850) guaranteed the rights of a terrorist (slaveholder) to “re-kidnap” escaped Africans. The U.S. Congress passed a legal mechanism for Africans to be under surveillance, tracked and forcibly returned to American concentration camps, commonly known as plantations. An estimated half a million people escaped to gain freedom, a ratio of about one in five Africans – mirroring the contemporary rate of Black incarceration in the 21st century. Many Africans left the United States altogether for safe havens that included Canada and Mexico.” (more here, and yes: polemical, but understandable as to current conditions)
ah, yes; a black Democrat mayor is only interested in keeping black on black killings down, see? she is a soul-sister to ‘america’s first black president’, bubba clinton, only her version is: One Strike Yer Out! tsk tsk.
i take it that you mean ‘change a culture for the better’, eh? ;-) it has changed for the worse over the last couple decades to my mind. partly due to wall street banksterism, US global wars for resources masquerading as the GWOT and ‘spreading democracy’ baking in both cases more and more violence.
but i do see a few glimmers of light; one is that more msm venues are covering police brutality and killings, and two: that at least some few cops are being arrested and/or indicted, some tried. now a lot of that could be in the way of a political decision, as in: we don’t want riots!!! and such, but at least it a bit of a step forward.
ooof, there are so many suggestions out and about about how to change the culture so that blacks (and first americans, other POC, mentally ill, and other Expendable Rabble) can not only survive, but thrive. creating intentional communities is what Occupy did, and many continue to do, with alternatives based on cooperation, sustainability and need, not want, and trying like hell to bypass corporate profiteers as much as possible. in the BLM movement, #shutItDown, or squeezing capitalistic shopping has been a big deal, and using the created space to tell the stories of some of those murdered.
now as joss would have it, when your comment came in via email, i’d been reading this very fulsome essay by kali akuno, who co-authored ‘the operation ghetto storm report’ has a lot of ideas for changing the status quo, and liberating blacks from their many chains. he says, of course, that capitalism itself is the prime engine of black oppression and immiseration, but again: has also served to create a comprador class of blacks, who are the black misleadership and business class who…seem quite able to live with the status quo. ‘Until We Win: Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Era’
he gives historical contexts, including global, black surplus labor issues,and then under the section ‘A Potential Path of Resistance’ has a lot to suggest, including the question: Can we be the agents of our own self-determination,
then:
“Given how we have been structurally positioned as a disposable, surplus population by the US empire we need to build a mass movement that focuses as much on organizing and building autonomous, self-organized and executed social projects as it focuses on campaigns and initiatives that apply transformative pressure on the government and the forces of economic exploitation and domination. This is imperative, especially when we clearly understand the imperatives of the system we are fighting against.” [snip]
“Our objectives therefore, must be structural and necessitate nothing less than complete social transformation. To press for our goals we must seek to exert maximum pressure by organizing mass campaigns that are strategic and tactically flexible, including mass action (protest) methods, direct action methods, boycotts, non-compliance methods, occupations, and various types of people’s or popular assemblies. The challenges here are not becoming sidelined and subordinated to someone else’s agenda – in particular that of the Democratic party (which as been the grave of social movements for generations) – and not getting distracted by symbolic reforms or losing sight of the strategic in the pursuit of the expedient.”
but yes, create alternatives, be aware of the underlying structure (as in the d.g. kelly interview above), and apply as much ‘subvert the machine’ to available pressure points as feels right.
p.s. but to really change the culture, both here and around the globe will take an enormous shift in consciousness, but folks here are likely tired of me nattering on at length about it. ;-)
Wow. Kali, huh?
Just a brief shot before I’ve had a chance to read your whole comment. It’s just that before I tuned in I had already loaded the quote below.
Why American police need to be retrained. My understanding is they spend much more time training police to kill and take down than they spend training them to resolve situations peacefully. That needs to be reversed nationally. And only executive action by POTUS and his AG can do that.
“Police are trained to think like the military in combat, which means they prioritize their own safety and the safety of fellow officers over everything else, including that of the citizens they allegedly “protect and serve.”
