(I’m not sure how I’d missed this travesty of justice; for a time I’d stick his accursed name into a search bar, as I do ‘Tamir Rice’. My thanks to Popular Resistance for featuring it.)
Time.com, Oct. 30: ‘Judge Grants Texas Cop Immunity Over Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Black Man’
“Manslaughter charges against a Texas cop who shot and killed an unarmed black man have been dropped by a federal judge, after he ruled that the police officer had federal immunity at the time because of his work with the FBI.
Charles Kleinert, a former Austin police detective who also worked for the FBI, killed 32-year-old Larry Jackson Jr. after shooting him in the neck following a chase in Texas on July 26, 2013. Kleinert was initially indicted on manslaughter charges by a Texas grand jury for the crime. However, on June 26, 2015, he filed a motion to dismiss the indictment.”
The article doesn’t get too much of the story right from then on, except for quoting a bit of District Judge Lee Yeakel’s Memorandum ‘Opinion’ and order to dismiss the case.
“Judge Yeakel ruled Thursday that Kleinert was protected by the supremacy clause in the Constitution, designed to defend federal officers from prosecution while on duty, and that Texas courts had no jurisdiction over his case. Texas prosecutors had initially stated that Kleinert was acting as an Austin police officer, not a federal officer, when he killed Jackson.
According to Austin’s local Fox affiliate TV station, the judge also said that the gunshot Kleinert fired, fatally wounding Jackson, was unintentional.”
Well, that last ‘opinion’ is some hooey, given the facts; but here’s some of the story as I tried to keep track of it starting last August, when KKKleinert had been indicted for manslaughter, not murder, as was clearly the case. Actually, it was an execution.
On July 26, 2013, police were investigating a robbery at the Benchmark Bank during business hours. When Larry Eugene Jackson, Jr. tried to enter the bank, he discovered the doors were locked. As it turned out, Dicktective Kleinert was at the Austin bank reviewing camera footage after an earlier bank robbery. Jackson was reported to have given a false name to the bank manager when he was let in, and he may have had fake ID with him, which led to the supposition that he was there to cash a forged check. One story says that he left the bank then, but came back again later. Kleinert went outside, allegedly smelling a rat, and soon after a verbal confrontation with him, Jackson fled on foot. Apparently he ran after the after the ‘suspect’, but falling behind, he commandeered a citizen’s car in the process, identifying himself to the driver as APD, and telling her that Jackson posed no threat. When they spotted Larry under a nearby bridge, he exited the commandeered car, which left the scene. Under the bridge, Jackson and Kleinert ‘struggled’, and according to SocialistWorker.org, Kleinert:
“pursued Jackson and beat him, breaking his ribs and perforating his colon. He then placed his gun to the back of Larry’s neck and pulled the trigger.”
When Jackson’s autopsy results were finally released, they showed that he was on his knees when Kleinert shot him through the base of his skull, and the bullet exited his mouth. The cop’s gun muzzle left an impression on his neck.
Kleinert claimed that it was all a big accident, and that his gun discharged when he lost his balance and fell. Or some such nonsense.
You can hear the reporter’s coverage of Kleinert’s despicable boo-hooing in court here.
Jackson’s family filed a wrongful death suit, and in August of 2014, the city of Austin awarded his three children $1.25 million in what would likely be an admission that KKKleinert was guilty of murder. A second suit on behalf of Larry’s parents was still pending at the time.
But wait: Time didn’t report the best parts of the Judge’s ‘opinions’; I also found this:
“The court finds and concludes that the State has failed to provide any evidence that raises a genuine issue of fact that Kleinert’s belief in the propriety of his conduct was objectively unreasonable.
Jackson fled from Kleinert at the bank. After Kleinert caught up to Jackson, Jackson failed to comply with Kleinert’s oral commands, despite the fact that Kleinert had his firearm drawn and pointed at Jackson.
