A Trial

I am not watching George Floyd’s trial, I had already made my mind up about his death a year ago. It was not murder as defined by law but it was manslaughter. Derek Chauvin did not know that at the time Mr. Floyd was positive for Covid, which we now know is a lung disorder that affects one’s ability to breathe. Added to that Mr. Floyd was on drugs which also may have contributed to his ability to breathe well. Then add the knee of a Cop to the neck of a man supine on the ground for over 11 minutes, you have lead him to take his last breath regardless. The neglect and abuse came when he begged for his life and was ignored, in fact we may never know if Chauvin at those moments just put a little more pressure on that neck as Floyd took those last fateful breaths as a camera cannot capture that. We know now that Chauvin explained that to the passer by’s who took video and spoke to the Officers, one an EMT that understood how to save lives and watched one expire despite her efforts to somehow change this deadly encounter.

All of the witnesses have expressed immense emotion and a quiet rage that given what they witnessed is justified, the excuse that they expressed outrage is seemingly the explanation, if not the defense, for why Chauvin just kneeled there a little longer, and maybe a little harder as to justify the show. Again we will never know those last moments of thought that passed Mr. Floyd or through Officer Chauvin’s mind that day as they are gone like a breath in the wind.

I am not sure what the outcome will be but then again this Jury is definitely more diverse and racially composed than others that have been in similar situations so we hope they can collectively use the information presented in the trial to come to a conclusive and unanimous decision. I know I made up my mind already and little will change that.

But what I have found interesting is the lies by Cup Foods to the media and now the witnesses and the employee that day who took that counterfeit 20. And that is what I perhaps find as the most controversial and the most disturbing that it was a child who did nothing wrong, was sent to fix it and it led to the fateful call over what was over nothing. The same thing that led to Michael Brown in Ferguson, a pack of smokes that were less than 10 bucks. And the same with Eric Garner in Staten Island selling loose smokes for a buck near a bodega that also sold cigarettes and did not want the competition or the activity as it was near a park that often was the site for selling much harder stuff. As of today, little has changed on that fateful street.

And this is what the Washington Post had to say about Garner’s death:

The more than 20 hours of trial testimony — together with previous public accounts of the incident — permit a comprehensive and detailed examination of Garner’s death, one of the most consequential events in the 174-year history of the NYPD and a pivotal flash point in what would become the Black Lives Matter movement.

That examination reveals how a mundane interaction between a black man and white police officers can quickly devolve, and how split-second decisions can alter the outcomes of such encounters. Five years later, it also sheds light on the extraordinary difficulty of holding police to account for deadly violence — even when the death is captured on camera and witnessed by the world.

In the end, a case that sparked a national reckoning over race and justice will reach its conclusion in a largely semantic inquiry about police takedown tactics.

And with that we are here today. Not a lot has changed in the years since Garner’s death, Brown’s death or will with Floyd’s death. As noted earlier the murder’s by Cops this year fell from 1,000 to 985. A 15 drop in body count. I am sure that is more pandemic related than actual behavioral/policy changes.

But what again is noted is that these owners of Bodega’s that set up businesses in minority neighborhoods are not members of the same community, they have distinct policies in place and they don’t hire members of said community to work in them. That may be the first step needed to build bridges not burn them down.

But as we heard the testimony of the clerk whom the owner/manager said in the Times interview that he did not know, had sent him away was another lie. This is from the New York Times

In an interview, Mr. Abumayyaleh provided new details of the moments before Mr. Floyd’s fatal encounter with four Minneapolis Police officers, saying that another man had tried to use a fake $20 bill minutes before Mr. Floyd walked into the store.

The first man handed the bill to an older employee who had worked at the shop for several years and used a special marker to determine that the bill was counterfeit, Mr. Abumayyaleh said. The employee refused the sale and handed the bill back to the man, who left.Reconstruction-Era Violence The Equal Justice Initiative has documented a rate of killing in the period following the Civil War that was far higher than the decades that followed.

A few minutes later, Mr. Floyd walked in and gave a $20 bill to a teenage clerk, who did not immediately recognize the bill as fake. After a machine scan determined that the bill was counterfeit, the young clerk followed Mr. Floyd outside, asking him to return the items he had bought, but he refused, according to a transcript of the clerk’s call to 911.

“He’s only been in the States for about a year,” Mr. Abumayyaleh said of the teenage clerk, who is no longer working at the store. “It’s his first time probably ever calling the police.”

Mr. Abumayyaleh, who is Palestinian-American and has spent all of his 35 years in Minneapolis, said he had left the store about three hours before the killing. It had been a busy day, like most Mondays, Mr. Abumayyaleh recalled, but he was used to that. The store had always been in his family, and by age 10, he was helping out behind the counter. By 15, he was working there full time.

That night, just after 8 p.m., an employee called Mr. Abumayyaleh, crying and screaming, saying, “they’re killing him,” he recalled. He said he told the employee to record the scene and “to call the police on the police.”

Since then, Mr. Abumayyaleh said, he has been bombarded with hateful messages. He asked a member of a local violence prevention group to serve as a spokesman and issued a public statement condemning Mr. Floyd’s killing and saying that the store supported the protesters and shared their rage.

Things have been even worse for the teenage clerk, Mr. Abumayyaleh said, describing the aftermath as “a nightmare.” He also said that Cup Foods has been rethinking when its workers should call the police. Mr. Abumayyaleh said they will now only call 911 to report violence.

Mr. Floyd’s death was not the first time that Cup Foods has been drawn into a killing that drew national scrutiny.

When a 17-year-old boy went on trial for the 2002 killing of an 11-year-old girl, he insisted he was at Cup Foods and not at the scene of the crime. Senator Amy Klobuchar was the district attorney in Hennepin County who oversaw the first prosecution of the teenager, Myon Burrell, and an investigation by The Associated Press raised serious questions about the verdict and shadowed her presidential campaign.

Investigators never followed up with two people whom Mr. Burrell said he was with at Cup Foods during or following the shooting. Both told The A.P. they were with him.

Since the killing of Mr. Floyd, several residents have said they support the store and its owners. On Monday, Kendrick White, 26, arrived at the store to connect with some friends, something he has done for years.

“You see brothers, sisters, cousins, people from the neighborhood,” Mr. White said. “There are people who grew up here who have been coming here their whole lives.”

But everything had changed. The streets were barricaded off, and many nearby businesses were still closed. Visitors snapped photos as they wandered around the memorials and wilting flowers.

“We respect the fight, but it’s emotionally draining for those of us who have been in the heart of it,” said Ebony Wright, 38, who lives not a block away from the store and has been kept awake by people shouting into megaphones and playing music from speakers. “People who come down here don’t realize that there are people who actually stay here.”

So as you read the portion highlighted there are some discrepancies I noted in the testimony of the clerk.

In other emotional testimony, prosecutors for the first time detailed the incident that led to Floyd’s arrest and eventually his death — including security video from inside Cup Foods, the market where an employee called 911 to report the passing of a counterfeit $20 bill that resulted in officers responding to the scene.

Christopher Martin, 19, a cashier at the time, recalled how Floyd had come into the store and appeared to be “high” but functional. The surveillance video presented in court showed Floyd, dressed in a black tank top and pants, casually walking around the store with a banana.