They are trained to take control of situations, rather than think critically, which results in an exponential number of unnecessary violent altercations with citizens who questions their “authority.” In reality, many of these incidents would require no force, or violent response whatsoever, and could be easily de-escalated and peaceably resolved.
When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly everything begins to look like a nail…”
http://www.alternet.org/because-they-lack-crucial-training-these-cops-severely-beat-blind-autistic-teen-unconscious
yes, far less training time for de-escalation, and especially defusing situations with the mentally ill. from the Times:
“Officers at police academies have always been trained in de-escalation, but there has been less emphasis on such methods over the past 20 years. A recent Police Executive Research Forum survey of 281 police agencies found that the average young officer received 58 hours of firearms training and 49 hours of defensive tactical training, but only eight hours of de-escalation training.”
now i can’t remember what O’s ’21st century policing task force’ said about de-escalation, but here’s news of their ‘interim report‘ (there’s a pdf out there if ya want to look for it).
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/PolicingTaskForce
but i do remember that some PDs that were under federal consent decrees were ordered by their federal monitors to conduct those trainings whined that they weren’t given the dollars to do so, and that was why they were so far out of compliance. oh, yes.
i expect you’re just right that only he can order it nationally, or maybe mz lynch, but do they have the will to do so? heh, i did kick up a few COPs pieces about departments targeting vets for those trainings, as in: well sure, they’re all whack jobs, poor things, tra la la.
to your point of cops being trained to put their own safety first, i couldn’t agree more. back in april i’d posted a few current alternative ideas, then one a few months later…but this guy dale brown is interesting. more info from his site is at the link above. and yeah, his beef and his employees, plus camo is a bit off-putting….
arrrgh; that page led to the pdf of the final report; the part about trainings and ‘best practices’ begins at about page 51. but O has been all about ‘building trust in the police’, oh yes.
added on edit: in that section, under Action Items are a whole lotta ‘shoulds’, no ‘wills’ or ‘musts’ iirc, O had said that police need to buy into rules.
4.3 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should engage in multidisciplinary, community team approaches for planning, implementing, and responding to crisis situations with complex causal factors. Collaborative approaches that engage professionals from across systems have emerged as model practices for addressing community problems that are not resolvable by the police alone. These team approaches call upon law enforcement agencies, service providers, and community support networks to work together to provide the right resources for the situation and foster sustainable change. Multiple witnesses before the task force spoke of departments coordinating mental health response teams that include mental health professionals, social workers, crisis counselors, and other professionals making decisions alongside the police regarding planning, implementing, and responding to mental health crisis situations. But this model is applicable to a number of community problems that regularly involve a police response, including homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking, and child abuse. Ultimately, the idea is for officers to be trained and equipped to make use of existing community resources in the diffusion of crisis situations.
4.3.1 Action Item: The U.S. Department of Justice should collaborate with others to develop and disseminate baseline models of this crisis intervention team approach that can be adapted to local contexts.
4.3.2 Action Item: Communities should look to involve peer support counselors as part of multidisciplinary teams when appropriate. Persons who have experienced the same trauma can provide both insight to the first responders and immediate support to individuals in crisis.
4.4 recOmmendatiOn: Communities should support a culture and practice of policing that reflects the values of protection and promotion of the dignity of all, especially the most vulnerable. The task force heard many different ways of describing a positive culture of policing. David Kennedy suggested there could be a Hippocratic Oath for Policing: First, Do No Harm.82 Law enforcement officers’ goal should be to avoid use of force if at all possible, even when it is allowed by law and by policy. Terms such as fair and impartial policing, rightful policing, constitutional policing, neighborhood policing, procedural justice, and implicit bias training all address changing the culture of policing. Respectful language; thoughtful and intentional dialogue about the perception and reality of profiling and the mass incarceration of minorities; and consistent involvement, both formal and informal, in community events all help ensure that relationships of trust between police and community will be built. The vision of policing in the 21st century should be that of officers as guardians of human and constitutional rights.
Wouldn’t that final one be lovely?
There is no will. These are the beards of a white supremacist system. That’s why I say we have got to make him do it. From the ground up, through our black organizations, pundits and black caucuses. Wouldn’t it be great to see BLM protesting this faux black president before his rein is out?