Kleinert, in a split-second decision, chased Jackson, caught up to Jackson, and the two engaged in a struggle. Despite Kleinert holding Jackson by the t-shirt, Jackson continued to resist.
As Kleinert had his weapon drawn, he could not holster his firearm without letting go of Jackson. Kleinert hit Jackson twice with two hammer-fist strikes while holding his firearm in the striking hand with his index finger on the slide of the handgun.”
Jackson did not submit. In a third attempt to run away, as Kleinert was about to hit Jackson a third time, Jackson spun around and turned into Kleinert.
At that moment Kleinert’s firearm discharged. It is uncontroverted that the gunshot was a “sympathetic discharge,” meaning that the gunshot was not an intentional discharge.”
Ah, yes; one other thing Time probably got right was this quote from Adam Loewy, the family’s attorney (via the Guardian):
“It is one of the most horrendous moments in the history of civil rights in this country.”
His family is planning to appeal the egregious decision. A manslaughter conviction could have earned Kleinert from two to twenty years in prison.
on edit, and in the ‘utterly predictable’ category:
http://revolution-news.com/officers-who-shot-and-killed-kajieme-powell-will-not-face-charges/
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
An interesting decision on a couple of levels but generally it reaffirms my opinion that the repression and killing of Black men and women is not a local ‘training’ or bad apple phenomenon but a structural integrated part of our system, top to bottom.
This killing happened before the public uproar, demonstrations and national exposure of these cases yet nothing of substance has or will be done to even slow the killing except some lame PR drivel including that from the Liberal presidential candidates.
I’m not certain but if Kleinert was acting as a FBI agent, who are not Cops, he had no reason to become involved in a petty local crime. This may be a new and useful defense because many Cops receive FBI training and may now be considered Junior G-Men legally. The Blood-Money paid to these victim’s families is never an admission of guilt, just as in other authoritarian Third World Countries it merely buys acquiescence from the subjugated community.
i think you’re right about it being baked in structurally, and it’s not clear to me what will stop it. the deaths ‘in custody’ seem to be growing, but it may just be my bias. and as more videos surface that completely contradict police lies, the police are delegitimized further.
from reports, kleinert was simply a member of some task force that was loosely affiliated with the fbi, but his attorneys ran with it, got the trial moved to federal court in april, iirc. but wow: the Judge Travesty wanted to buy it all.
i guess i was going with what adam loewy had said when the city settled the first family civil suit, but maybe that was by the way of PR, too. i went and found it again:
“The settlement marks a record payout by the city. We view this as an admission of excessive force. This kind of settlement would not be approved if the council felt the officer was at all justified in the shooting.”
i added kajeime powell’s killers won’t be prosecuted, either, on update. chicken-shit cops, easier to kill even from that distance.
re: drivel from candidates, yes. which was what was so disheartening about this op-ed of glen ford’s. yeah, yeah, i know you think the young uns know what they’re doin’, and the old ‘patriarchal fogie’s and panthers oughtta stfu. but seeing them get sucked into the dem establishment depresses me.
‘Garza vs. McKesson: The Great Debate Over How the Democratic Party Will Liberate Black People’, by Glen Ford at OpedNews.com
“One side wants the Democrats to sponsor a town hall meeting on racial justice, the other prefers that the Party hold a Black issues oriented debate. Both #BlackLivesMatter and Campaign Zero have earned semi-official status as Democratic Party affiliates. The question is: Who is taking care of the “movement”?
oh, and protests were going on in ABQ when kleinert assassinated jackson, but not so much national news as i remember it.
I would never tell the old rascals such as Glenn to STFU but would ask them to examine their Father Knows Best attitudes and think more about what they say and insinuate and why they still carry this destructive, arrogant, patriarchal baggage.
Honest critiques of BLM and especially the completely separate Campaign Zero should be applauded but this conflation and guilt by association is getting repetitive and looking pathetic. It’s beginning to smell like a COINTELPRO or McCarthy like attack. My opinion would change if any of these Women embraced the Democrats but there is no indication of that happening.