Floyd is shown fiddling with his pockets and shifting back and forth in stretch-like movements as he interacts with two people in the store, including Morries Lester Hall — a friend who was a passenger in the car he was driving that day.

Martin testified that Floyd purchased a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that he believed to be fake because of its blue tint. Under store policy, employees who are found to have accepted counterfeit bills have their pay docked for the amount, Martin said, but he testified that he initially considered putting the cost on his “tab” as a favor to Floyd

He said a previous customer had tried to pass a fake $20 bill in an effort to “get over,” but he didn’t think that was Floyd’s intention.

“I thought that George didn’t really know that it was a fake bill,” Martin testified. “I thought I’d be doing him a favor.”

But Martin said he raised the issue with a manager who ordered him to go outside to where Floyd was sitting in a parked car and ask him to come back inside the store. When Floyd did not do so, another employee called 911 to report the counterfeit bill — a fateful call that would lead to the 46-year-old’s death.

Martin, who quit his job after Floyd’s death because he said he didn’t feel “safe,” recalled returning to work and noticing a commotion outside. Leaving the market to investigate, he found Floyd restrained, “motionless, limp” with Chauvin’s knee “resting” on the man’s neck.

Martin, who lived upstairs from Cup Foods, said he called his mother and told her not to come outside, and then he began filming the scene — a video he said he later deleted after watching Floyd’s body loaded into the ambulance that drove the opposite direction from the closest hospital, leading him to realize Floyd was probably dead.

Martin told the jury he felt “guilt” over Floyd’s death. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” he said.

So we have the idea that racism, stereotyping and discrimination is a white-black thing. Uh no. Many of the assaults on Asians here in New York are from Black individuals. And that history is often one well known and documented. We rule by making sure all marginalized groups keep the hate going and it works. Again racism and hate are not owned by one group of folk; however, it’s not called White Supremacy for nothing! What it is is poverty and the faux meritocracy nonsense that we continue to spout as a type of egalitarian notion of American prosperity. Many members of the Asian community can assure you that there is an economic divide there that parallels the wider society. But then again who is Asian? And what does that mean? Again African? What does that mean? We are not of one color, but one of many. And with that comes the confusion about Cup Foods or the Ferguson Market where Michael Brown took a pack of smokes. These are the markets and stores that cut across the landscape, often owned by faces of color and largely shopped by them. They are cornerstones of small businesses and have found themselves targeted by Police and by thieves, the pandemic may literally be the death of many. But that many bodegas do sell drugs it does make one ask, did Michael Brown exchange pot for smokes and in turn who called the Police and why? Oh wait they didn’t. Brown was stopped for failing to walk on a sidewalk. So no there was no robbery or crime.

We don’t know the story until we know the story and even people lie to protect their own interests, videos show a picture but they don’t always tell the story, they show the event and without audio we have to fill in the blanks. The story of Floyd is still occurring. Who were his friends that day in the vehicle with him? Will they testify? Why not? Again this is never going to be a full accounting or recounting of the events as even witnesses have shared how they felt and what they saw. A 16 year old girl, a 19 year old boy. A EMT, a MMA fighter and they all share one thing – shame and anger as you can do nothing regardless when you are in the loop of the system. Once a Police man has decided you are the criminal, his knee is on your neck, metaphorically or not. They just manage to do it to more men of color than most. And that is due to opportunity. Men and boys who don’t have jobs, or homes or places to be and income to earn so they are just there trying to make it work, and sometimes it doesn’t to fatal ends. And those are not always by cops but it they just do it with the law and the protections they offer. Must be nice to be a Cop.

Ferguson Legacy

The other day I listened to the Sam Harris podcast (he is a famous Atheist) who had struggled with what to say about the current unrest regarding George Floyd’s death at the hands of cops.  Mr. Floyd is not the first nor the last and the deaths keep coming as it is already half the year and it is clear that law enforcement want to hit their annual count again this year despite it all.   I cannot stress enough if you have not reviewed the Washington Post/Guardian data base on annual deaths at the hands of police then you should. 

What seems to be of issue is the nature of the arrest and what led up to the conflict that ended up with the individuals arrest. Well we know that close to 90% of them are wellness checks when an individual calls law enforcement to aid with a mental health issue, either they or someone they have witnessed is acting strangely or seems suicidal and needs an intervention.  Just the kind of people you need in that are a couple of cops with guns and no mental health training what.so.ever. 

When Vanderbilt called the Police to do a “wellness” check on me after my rant four days earlier, actually on a Thursday and it was now Tuesday I found that bizarre given that if I was going to off myself wouldn’t I and how would they know? They had no warrant and it was in fact four days with no calls to the Police about hearing gun shots from neighbors so again what the flying fuck. When I witnessed this last year in the Vanderbilt main floor reception with a man who was having a meltdown I found that odd that the Police were called to intervene.  He was leaving they tasered and arrested him for threatening to kill himself. All of this in a hospital with witnesses and in fact a staff that undoubtedly had some mental health experience somewhere in the building.  Okay then.

What had me worried when the Cops showed up at my door was that only two days earlier the local Police were called on a wellness check as a woman has parked her car by the Cumberland threatening to drive into the river and when she attempted to do just that the two Cops jumped in to “save her” and in turn one was killed by the current and drowned and irony she lived to be later charged with vehicular manslaughter and maybe even a DUI.  Okay then.

Here is what I think.. what the flying fuck were they thinking not calling for an EMT or Fire Department should anything go wrong as they are trained rescue teams.  (Again we have problems there as well as they are often called on many issues often relating to homeless issues that are not about fires and EMS and they in turn go right to Cops to arrest and prosecute the same)  Again follow the money when it comes to Criminal Justice. 

The numerous stories of individuals who have taken a mental health break only to be killed is significant. There was a period of time where the phrase “suicide by cop” was commonplace in the vernacular.  Funny their own website advocates that it can be handled without lethal force. But again what if proper medical mental health people been on the scene?  Again hindsight is 20 20 and we cannot see clearly here when it comes to lionizing the Police. The Cop who drowned was lauded for days in Nashville to the point I thought did a head of state die?  I will be honest I said the same regarding George Floyd not to diminish his death, a young man died a week before his death, another the same day, Breonna Taylor three weeks before, and since and even before then there have been more. This is America.  You would think that at this point Cops sitting around spraying Protestors and doing nothing to looters might have said, “We need to stop this shit.” But nope. 

As I listened to Mr. Harris he cited a study about gun violence and the reasons Cops are trigger happy, a study that has been brought into question as again even the research and “investigations” into these shootings are plagued with bias and deception as that is the the thin blue line to protect one’s own. Cops who have complained about other Officers and their behavior on duty have been met with resistance and often terminated, just ask this Officer.   So white folks are distressed but then again they are bored, hate Trump and this may be some fallback to the whole Covid lockdown so while I laud their efforts few seem to know history, do their homework and actually know real black and brown people, have never had a serious encounter with Police or the Justice system and yet guess what?  Without them this won’t change.  

Again we will never know what transpired on the streets of Ferguson the day of Michael Brown’s fatal encounter; however, I do know it was over cigarettes. The same with Eric Garner  and with George Floyd it appears that was what he purchased with the “counterfeit” $20 that led the clerk to call the Police.  Wow just wow, death over a criminal misdemeanor.   The same with Mr. Brooks a DUI. All of them were needless if not stupid and could have been handled better and that comes from training and education and building community support and connections.  Fuck that, this is how the money is made bitches! 