Alas, they’ll probably wait for the white one.
One thing Barama could do that would have immediate effect is to declare the War on Drugs a failure and over, eliminating the need to criminalize nonviolent offenders, stop and frisk, and eliminating civil forfeiture (literally legalized highway robbery). There is plenty of evidence that it has failed that he could site to make the case.
That would be a beginning in the reformation of a pernicious police culture.
“What began in the late 1970s as a crusade against “the devil’s candy” is now well-known as a miserable failure. That is, unless you are interested in giving the State tremendous power and billions of dollars in civil asset forfeiture. The shell of purported righteousness has fallen away from the War on Drugs to reveal its sickly core.
An analysis released five days ago by the Pew Charitable Trusts confirmed the ineffectiveness and waste of the drug war. The report, titled “Federal Drug Sentencing Laws Bring High Cost, Low Return,” describes how mass incarceration, mandatory minimums, and billions of dollars per year have done nothing to curb drug use or supply, while caging tens of thousands for minor roles in trafficking.”
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/09/police-arrest-94-year-old-veteran/
If he had the will. Which he doesn’t.
those are some damning facts, all right. but this nation has always funded *ad profited from* both side of the ‘war on drugs’, hasn’t it? yes, O could have rescheduled any drugs during his reign, ad made some feint recently to allow a few ‘non-violent offenders’ out of prison. ‘barama’; heh.
but oy, it would be lovely to see BLM activists show up at the offices and houses of CBC members, with the press in tow, of course…
i didn’t grasp this issue at naked capitalism, but took note again that cynthia mcKinney is the sole for real member of the caucus.
D Dayen begins the piece with: “Last year, the Huffington Post published the definitive take on the Congressional Black Caucus’ frequent sellouts to Wall Street, and how Maxine Waters has attempted to shut it down. Their public image as the conscience of the Congress belies a coziness with bank lobbyists and an open willingness to do their bidding. Ten CBC members sit on the House Financial Services committee, and can often convince those who don’t to go their way.”
‘frequent’ may have been low-balling it.
” capitalism itself is the prime engine of black oppression and immiseration, but again: has also served to create a comprador class of blacks, who are the black misleadership and business class who…seem quite able to live with the status quo.”
Exactly. I call them Neo-Blacks. Barama is the prime example of that class.
oh, my, the current list of black comprador/neo-blacks is soooo long. but a few others who jumped to mind are clarence thomas, jeh johnson, eric holder, valerie jarrett, susan rice….
oh, and i just put up a new bernie post up this morning in case you hadn’t seen it. ;-) (i think most folks must just subscribe to threads one at a time.)
jeh johnson, eric holder, valerie jarrett, susan rice….barack obama.
Hmmmm. There was a class of such blacks in antebellum days. They played pretty much the same role as these guys. They were called mulattoes. The more things change the more they remain the same.
i remember a female blogger saying that those you highlighted had ‘passed the paper bag test’. didn’t it also used to be called ‘high yellah’?
yep, repeating and repeating. ‘remains of the day’.
chuckle. The Obama administration’s paper bag test. Loretta Lynch barely made the cut.
chortle. i’m thinking ‘paper cut’ now. don’t ya love the name ‘lynch’ given her new job?
one of the heads of a particularly egregious police unions is also named ‘lynch’.
t”he current list of black comprador/neo-blacks is soooo long”
Here is another half black performing the function of helping to advance a racist agenda.and a neoliberal narrative.
Gladwell is not as crude as Trump, but his logic is the same and the message, wrapped in the discourse of social mobility, is similar. That is, the call is for one of expulsion: get rid of them whether the be poor blacks or immigrants, get them out of the suburbs, out of the cities, put them anywhere where they cannot form communities and where they will be utterly dependent on the good will of the new white missionaries—who have been blessed with quality schools, city services, job opportunities, and so it goes. This is not only disgusting; it is also the logic of genocide with a smile.”