I don’t see any submission by BLM to the DNC in their demand for the candidates to jump rope in a debate where they would be required to state and defend their proposals and I don’t think the women of BLM stated they would join or support any candidate after the debate whatever the rhetoric they produce.
Campaign Zero is and always has been, in the DNC bag.
yes, your past verbiage critiquing ford was less than ‘stfu’, and the same for your critique of the author/historian of the black communist movement in the ’30s, when asked by lazare or someone to offer any advice, etc.
but COINTELPRO is far over the top to me. yes, the three women have been emphatic about not endorsing candidates, but requesting a debate among dems for a ‘deeper discussion’ with the onus on candidates seems to reflect some alliance to dems. i don’t recall them asking for the green candidate/s to be invited, but then it’s been days since i watched the video.
(turns out one can’t just link to one of perry’s shows; how odd is that?, and few are on youtube.)
they’ve seriously updated their website, and it’s very good. it turns out that the women look askance at campaign zero, contra my memory that they’d also embraced it on twitter. but this is what one of their authors wrote, make of it what you will:
“Recently the Democratic National Committee endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement. The BLM network swiftly rejected that endorsement. While voting certainly matters, particularly in local municipalities like Ferguson, movement members are clear that voting for policies and politicians whose ultimate goal is to maintain a rotten and unjust system is counterproductive. Thus the movement cares about national politics, and many participants have sought to make presidential candidates responsive to their political concerns. However, there is deep skepticism about whether the American system is salvageable, because it is so deeply rooted in ideas of racial caste. In this regard, the BLM movement, together with the Occupy movement of years past, is causing a resurgence of a viable, visible, and vocal (black) left in national politics. Moving some issues of import onto the 2016 election agenda should therefore be viewed as a tactic, not a goal. The goal is freedom and safety for all black lives. And that goal is much bigger than one election.”
http://blacklivesmatter.com/post/11-major-misconceptions-about-the-black-lives-matter-movement/
now they’ve rightfully noted that it’s time for lgbt women of color to be in the front of black movements, and it was interesting to me to see the hundreds of thousands who went to deecee with farrakhan, a male chauvinist if there ever was one. ;-)
tomorrow is the ‘black is back coalition’ gathering in deecee; it will be interesting to see what that’s like, who’s there, and what issues and remedies are touted. more like ‘black control of black community policing’? (or however it went…) but i do agree with ford that the de facto leaders of the BLM don’t want to challenge power so much. yeah, i know they admit they’re only feeling their way along. that they have rejected respectability politics is wonderful, and i hope these calls for ‘debates’ is not a harbinger of change in that regard.
“there is deep skepticism about whether the American system is salvageable, because it is so deeply rooted in ideas of racial caste. […] The goal is freedom and safety for all black lives.”
It’s sort of a black bougie libertarianism, the “open society” children of Soros. They have the integrity to demand “freedom and safety for all” but cannot admit (and entertain) that the unsalvageability of the American system is rooted in exploitation … and that they themselves are still being exploited for the impossible “open society”, as conceived (if it is not a fraud itself).
The tactics Ford is using again BLM seem to resemble many of the tactics used against the Panthers by the government, discredit through conflation, insinuations about personal gain, projection of intent, but the McCarthy like, Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Democrat Party, tone of his attack is telling.
I doubt many of the young people in BLM read or listen to BAR but these attacks give other people support for their attacks on BLM.
The phony and opportunistic adoption of BLM by the DNC was recognized for what it was and immediately rejected. The demand for a debate will probably be rejected but many people criticized BLM for not making demands.
Ford certainly knows the futility of Black people challenging power at least openly, does he want them to martyr themselves to mirror the Panther’s failure and destruction?
“Ford certainly knows the futility of Black people challenging power at least openly, does he want them to martyr themselves to mirror the Panther’s failure and destruction?”