Nothing has changed’: Ferguson grapples with legacy in wake of Floyd protests

 The Washington Post)
By Annie Gowen
June 15, 2020

FERGUSON. Mo. — Kayla Reed marched on these streets for weeks after a white police officer fatally shot unarmed black teen Michael Brown Jr. nearly six years ago. When she returned in recent days to protest the death of George Floyd, the black man who died after Minneapolis officers held him down for nearly nine minutes, she had a painful sense of deja vu.

The same helicopters buzzed overhead, the same police officers clutched shields and batons, the same chants of “No justice, no peace” filled the air. When riot officers draped in heavy body armor lined up in front of the town’s police department, Reed knew she had to leave. She couldn’t bear to watch violence erupt again.

“It feels too familiar to me,” said Reed, 30, a well-known activist.

After Brown’s death galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement in this St. Louis suburb in 2014, protesters’ demands for policing reform made the city’s name synonymous with the cause of racial justice. Over the intervening years, Ferguson has seen some change.

Four of the six City Council members are black, compared to just one six years ago. A black police chief now leads a more racially diverse department, whose rank-and-file officers wear body cameras. The city — once accused of harassing its black residents with tickets and fines to fill its coffers — now collects far less in revenue this way than it once did.

And this month, voters made history by electing the city’s first black mayor.

Yet residents say that a deeply ingrained racism still exists in Ferguson, that black neighborhoods are still overpoliced, and that even with the more diverse leadership, remnants of the old guard remain.

They say the city has been slow to implement changes that are part of a U.S. Justice Department consent decree to change discriminatory practices, such as implementing an effective civilian review board and collecting data on police use of force. Much of the economic boost that streamed into the region after Brown’s death flowed toward the whiter, more affluent end of town, a Washington Post analysis in 2018 showed.

Chris Phillips, an activist and filmmaker who once lived in Brown’s apartment complex, said that many Ferguson residents still have anxiety-fueled dealings with local police, and they’ve been airing their grievances at local Floyd protests.

“You still see the same police presence. Nothing has changed as far as that goes. It’s night-and-day different from white, middle-class neighborhoods,” Phillips said. “You’ll see police every quarter to the half-mile patrolling, and people getting stopped. This is basically traumatizing for people, an African American person seeing a cop in their rearview window. That anxiety doesn’t go away.”

Then on June 6, another video surfaced from a neighboring town that showed a white officer ramming an unarmed black suspect with his car, then beating him as he lay in the street. The officer was fired on Wednesday.

Veteran protesters in Ferguson see this latest incident of local police brutality as evidence that systemic racism in the region — one of the most racially segregated in the country — is endemic, and that true change remains elusive.

Nationally, officers have continued to shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people a year since 2014, a Washington Post database shows, and are on track to do so again even during the pandemic. They’ve been filmed using excessive force at rallies across America — and across the street from the White House.

“I think in some ways it’s really inspiring to see so many people out, and black folks understand this moment will have the same legacy of the Ferguson uprising,” Reed said. “But there is a piece of it that’s difficult to process — so much time has passed since Mike Brown was killed and so little has been done.”

The tear gas from the Floyd protests had barely cleared the air and business owners were still boarding up broken windows when the city went to the polls on June 2 and elected Ella Jones the first black mayor of this former sundown town of 21,000 residents.

Jones, 65, a former Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman and pastor, said she was inspired to enter politics after Brown’s death, winning a seat on the council in 2015. She earlier ran for mayor in 2017, trying to unseat the controversial former town leader who had defended Ferguson police after Brown’s death — and lost.

But she has never been part of the city’s protest movement, and as a consequence, some have viewed her with suspicion.

“We’re going to wait and see what she does,” Phillips said. “If you were to categorize how protesters feel about Ella, it’s almost keeping both eyes open and not put this blinded trust in her.”

Jones said that after Brown’s death, she believed the best thing she could do was knock on the door of City Hall. As a City Council member, she held events to showcase vacant homes to new buyers and helped clean up businesses damaged in the last round of riots.

“Once you protest, what’s the next step?” she said. “So, I ran for council, and that was my way of saying Ferguson needs to change.”

Jones’s primary goal is to complete the mandates of the 2016 consent agreement, including improved training, increased civilian oversight and expanded diversity. The city has contracted a firm to collect data on use of force complaints and other actions, she said.

The consent decree was put in place after the protests, when the Justice Department found that the police department had routinely violated the rights of black citizens in traffic stops, unlawfully ticketed them, made arrests without probable case and used excessive force.

Income from tickets and fines has dropped from nearly $2 million the year Brown was killed to $344,711 last year, state data shows.

But some activists remain worried that Jones may not be strong or progressive enough to heal the still-fractured city.

Katurah Topps, a policy counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a St. Louis native, argued in a recent editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Ferguson’s leadership has resisted progress, and that the “very power structures that preyed on their most vulnerable residents remain intact today.”

For example, Jeffrey Blume, the finance director who was in charge when Ferguson wrongly ticketed and fined black residents millions of dollars, is now the interim city manager. Jones had opposed his appointment. Phillips called Jones’s opposition to Blume’s appointment a rare instance in which she went against the status quo.

“She had opportunities to be more progressive in her approach and to vote on issues that were in the better interest in the city, and she did not take all of those opportunities,” Phillips said.

On June 6, a grainy home security video posted on a local news website showed a white officer from a neighboring town allegedly ramming an unarmed suspect with his car, then beating him. The officers had responded to a report of gunshots, authorities said, but neither the suspect nor his companions had a weapon.

Ferguson veterans found themselves mobilizing again, finding the latest incident to be proof that, as Reed put it, “police reform is just as fragmented as the political landscape.” Nearby police departments in the St. Louis area have shown little interest in implementing reforms that the Justice Department ordered in Ferguson, she said.

Veteran protester Cheyenne Green was 21 years old in 2014 when she joined the crowd that gathered around Brown’s body as it lay in the street for more than four hours.

She says she didn’t even know what an activist was back then. Now she’s a 27-year-old veteran protester and political consultant.

Green joined about 200 other protesters Wednesday in front of the Florissant Police Department headquarters as they wielded bullhorns and led the crowd in now-familiar chants. At one point, leaders asked the crowd to raise a middle finger to the officers standing nearby.

Green sees part of her role now to educate the new ones coming out — white, black, Latino — about the cause.

They’d received good news that day, she said. The officer, Detective Joshua Smith, had been fired. Police Chief Tim Fagan had told reporters earlier in the day he had been moved by the protesters demonstrating outside the station.

“I hear those cries. We are listening to the voices of the people,” Fagan said, noting that the video showed Smith had probably committed “numerous policy violations” during the stop when the suspect was mowed down.

Green grabbed a bullhorn.

“This isn’t no kumbaya,” she said. “We understand the officer was fired, but was he arrested or convicted?”

“No!” the crowd hollered back.

“Is that right to you guys?” she asked.

“No!”

Green had some words for the younger people in their group, many of whom were in middle school when Michael Brown was shot and had been to their first protests in recent days.

“As we’re occupying, we’re going to have conversation, something you can take back home to your families,” she told the younger protesters. “This is only the beginning.”