Genocide with a smile. It’s what they do.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/08/dark-waters-hurricane-katrina-the-politics-of-disposability-and-the-racism-of-malcolm-gladwell/
thank you, nomad. i hadn’t know that gladwell was half-black. in my post-katrina diary, anna hartnell, i think her name was, had linked to his callous, lying rant against the poor and black. i like that he focused on the charter schools, and used the terms akin to ‘disaster porn’. hartell also gave evidence that those in diaspora were treated as criminals, since that was what they saw on the teevee news each night. i shudder when i remember the hideous names folks were called when the NewsOTainment showed what condition the Superdome was in, as if it were their fault. christ.
genocide and *sociocide*, i’d add. but yes, it’s such a long list of black compradors (House Negroes).
at the bottom, it says that akuno produced this feature for deep dish tv; this is the trailer.
at the bottom of this page, toward the bottom of the page is Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, speaks to the question of civil rights laws and legal problems, the structures of racism, how they are linked, and how black lives matter less in the U.S. yes, some incisive framing of ‘the need for laws’ in the first place.
http://www.deepdishtv.org/current-projects/american-nightmare/
but heh; i can’t figure out where you watch the entire film. it ain’t on youtube or amazon.com that i could find.
and oh, how brilliant: he did say that alternative communities must include all of the oppressed, including the indigenous, and other disposable rabble. thing is, automation is on the rise rise rise, including robots, so the surplus labor will only get worse.
That the deskilled or never skilled are “surplus labor” is a wishful fantasy from more open times. They are now disposable, as their surplus labor would bankrupt nature.
Not long ago, it was envisioned that, when the earth becomes automatic, the disposable people could be liberated artists. Cultural crapitalists would then extract surplus in the currency of lives.
Crapitalist pessimists, however, had a darker vision of surplus extraction from the disposable …
In this culture of hypocrisy, the oracular must be whispered.
Well, well, well. Jury nullification is still alive and well in North Carolina. And it even has some black and Hispanic converts (love to hear their self-talk calculating the pros and cons of convicting a police officer).
Bernie is taking a second swing through South Carolina and taking his new BFF Cornel West with him. Columbia again. Florence (another city in Jim Clyburn’s district) and Rock Hill (just to the northwest of Jim Clyburn’s district but in the Charlotte TV market area that cover s a good bit of borderland). Florence is its own TV market that straddles the area between Charlotte and Charleston. The media can’t claim that Bernie is not paying attention to black people on this trip. The carnival continues.
Trump’s white shoes are not lost on the “Make America White Again” in the Carolinas.
My normally sane former classmates are sending me UKIP propaganda about fear the mooslim birthrate in Europe….they’re coming to kill us all. I forgot my manners and called them out on their fascism; mentioned that that sort of propaganda hadn’t been seen in Europe for 80 years.
My otherwise sane cousin copied across a Birgitte Gabriel event against the Iran agreement starring Cruz, Huckabee, and one of the other GOP candidate. Had not heard of Gabriel before; wow, is she a piece of political propaganda work. Lebanese family victim of their civil war. Affilated with Jim Hagee, another piece of religio-political work. Of course all of these email and Facebook circulations to my friends and relatives are networked through their friendly church members and are the means by which Hagee and Gabriel support themselves off the loose money of elders.
I suspect that the social media garbage rate will increase dramatically as the US political campaign cranks up (it’s not really started yet; wait until next February and then next October).
Another book recommendation. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. The source of the immigrant nonsense (the Missouri Compromise, which drove Southerners, including Thomas Jefferson age 77, to lust for Texas, Alta California, New Spain — all current centers of Hispanic population with rabid bigot politicians); the source of evangelicalism (Lyman Beecher the originator of the temperance movement and grandfather of the abolition movement through Harriet and Henry Ward and Charles Finney, early tent revivalist, president of Oberlin College and a key station of the Underground Railroad). These guys invented the tactics of one strain of movemental politics in the US during the 1820s-1840s even as the labor movement was beginning to emerge in Lowell.
Howe’s narrative of Denmark Vesey sounds like hysteria cut down a more peaceful and systematic organizers whose following had gotten a little to large for the anxieties of white Charlestonians.