Ridiculous. Ford does not speak to black people alone. Neither does Ford push separatism or pan-africanism.
Besides, Malcom was murdered just after he realized that Black Power was reactionary. Did you learn your lessons, “comrade” “anarchist”?
i guess i don’t see him going HUAC on them, but we certainly don’t need to agree on it. and no, i didn’t know of those particular tactics having been used on the panthers, but i do know some of the murders by cops of amadou diallo, fred hampton, mark clark, and others.
i will note that ford picked up drew franklin’s piece on deray and the others and TFA. and BAR is often broken, as is their commenting software, both registering and logging in. they had an address for a time to send email if you couldn’t get in any longer, but it’s all so much hassle.
yes, the ‘not making demands’ grew old, especially as the ferguson action team had a good list up way ahead of ‘operation zero’. but so many of the black lives/social justice twit accounts i used to check in with (maybe most, actually) are going fult-tilt dem presidential politics, as if some candidate’s spiel is gonna make their lives better just by uttering the right campaign words. if obama didn’t teach them (or any of us) anything…
“hillary just did a gun control add!” “hillary won’t take any more millions from the ACA!” “bernie just introduce a bill to legalize cannabis!”
but as far as ford wanting them to risk their lives, i dunno. but i did look around on the blackIsbackcoalitions twitter thang, clicked into some facebook pages linked, and did find:
#BlackPowerMatters
#BlkCommunityCtrlOfPolice
and something about ending the incarceration state.i remember posting the video of ford speaking on that second issue, but…it wasn’t all that enticing or realistic, i’d thought.
well, we’ll see tomorrow, and what the conference the next day brings.
Ford:
How will the doofuses do it if they can’t acknowledge, yeah, must suppress, this goal?
from this diary, 5/13/2015, this: is it the same? mine eyes have reached their sell-by date today, and there are other several other propositions of interest, as well:
“And from From Glen Ford:
“If the Black Lives Matter mobilization is to sustain itself – if it is to go beyond protests against the latest police atrocity and become a full-fledged movement – it must embrace the principle of Black community control of the police. The entire history of the United States screams out that Black people must define and control the processes by which justice is meted out in their own communities. If there is one historical truth that is indisputable in America, it is that Black people have never gotten justice from the U.S. criminal justice system – which is why one out of every eight prison inmates on planet Earth is a Black American.
In the nearly half century since the Black Panther Party described the police as an army of occupation in Black America, we have learned the very painful lesson that inclusion of large numbers of Blacks among the ranks of the police does not change the nature of the occupation. Nor does the naming of Black police chiefs, or the election of Black mayors and city councils – and certainly not the election of a Black corporate president. In fact, the Mass Black Incarceration regime – what Michelle Alexander calls the “New Jim Crow” – gains legitimacy through diversity in hiring and the collaboration of the servile Black political class. Black cops get jobs, but people get no justice, because the mission of the police remains the same: to contain, control and terrorize the Black community. That’s their job. And that will remain the mission of policing in the Black community until the community seizes control of the police.”
He guides readers to the Black Is Back Coalition, and Omali Yeshitayla, and their upcoming conference in St. Louis on April 18 and 19.”
Wendy, I searched this BIBC and it appears to be about six people directing the development of an old style vertical, hierarchical Party/political structure which may be why it appeals to Ford who may be frightened by the Anarchist inspired non-structure of BLM.
The ‘ Community control of police’ meme sounds quite radical but neither Glenn nor the BIBC explain what it actually means or how it would be organized. There is no real organized Black Community to control the police and would it be the same police who now oppress that community? The Police Forces operating in the US today have the power and backing of the PTB to ignore or deflect the local attempts of politicians or organized groups even outside the Black community to gain any control of their operations, Albuquerque is just one example. Even the weak reformist Federal mandates are soon outmaneuvered or ignored.