As Rome Burns

Another Black man killed by Police, following another Black man killed by White Vigilante men who were doing what they do, kill black me or whatever as one was a former law enforcement officer so it is clear where he learned that skill. Ahmaud Arbery did not realize that was to be the last run of his life.  When does anyone think that?

It always begins with a 911 call where an aggrieved person/victim has been robbed and of course seen, suspected or believed that a large black man is behind the action that has prompted the call. With George Floyd it was no different and it ended no differently with Mr. Floyd dead.

I can’t breathe is a phrase we here in this area have heard before, Eric Garner was selling singles cigarettes outside a bodega so they called 911.Bystanders filmed the arrest on their cellphones, recording Mr. Garner as he gasped “I can’t breathe,” and his death was one of several fatal The federal civil rights investigation dragged on for five years amid internal disputes in the Justice Department, under both President Barack Obama and President Trump.

In the end, Mr. Barr made the call not to seek a civil rights indictment against Officer Pantaleo, just before a deadline for filing some charges expired. (the same Bill Barr, yes that one)

His intervention settled the disagreement between prosecutors in the civil rights division, which has pushed for an indictment, and Brooklyn prosecutors, who never believed the department could win such a case. between black people and the police that catalyzed the national Black Lives Matter movement.

 Then came the incident in Ferguson, Missouri that began when Michael Brown allegedly stole some Cigarellos he was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. The shooting prompted protests that roiled the area for weeks. On Nov. 24, the St. Louis County prosecutor announced that a grand jury decided not to indict Mr. Wilson. The announcement set off another wave of protests. In March, the Justice Department called on Ferguson to overhaul its criminal justice system, declaring that the city had engaged in constitutional violation

 On April 12th, 2015, a 25-year-old black man from the west side of Baltimore  was arrested for possession of a “switchblade,” put inside a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) transport van, and then, 45 minutes later, was found unconscious and not breathing, his spinal cord nearly severed.  His name Freddie Gray.  Following a seven-day coma, Gray died on April 19th; his untimely death and citizen video of his arrest, which showed Gray screaming in pain, prompted both the peaceful protests and headline-grabbing riots. The subsequent two-week police investigation ultimately concluded that Gray’s injury happened sometime during the van’s route – over six stops, with two prisoner checks, and another passenger pick-up.   On May 1st, 2015, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby stood on the steps of Baltimore’s City Hall to announce criminal charges against six police officers, an unheard of demand for police accountability. But over the next two years, four trials would end in defeat for the prosecution, the remaining charges would be dropped, and many leaders in Baltimore would retire, quit, or be fired.

January 2015, the day began with a swap: one boy’s cellphone for another’s replica of a Colt pistol.

One of the boys went to play in a nearby park, striking poses with the lifelike, airsoft-style gun, which fired plastic pellets. He threw a snowball, settled down at a picnic table and flopped his head onto his arms in a perfect assertion of preteen ennui, a grainy security video shows. Because of multiple layers in Cleveland’s 911 system, crucial information from the initial call about “a guy in here with a pistol” was never relayed to the responding police officers, including the caller’s caveats that the gun was “probably fake” and that the wielder was “probably a juvenile.”

Seconds later, the boy lay dying from a police officer’s bullet. “Shots fired, male down,” one of the officers in the car called across his radio. “Black male, maybe 20, black revolver, black handgun by him. Send E.M.S. this way, and a roadblock.”

But the boy, Tamir Rice, was only 12. Now, with the county sheriff’s office reviewing the shooting, interviews and recently released video and police records show how a series of miscommunications, tactical errors and institutional failures by the Cleveland police cascaded into one irreversible mistake

July 2016, it took just 40 seconds for an ordinary traffic stop to turn deadly — from a police officer saying, “Hello, sir,” to him firing seven shots at a seated motorist.

But the police dashboard camera video released Tuesday adds a visceral element to what police witnesses had described — unnerving even in the context of other police shootings and after a video taken by Philando Castile’s passenger went viral.

It was July 6 when Officer Jeronimo Yanez killed Castile in Minnesota. It was shown in court during Yanez’s trial. and hew  was acquitted  of one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety.

A scant two weeks later July 15 in another city in another state a woman was arrested after a traffic stop.  Her name was Sandra Bland.  She  died three days after her arrest at the Waller county jail. It was ruled a suicide after she was found hanging in her cell.  But Bland’s family have long remained suspicious of the circumstances, and the newly released camera footage prompted calls for a new investigation.

I recall my first realization that there was a problem in 2008, with Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station. His story was made into a major motion picture but even 10 years later more questions few answers and little change. 

There was a valid attempt to count the number of deaths at the hands of police officers and that was 1,000 a year.  The data is here in the Washington Post nor the first riot in the streets but this time will be any different? Well that depends. 

In  2017,  and unlike the stories above, and the many I have not listed, this ending was different. Mohamed Noor, who is black, Somali and Muslim, became the first Minnesota police officer convicted of murder in an on-duty killing, when a jury found him guilty in the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, who was white.

Legal action against police officers involved in fatal shootings is exceedingly rare. 

But there have been others in the Minneapolis area and we the same results as Mr. Castillo:  In 2016, ,Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County prosecutor, chose not to charge officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark, who was black, saying Mr. Clark had grabbed one officer’s holstered gun.  The year prior he did not charge the officers who pursued and shot at Thurman Blevins, killing him; Mr. Freeman said Mr. Blevins, who was also black, had a gun and did not follow the officers’ commands. In the killing of Travis Jordan this January, the prosecutor said the police officers had faced a deadly threat because Mr. Jordan, who was Hawaiian, had a knife and was coming toward them.

Since 2005, 101 nonfederal officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter in shootings while they were on duty, according to Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University. About 36 percent of those officers have been convicted, but only four of them on murder charges; the others were for lesser offenses.

Yes race matters, depending on who is holding the gun.  I end this comment with this:

Mustafa Diriye, a community organizer working in Minneapolis, said he had advocated vigorously for justice for Ms. Ruszczyk, just as he had for black victims of police shootings. He was pleased with the verdict, he said. 

Yet he could not help but be bothered that the system had worked so well for a white woman when it had failed so many black people, he said. 

“‘I fear for my life’ — that’s what all white cops get away with,” said Mr. Diriye, who is originally from Somalia. “That only works for white officers. They can fear for their life. But if you are black, no, no you cannot be fearful.” 

Mr. Diriye said he felt that if white people would demand justice for black police-shooting victims the way they did for Ms. Ruszczyk, things could be different. 

“The hypocrisy is there,” he said. “That is my frustration.”

Everybody’s a bit Racist

I am not sure what to make of this talk about racism and that Cops are just overacting, overreacting and/or are just racists.

Last week I had to attend a race and equality workshop that the district is providing to ensure that our recent “investigation” (as there is always one ongoing) by the DOJ about punitive punishments in school are directed primarily to students of color. An odd coincidence, or not, as our criminal justice system seems to do the same. And by color one means brown or black. Let’s not obfuscate that we are a nation of many colors but the coffee shades seem to receive the most attention.