Altogether excellent straightforward, well-footnoted historian of a period of history much shortchanged in the jump from Revolution to Civil War. A period that has many similarities to our own in its politics.
Some of the #blacklivesmatter people are beginning to take on discrimination in prenatal and hospital delivery care, which kills women of color and creates some of the disabilities that consign children of color to special education classes before they are pipelined to prison. A welcome additional focus on post-Obamacare healthcare failures.
It seems that cops commit suicide at three times the rate that homicide kills them. I wish there was some statistic that separated out homicide by spouse from homicide by person they don’t know while on duty. I think the cop heroes walls are likely to be overdone in order to gain sympathy for brutality. Lord knows there certainly is a huge warrior death cult surrounding them even as cities screw them on salary and benefits.
explain jury nullification being alive and well in NC, please?
but lord lurve a duck; brother west barn-storming with the bern. i just checked, and his twit account hasn’t any selfies with him and da bern up. at least rev sekou hasn’t sold out yet. yet. (he’d lol-ed that no one was lookin’ for his endorsement. ;-) what next? he’ll talk bernie into doin’ some catch-and-release arrests in baltimore? ;-)
i’d imagine you might mean the epically odious pastor john hagee of christians united for israel fame? yeah, he’s big at aipac get-togethers, has em put reverb on his mike so he sounds like…either gawd or charleston heston in male nipple movies.
she does sound liie a pip, our brigitte. claims she has a boatload of of msm ‘clients’, as well as Oprah!!!
cool on the hospital protests; i hadn’t heard that. dyett closing, yes, and the hunger strikes. ah, rahm.
re: the book; i’ll have to wait for the movie, but thanks for telling some of the key narratives.
and how nice to see you, stranger. ;-)
Jury nullification is when juries deadlock or acquit purely because “white” or because “cop”. It happened a lot with lynchings.
my (albeit lay understanding) was one again reckoning that: the law wa/is uh ass”, meaning (it may have come via da wiki):
“Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury acquits a defendant, even though the members of the jury may believe that the defendant did the illegal act, yet they don’t believe he should be punished for it. This may occur when members of the jury disagree with the law the defendant has been charged with breaking, or believe that the law should not be applied in that particular case. A jury can similarly unjustly and illegally convict a defendant on the ground of disagreement with an existing law, even if no law is broken (although in jurisdictions with double jeopardy rules, a conviction can be overturned on appeal, but an acquittal cannot).
A jury verdict that is contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it. If a pattern of acquittals develops, however, in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offence, this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment.” yada, yada.
added: but to which cases were you referring?
more news, including a good follow-up to the second killing by police in the OP:
“A Portsmouth, Virginia, police officer was fired and was in custody Thursday after he was indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of an unarmed 18-year-old man in April, police told NBC News.
Officer Stephen D. Rankin, 36, who is white, was also charged with use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in the shooting of William Chapman II, who was black. Chapman, who was shot in the face and the chest, had no alcohol or drugs in his system, and his pockets had been turned inside out, an autopsy found.’ [snip]
“A grand jury cleared Rankin of the 2011 fatal shooting of another unarmed man, Kirill Denyakin, a Kazakhstani national. In a civil suit brought by Denyakin’s estate, Rankin testified that Denyakin charged him and refused to take his hand out of his pants, court records show.
Rankin shot Denyakin 11 times, according to records on file with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A civil jury and the appeals court both found for Rankin after evidence showed that Denyakin had almost three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood and had a history of making violent threats.”
Failure.to.obey.
Too bloody sad. Mohamed Ibrahim, 28, was killed in an officer-involved shooting Sunday (Sept. 6) night.
“”I just had a weird feeling, and I followed the cop cars,” Ibrahim said. “When I got there, all I could see was people shouting ‘They shot him 30 times. They shot him 30 times.'”
The oldest sibling, Mohamed Ibrahim was a diagnosed schizophrenic, a fact his family told police when they came to their Shreveport homes looking for him Sunday evening. “I told them that he was schizophrenic, and they assured us that when they got him, they would call us so they could deescalate the situation,” the younger brother said.”