BIBC seems to be offering that missing Black Community structure either directly or through affiliates and talks of gaining control of the money that funds the Police System to institute their style hierarchy over these Black communities with good intentions but no real plan of action.
The PTB will never give their control or the money of their Occupying Forces away especially to some Commie sounding anti-imperialist revolutionaries and taking that control is a whole nother ballgame.
i’d rather remembered that bibc wasn’t all that new, but yes, it is a small group. now i’m not sure what you mean by ‘the Anarchist inspired non-structure of BLM’, but yes, there is a loose confederation of related groups, certainly. and few get on msnbc as ‘leaders’.
but no, what one reads on this downloadable pdf on their website is an ‘ain’t ever gonna happen in a million years’ suggestion, especially this particular part:
“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Council of the City of _____ , that the City of ___, using all the power at its command, will facilitate the democratic process to establish a Black Community Control of Police Commission that will be elected by black people within the City of _____and be authorized to assume full responsibility and authority
for policing the black community, with the power to hire, fire, set standards, determine training and establish the budget for carrying out its mission of Black Community Control of the Police.”
Right. i looked around to see if there were any coverage of their rally yesterday, and found the one from last year. pathetically small. but finally some news showed up on their twitter account: it rained, so they moved into the conference space at howard university. so…dunno how many attended, or will attend today’s conference, but it may not show a lot of the power they hoped to convey. i’d still like to know what their “or else” amounts to.
one thing i’m sincerely glad the group gets is that demanding black police chiefs, cops, and whatnot is ridiculous on the face of it, especially given that the power to change a lot of this resides with city managers. O! what a failure the ‘new’ citizen review board in abq is! and remember that the federal monitor held one on one meetings with some of the city council members? Bad form, pan!
(oh, and here i’m just no-caps-wendy, or wendye, smile)
Did you see the crescent moon, Venus, Jup eastern alignment early this or yesterday morning?
What’s with the no caps wendy? I didn’t think anyone was confusing you with the Tehana Wendy D.
This BIBC might be surprised by what the results of an election might be if it was ever allowed. Many people accept security with repression and are fearful of change and would rather someone else take care of the problems. Notice how many people, when having problems with a family member, don’t call a preacher, family member or friend to help but call the enforcers, knowing and having seen how that kind of encounter can and often does end.
What bothers me most about this proposal is that it accepts the concept of maintaining a Police Force and will continue to attract people who are conditioned and inclined to exercise militaristic, authoritarian Policing.
Without a USSR to make worldwide propaganda gains exposing the class and racial government repression in Amerika there is little incentive for the PTB to change their effective and useful treatment of minorities. That is why all we see is PR smokescreens and rapid returns to BAU.
with the time change, i can’t see them altogether from the house now, since they’ve moved so far from the moon. but oh my, i did love that celestial display earlier! and now orion rises over menefee mountain just before bed, and he’s one of my faves. oooof, the milky way moved so much this month, too.
no caps: i) an e.e. cummings fetish ii) on accounta when i joined fdl only wendy(nospace, no caps)davis was permitted. this is a wordpress site, as well, so i could only tweak my initial screen name.
by now i’m just plain wd to most of my e-friends. typing’s tough enough without caps!
yes, i can see your points about their seeming to want to have police at all, but it’s also possible that they believe that certain boards would restrict them mightily. but in any event, they finally showed a photo from the conference; hardly anyone is there. wonder if ford will use his time on with paul jay on tuesday to talk about it? and yes, their twit account had a soundcloud or whatever that indicated they’ve held the rally since 2009; hasn’t seemed to catch on,
I have to wonder what is going down when GF highlights and promotes a group such as BIBC, 6yrs old and going nowhere, while attacking BLM who were almost immediately declared ‘Enemies of the State’ and who have a rather large young people base even if it is varied and somewhat confusing.
I don’t have great expectations for BLM but any group that makes the USG Most Unwanted List will get my support.