In that horrific 4 hour hostage situation I heard about how we are all a bit of a victim of our prejudices. The questions posed were so distressing and so racist I wondered how the few persons of identifiable color responded not including the ones whose ethnicity is less defined by one’s color. I was asked to know when I knew of my “white privilege” and “in the safe cocoon of my home how did we define and discuss the others as we saw them in the news or through our exposure to them.” Or “what names were used to describe or define the others.” After thinking – wasn’t that a movie with Nicole Kidman – I could not believe the arrogance and the idiocy on display here. I personally also loved the video of the Harvard students of color discussing their feelings about race on the yard of Harvard. Well ask the man who is the CEO of America, Barack Obama about that. Harvard seems to do right regardless of color if you can get there. So why not talk about what made you special, different or entitled to walk that hallowed yard and the privilege and opportunities you will now have because of it. Sorry but there are kids of many colors who will never get that opportunity despite being deserved.

But ham fisted ways is how the official script on racism seems to be handed. And these are the courageous conversations that had in this same district a fellow teacher’s curriculum removed and he transferred to another school for having the audacity to want to have them. Whoops!

Then came this little news article (below) that has the current head of the F.B.I. opining that cops are racist as they are trained that way and the failure of communities to have sufficient role models have enabled those stereotypes to become a part of the script. Gosh why is that?

The F.B.I. is the data collection agency of America. And they now suddenly realize that the numbers don’t lie, the perps, the cops, the media and everyone in between do and are also a bit racist but the sheer numbers of disproportionate minorities arrested and convicted for largely victimless crimes, where both evidence and danger were negligible at best at worst they got some true criminals off the street. But as more and more exoneration’s come forth as the questions keep coming, the victims of police crime seem to rise in direct opposition of genuine crime rising there has to be someone behind the wheel who sees the road. This is the agency of J.Edgar Hoover who managed to have files on just about any one or anything deemed an enemy to the state before the advancement of modern technology so to just note now that there “may be a problem” is both disingenuous and disturbing.

But to law enforcement is was the olive branch they fictitiously needed and in turn an admission that well everybody is a little bit racist its what you do or don’t do about it that needs to be addressed.

I always say that when you are speaking or writing to you are either doing for yourself or for your audience, this may or may not just be that. It may go nowhere and it may do nothing but someone needs to say something but more importantly do something. That is the real need.

F.BI. Director Speaks Out on Race and Police Bias

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
FEB. 12, 2015
New York Times

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, delivered an unusually candid speech on Thursday about the difficult relationship between the police and African-Americans, saying that officers who work in neighborhoods where blacks commit crimes at a high rate develop a cynicism that shades their attitudes about race.

Citing the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from the Broadway show “Avenue Q,” he said police officers of all races viewed black and white men differently. In an address to students at Georgetown University, Mr. Comey said that some officers scrutinize African-Americans more closely using a mental shortcut that “becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights” because black men are arrested at much higher rates than white men.

In speaking about racial issues at such length, Mr. Comey used his office in a way that none of his predecessors had. His remarks also went beyond what President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have said since an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August.

Mr. Comey said that his speech, which was well received by law enforcement officials, was motivated by his belief that the country had not “had a healthy dialogue” since the protests began in Ferguson and that he did not “want to see those important issues drift away.”

Previous F.B.I. directors had limited their public comments about race to civil rights investigations, like murders committed by the Ku Klux Klan and the bureau’s wiretapping of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Mr. Comey tried to dissect the issue layer by layer.

He started by acknowledging that law enforcement had a troubled legacy when it came to race.

“All of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty,” he said. “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”

Mr. Comey said there was significant research showing that all people have unconscious racial biases. Law enforcement officers, he said, need “to design systems and processes to overcome that very human part of us all.”

“Although the research may be unsettling, what we do next is what matters most,” Mr. Comey said.

He said nearly all police officers had joined the force because they wanted to help others. Speaking in personal terms, Mr. Comey described how most Americans had initially viewed Irish immigrants like his ancestors “as drunks, ruffians and criminals.”

“Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicle that transports groups of prisoners; it is, after all, the ‘Paddy wagon,’ ” he said.

But he said that what the Irish had gone through was nothing compared with what blacks had faced.

“That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience, including in recent times, must be remembered,” he said. “It is our cultural inheritance.”
Continue reading the main story

Unlike Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and Mr. Holder, who were roundly faulted by police groups for their critical remarks about law enforcement, Mr. Comey, a former prosecutor whose grandfather was a police chief in Yonkers, was praised for his remarks.

Ron Hosko, the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and a former senior F.B.I. official, said that while Mr. Holder’s statements about policing and race after the Ferguson shooting had placed the blame directly on the police, Mr. Comey’s remarks were far more nuanced and thoughtful.

“He looked at all the sociological pieces,” Mr. Hosko said. “The director’s comments were far more balanced, because it wasn’t just heavy-handed on the cops.”

Mr. Comey said that the police have received most of the blame in episodes like the Ferguson shooting and the death of an unarmed black man in Staten Island who was placed in a chokehold by an officer, but law enforcement in “not the root cause of problems in our hardest-hit neighborhoods.”

In many of those areas, blacks grow up “in environments lacking role models, adequate education and decent employment,” he said.
Mr. Comey said tensions could be eased if the police got to know those they were charged to protect.

“It’s hard to hate up close,” he said.

He also recommended that law enforcement agencies be compelled, by legislation if necessary, to report shootings that involve police officers, and that those reports be recorded in an accessible database. When Mr. Brown was shot in Ferguson, Mr. Comey said, F.B.I. officials could not say whether such shootings were common or rare because no statistics were available.

“It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police last week, last month, last year,” Mr. Comey said.

He added, “Without complete and accurate data, we are left with ideological thunderbolts.”

Ronald E. Teachman, the police chief in South Bend, Ind., said Mr. Comey did not need to take on the issue. But Chief Teachman said it would be far easier for him to continue the discussion in Indiana now that Mr. Comey had done so in such a public manner.

“It helps me move the conversation forward when the F.B.I. director speaks so boldly,” he said.

Mr. Comey concluded by quoting Dr. King, who said, “We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools.”

“We all have work to do — hard work to do, challenging work — and it will take time,” Mr. Comey said. “We all need to talk, and we all need to listen, not just about easy things, but about hard things, too. Relationships are hard. Relationships require work. So let’s begin. It is time to start seeing one another for who and what we really are.”

Chock Full O’Nuts

There are groupies in almost every occupation. None more so than the one associated with the Criminal Justice system. I could think of several authors who would fall into that category and it turned out all right for them writing – fiction.

Now you can have realistic fiction based on non fiction or historical events or people. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter comes to mind. I enjoyed it. Unlike the other Lincoln “quasi biographic” film of the same name, I ate popcorn watching that one. I find it distasteful to snack on a nacho or M&M while Lincoln was freeing the slaves and getting shot in the head, slaying vampires however.

So today when I read Radley Balko’s blog for the Washington Post I literally laughed my ass off and had a bagel. Oddly that is another movie snack I enjoy with a latte. Seriously people some of the shit you eat in the movies is distressing.

Today he outs a junk scientist only he was never one to begin with. Frankly again the real issue is the media and their lack of substantiating or validating one’s credentials before slapping them up on the big screen to blather on about their expertise.

Mr. Balko had already done one about a ReMax realtor and his “expertise” on mass shootings in schools and there are many other experts with credentials that Mr. Balko has questioned with regards to their knowledge and skill set when it comes to criminal trials and testimony.

The reliance on experts is such a credo by Lawyers that they don’t care who they get to add to the list just as long as they are available, have something published in which to cite and a long history of blathering on to juries about their knowledge and skill set about something that they only read about in a paper or reviewing some depositions. Fair and balanced? Not to any side of the argument. They are just bought and paid for hookers with some “credential” of some kind.

Just like video that can be altered or somehow edited to reflect whosever story needs selling. Mr. Balko also discusses the video that Chris Hayes dissected on his show last night. I never watch MSNBC and during my channel surfing this happened to be on at that moment. Interesting version of “facts” about Tamir Rice, the young 12 year old boy murdered in Cleveland by Police. Shame that the junk scientist forensic pathologist will not be able to do that autopsy. I am sure he is available and probably cheap.

And we have more on regards to the criminal front, the fact of memory and how it too can be deceiving – by intent or by just being human. Great editorial in today’s New York Times about the way memory is not what it appears to be. Total Recall is just a movie and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right there memory issues are either a pun or oxymoron when it comes him.

Then we have the media itself. Yes pointedly blamed by the Prosecutor in Ferguson for contributing to the fraudulent information and testimony to the Grand Jury.. there were apparently some star fuckers there not named by Bill Cosby as liars… but the kind that glom onto the need for attention seeking and validation that the media provides in our 24 hour cycle of dumping, clumping and boring us to death.

Journalism still does have a place. But it takes time to research investigate and substantiate a story, the veracity of the tellers and in turn ensure all sides are accounted for and heard.

The newest in the line of the moon landing was fake, 9-11 was planned by the Jews or other tales of the fabulist which has now been added to the list is the Rolling Stone article about the rape at the University of Virginia. Once again the Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse rape allegations were brought up. Next up more Cosby!

Yes I understand that women have lied about rape. That reporters also lie. But here is the deal assholes – go out and investigate your theory and get back to us with your version. It is easy to be an armchair critic, psychologist or journalist aka blogger but if you really suspect a story and its veracity then either put up or shut up. The idea that you are sure you know the truth and then a bunch of other people who you don’t know either nor their authenticity to comment does not make it the truth, it makes it what it is – ranting and raving. Read the comments section of any newspaper it is full of vitriol and idiocy that has one questioning the sanity of Americans. Another Washington Post article discusses that very issue – here.

People Lie. They lie by omission, the lie by intent, they lie out of fear and they lie as their memories fail them. We have no such thing as a lie detector but in today’s age of information it is easy to substantiate, correct or simply ignore the lies and the liars who tell them.

Why Our Memory Fails Us
By CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS and DANIEL J. SIMONS
DEC. 1, 2014

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series “Cosmos,” regularly speaks to audiences on topics ranging from cosmology to climate change to the appalling state of science literacy in America. One of his staple stories hinges on a line from President George W. Bush’s speech to Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a 2008 talk, for example, Dr. Tyson said that in order “to distinguish we from they” — meaning to divide Judeo-Christian Americans from fundamentalist Muslims — Mr. Bush uttered the words “Our God is the God who named the stars.”

Dr. Tyson implied that President Bush was prejudiced against Islam in order to make a broader point about scientific awareness: Two-thirds of the named stars actually have Arabic names, given to them at a time when Muslims led the world in astronomy — and Mr. Bush might not have said what he did if he had known this fact.

This is a powerful example of how our biases can blind us. But not in the way Dr. Tyson thought. Mr. Bush wasn’t blinded by religious bigotry. Instead, Dr. Tyson was fooled by his faith in the accuracy of his own memory.

In his post-9/11 speech, Mr. Bush actually said, “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends,” and he said nothing about the stars. Mr. Bush had indeed once said something like what Dr. Tyson remembered; in 2003 Mr. Bush said, in tribute to the astronauts lost in the Columbia space shuttle explosion, that “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.” Critics pointed these facts out; some accused Dr. Tyson of lying and argued that the episode should call into question his reliability as a scientist and a public advocate.
When he was first asked for the source of Mr. Bush’s quotation, Dr. Tyson insisted, “I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the president. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere.” He then added, “One of our mantras in science is that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”

That is how we all usually respond when our memory is challenged. We have an abstract understanding that people can remember the same event differently. The film “Rashomon” made this point more than 60 years ago, the Showtime series “The Affair” presents each episode from two conflicting viewpoints, and contradictory witness testimony is a crime drama trope. But when our own memories are challenged, we may neglect all this and instead respond emotionally, acting as though we must be right and everyone else must be wrong.

Overconfidence in memory could emerge from our daily experience: We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others. It’s no accident that Oprah Winfrey’s latest best seller is called “What I Know For Sure,” rather than “Some Things That Might Be True.”

Our lack of appreciation for the fallibility of our own memories can lead to much bigger problems than a misattributed quote. Memory failures that resemble Dr. Tyson’s mash-up of distinct experiences have led to false convictions, and even death sentences. Whose memories we believe and whose we disbelieve influence how we interpret controversial public events, as demonstrated most recently by the events in Ferguson, Mo.

Erroneous witness recollections have become so concerning that the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel to review the state of research on the topic. This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

A critical concern about eyewitness memory is the sometimes tenuous relationship between the accuracy of a witness’s memory and his confidence in it. In general, if you have seen something before, your confidence that you have seen it and your accuracy in recalling it are linked: The more confident you are in your memory, the more likely you are to be right. But new research reveals important nuances about this link.
In a paper published earlier this year, the cognitive psychologists Henry L. Roediger III and K. Andrew DeSoto tested how well people could recall words from lists they had studied, and how measured they were in their recollections. For words that were actually on the lists, when people were highly confident in their memory, they were also accurate; greater confidence was associated with greater accuracy. But when people mistakenly recalled words that were similar to those on the lists but not actually on the lists — a false memory — they also expressed high confidence. That is, for false memories, higher confidence was associated with lower accuracy.

To complicate matters further, the content of our memories can easily change over time. Nearly a century ago, the psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett conducted a series of experiments that mimicked the “telephone” game, in which you whisper a message to the person next to you, who then passes it along to the person next to them, and so on. Over repeated tellings, the story becomes distorted, with some elements remaining, others vanishing, and entirely new details appearing.

When we recall our own memories, we are not extracting a perfect record of our experiences and playing it back verbatim. Most people believe that memory works this way, but it doesn’t. Instead, we are effectively whispering a message from our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time. We get a lot of details right, but when our memories change, we only “hear” the most recent version of the message, and we may assume that what we believe now is what we always believed. Studies find that even our “flashbulb memories” of emotionally charged events can be distorted and inaccurate, but we cling to them with the greatest of confidence.

With each retrieval our memories can morph, and so can our confidence in them. This is why the National Academy of Sciences report strongly advised courts to rely on initial statements rather than courtroom proclamations: A witness who only tentatively identifies a suspect in a police station lineup can later claim — sincerely — to be absolutely certain that the defendant in the courtroom committed the crime. In fact, the mere act of describing a person’s appearance can change how likely you are to pick him out of a lineup later. This finding, known as “verbal overshadowing,” had been controversial, but was recently verified in a collective effort by more than 30 separate research labs.

The science of memory distortion has become rigorous and reliable enough to help guide public policy. It should also guide our personal attitudes and actions. In Dr. Tyson’s case, once the evidence of his error was undeniable, he didn’t dig his hole deeper or wish the controversy away. He realized that his memory had conflated his experiences of two memorable and personally significant events that both involved speeches by Mr. Bush. He probably still remembers it the way he described it in his talks — but to his credit, he recognizes that the evidence outweighs his experience, and he has publicly apologized.

Dr. Tyson’s decision is especially apt, coming from a scientist. Good scientists remain open to the possibility that they are wrong, and should question their own beliefs until the evidence is overwhelming. We would all be wise to do the same.

There’s a further twist to Dr. Tyson’s tale. Years before he misremembered what Mr. Bush said about 9/11, Mr. Bush himself misremembered what he had seen on 9/11. As the memory researcher Daniel Greenberg documented, on more than one occasion Mr. Bush recollected having seen the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center before he entered a classroom in Florida.

In reality, he had been told that a plane had hit the building, but had not seen it — there was no live footage of the plane hitting the tower. Mr. Bush must have combined information he acquired later with the traces left by his actual experience to produce a new version of events, just as Dr. Tyson did. And just as Dr. Tyson’s detractors assumed that he had deliberately lied, some Bush critics concluded that he was inadvertently leaking the truth, and must have known about the attacks in advance.

Politicians are often caught misremembering their past, in part because their lives are so well documented. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was momentarily sidetracked by her own false memory of a time when, on a trip to Bosnia as first lady, she had to skip a greeting ceremony and run from her plane under sniper fire. As often happens, her memory was an embellishment of a real event, a hooked fish that got bigger in the retelling — there was fighting in the region, but not close enough to be a threat. Our memories tend to morph to match our beliefs about ourselves and our world. Mrs. Clinton did go to dangerous places, but on the tarmac in Bosnia she was met by children, not bullets.

Do our heroes have memories of clay? Dr. Tyson, Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton are all intelligent, educated people. Ordinary memory failures say nothing about a person’s honesty or competence. But how we respond to these events can be telling.

Politicians should respond as Dr. Tyson eventually did: Stop stonewalling, admit error, note that such things happen, apologize and move on. But the rest of us aren’t off the hook. It is just as misguided to conclude that someone who misremembers must be lying as it is to defend a false memory in the face of contradictory evidence. We should be more understanding of mistakes by others, and credit them when they admit they were wrong. We are all fabulists, and we must all get used to it.

Grand-less Jury

And here we go again.

Another grand jury that is anything but grand. This antiquated absurd concept needs to go the way of the wind or needs to be fully transparent, open to the public and to the media.

Why I would say shocking, but given the history of bullshit associated with Jury trials in general I say this does not shock or surprise me in the least. Jury of your peers, if your peers are idiots easily manipulated by more educated idiots then you should be fine.

Social media – its social alright.

Grand jury considering the Ferguson shooting is being investigated for misconduct
By Kimberly Kindy October 1 at 6:17 PM

The St. Louis County prosecutor’s office is investigating an accusation of misconduct on the grand jury that is hearing the case against the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Ed Magee, the spokesman for county prosecutor Robert McCulloch, said they received the information from a “Twitter user” Wednesday morning.

“We are looking into the matter,” he said.

An account of possible jury misconduct surfaced Wednesday morning on Twitter, when several users sent messages about one juror who may have discussed evidence in the case with a friend.

In one of those messages, a person tweeted that they are friends with a member of the jury who doesn’t believe there is enough evidence to warrant an arrest of the officer, Darren Wilson.

The same person who tweeted about being friends with a member of the jury has also tweeted messages of support for Wilson.

Magee confirmed that information on the Twitter user and feed came from an activist, Shaun King.

The jury has been weighing evidence on the case since Aug. 20, within days of the Aug. 9 shooting. McCulloch told The Washington Post last week that both the FBI and county police’s investigations into the shooting are “pretty much done.” He also said that jurors should be done hearing all the evidence by later this month, but they could meet through mid-November.

Grand jury proceedings are confidential and if there has been a breach, the prosecutor’s office may have to start over with a newly empaneled group.

Meanwhile, Ferguson is grappling with continuing protests amid the wait over whether Wilson will face charges.

The attorney for Brown’s family, Ben Crump, said the potential breach must be fully investigated.

“If this allegation is true and there is a member of the grand jury who is discussing the case with a Darren Wilson supporters the appropriate thing for the prosecutor to do is impanel a new grand jury,” Crump said in an interview Wednesday night. “If this person is discussing the case outside of the grand jury it is wholly inappropriate. It’s an issue of fairness for Michael Brown’s family.”

Reached on Wednesday evening, King told The Post that the potential link was further evidence that the current legal proceedings may be flawed.

“At a time where so many people in Ferguson already don’t believe that Prosecutor Bob McCulloch will take this case seriously, this potential leak is a disaster,” King said. “If it’s found to be true and the Grand Jury has to be dismantled, McCulloch should be taken off of the case immediately and replaced with a special prosecutor.”

Tale of Two Cities

That could be any city in America – there have always been two cities – one poor often black and the other white.

Bill Moyers played an old show where he and the late poet/singer/writer/actress/amazing woman (and the only person whom I can use all that and more deservedly to describe her) visited her home in Arkansas where she was raised as a child.  She and Bill walked to the bridge that divided the two towns – the white and the black – and she commented on how small it was as in her reality and memory it was much larger.  As they got closer she turned to Bill and said I am not going over there and turned away.  The memories of that divide so powerful that even a woman of accomplishment could not bear to cross.

We have a divide here the divide used to be the ship canal bridge that divided Seattle into North and South.  But it is not a city that is easily and so simplistically divided.  A woman stopped me the other day and said I am looking for 10th Ave. I go East or West?  She said west.  Wrong hill the divide of Denny places west on Queen Anne a neighborhood of stately homes and older reputation.  I never knew it that way as frankly as a kid we would drive through and depending where you were on the hill it was not that elite but Seattle has or was a working class city so its pockets of the working class were tucked away in varying hoods and often divided by a street or two.

I remember when I first visited the Central District or the hood as it was called or is maybe and that division came at East Madison then later South Jackson. One to mark the black area the other the Asian or “International” District (aka the China in Towns)

That still exists but it is by far more racially divided and in turn divisive as gentrification has started to make its mark. It began on Capitol Hill the once “gayborhood” where the Gay Pride was held in pride display on Broadway.  It moved to the center of town and gradually the boys and the few girls that lived there have been moving away to the suburbs and places where affordability becomes more important than hipsterhood.  Notice that most hipster hoods were former black, industrial or fringe hoods where a mixed “element” lived.  The bridges are there they are just invisible.

Now we have a larger group with the Latin Americans from all the southern borders moving up and in. I am not sure if there is an area dedicated to them, their cultures and their needs as I said to my neighbor who is Mexican, you are our superheroes – invisible man – who is everywhere and we don’t see or speak to him.  I think it was always that way and my parents who loved farming made sure I knew who picked my food so I never knew there were “illegals” or “legals” just people.

So when you see Ferguson you are seeing an American town under a magnifying glass and when you hold a magnifying glass on something long in the bright it burns what lies beneath.  And those who live in Ferguson are the first to say that.  This article is outstanding in how it describes the criminalization of poverty and when that belongs to black skin it is a way to ensure the status quo and this is about the white residents who are confused as to all what this means to their town and their world.

There is little belief that relief, understanding and more importantly change that will result from what transpired that day on that street that divided not just a city but now we know a nation.  And those questions that this posed and in turn problems will likely never be answered.

There have been numerous articles about the two men (well one was a boy only on the verge of manhood and the other a young man who too was barely out of short pants) who met on that street and the fatal encounter that resulted.  Two stories both tragic frankly and yet the end so different.

This is the story from the New York Times about Michael Brown and this is about the Officer who elected to murder a young man in broad daylight because he was afraid, needed affirmation or some type of validation to ensure that his authority was respected.  Read this hideous and disturbing excuse or explanation by a man whom I call Sunny Day Real Estate (a way happier name)  who teaches “homeland” security.Whatever that is.  And there is this as well from the New York Times about how Police react to situations with “Reasonable Fear” (sounds like a new movie starting Liam Neeson) as there is now the time to make sure the talking point and heads meet to lather rinse repeat.

And lastly I put this editorial that says if you think this is the tipping point the turning point or whatever euphemism to think that this will change and hope it is so.. think again.  The Supremes in their ever increasing bizarre right wing agenda to validate some very strict conservative view of the Constitution have made it unlikely that a new wind will not blow in anytime soon in any town soon.

How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
AUG. 26, 2014

IRVINE, Calif. — LAST week, a grand jury was convened in St. Louis County, Mo., to examine the evidence against the police officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, and to determine if he should be indicted. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. even showed up to announce a separate federal investigation, and to promise that justice would be done. But if the conclusion is that the officer, Darren Wilson, acted improperly, the ability to hold him or Ferguson, Mo., accountable will be severely restricted by none other than the United States Supreme Court.

In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.

The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.

The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”

This is deeply disturbing. The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down later.

The court has also weakened accountability by ruling that a local government can be held liable only if it is proved that the city’s or county’s own policy violated the Constitution. In almost every other area of law, an employer can be held liable if its employees, in the scope of their duties, injure others, even negligently. This encourages employers to control the conduct of their employees and ensures that those injured will be compensated.

A 2011 case, Connick v. Thompson, illustrates how difficult the Supreme Court has made it to prove municipal liability. John Thompson was convicted of an armed robbery and a murder and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two days before Mr. Thompson’s trial began in New Orleans, the assistant district attorney received the crime lab’s report, which stated that the perpetrator of the armed robbery had a blood type that did not match

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
AUG. 26, 2014

IRVINE, Calif. — LAST week, a grand jury was convened in St. Louis County, Mo., to examine the evidence against the police officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, and to determine if he should be indicted. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. even showed up to announce a separate federal investigation, and to promise that justice would be done. But if the conclusion is that the officer, Darren Wilson, acted improperly, the ability to hold him or Ferguson, Mo., accountable will  be severely restricted by none other than the United States Supreme Court.

In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.

The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. Police officers in West Memphis, Ark., pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Rather than comply with an officer’s request to get out of the car, the driver made the unfortunate decision to speed away. The police chased the car for more than five minutes, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Eventually, officers fired 15 shots into the car, killing both the driver and a passenger.

The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”

This is deeply disturbing. The Supreme Court now has said that whenever there is a high-speed chase that could injure others — and that would seem to be true of virtually all high-speed chases — the police can shoot at the vehicle and keep shooting until the chase ends. Obvious alternatives could include shooting out the car’s tires, or even taking the license plate number and tracking the driver down later.

The court has also weakened accountability by ruling that a local government can be held liable only if it is proved that the city’s or county’s own policy violated the Constitution. In almost every other area of law, an employer can be held liable if its employees, in the scope of their duties, injure others, even negligently. This encourages employers to control the conduct of their employees and ensures that those injured will be compensated.

A 2011 case, Connick v. Thompson, illustrates how difficult the Supreme Court has made it to prove municipal liability. John Thompson was convicted of an armed robbery and a murder and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two days before Mr. Thompson’s trial began in New Orleans, the assistant district attorney received the crime lab’s report, which stated that the perpetrator of the armed robbery had a blood type that did not match Mr. Thompson’s. The defense was not told this crucial information. Mr. Thompson’s. The defense was not told this crucial information.

Through a series of coincidences, Mr. Thompson’s lawyer discovered the blood evidence soon before the scheduled execution. New testing was done and again the blood of the perpetrator didn’t match Mr. Thompson’s DNA or even his blood type. His conviction was overturned, and he was eventually acquitted of all charges.

The district attorney’s office, which had a notorious history of not turning over exculpatory evidence to defendants, conceded that it had violated its constitutional obligation. Mr. Thompson sued the City of New Orleans, which employed the prosecutors, and was awarded $14 million

But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, in a 5-to-4 vote, and held that the local government was not liable for the prosecutorial misconduct. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that New Orleans could not be held liable because it could not be proved that its own policies had violated the Constitution. The fact that its prosecutor blatantly violated the Constitution was not enough to make the city liable.

Because it is so difficult to sue government entities, most victims’ only recourse is to sue the officers involved. But here, too, the Supreme Court has created often insurmountable obstacles. The court has held that all government officials sued for monetary damages can raise “immunity” as a defense. Police officers and other law enforcement personnel who commit perjury have absolute immunity and cannot be sued for money, even when it results in the imprisonment of an innocent person. A prosecutor who commits misconduct, as in Mr. Thompson’s case, also has absolute immunity to civil suits.

When there is not absolute immunity, police officers are still protected by “qualified immunity” when sued for monetary damages. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2011, ruled that a government officer can be held liable only if “every reasonable official” would have known that his conduct was unlawful. For example, the officer who shot Michael Brown can be held liable only if every reasonable officer would have known that the shooting constituted the use of excessive force and was not self-defense.

The Supreme Court has used this doctrine in recent years to deny damages to an eighth-grade girl who was strip-searched by school officials on suspicion that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen. It has also used it to deny damages to a man who, under a material-witness warrant, was held in a maximum-security prison for 16 days and on supervised release for 14 months, even though the government had no intention of using him as a material witness or even probable cause to arrest him. In each instance, the court stressed that the government officer could not be held liable, even though the Constitution had clearly been violated.

Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?

How Many More?

This is another casualty by being poor, being black and being in the crossfire of Police. This is America. Welcome.

After deadly police shooting, violence and uncertainty in Missouri suburb

By Ashley Fantz
CNN
updated 11:03 AM EDT, Mon August 11, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: 32 arrested Sunday after vigil turns violent, police say
• Mayor of St. Louis suburb urges calm, wants investigation to proceed
• Teen shot by police sparks outrage by many in Ferguson, Missouri
• Protesters looted and shouted at police and gunshots rang out at gathering Sunday night



Ferguson, Missouri (CNN) — The morning after a peaceful candlelit vigil for a teenager fatally shot by police disintegrated into violence and looting, the mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, called for calm.

“Obviously, the events of last night are not indicative of who we are,” James Knowles said, adding that the chaos that erupted Sunday night in the St. Louis suburb was “not constructive” and was only “bringing down the community.”

The evening began with people who wanted to honor and remember 18-year-old Michael Brown. But it ended with 32 people arrested and shots fired at police, a St. Louis County Police spokesman said Monday.

The outrage in this town of 21,000 began this weekend after a Ferguson police officer shot and killed the teenager Saturday but witnesses said he had been unarmed and had his hands in the air.

Authorities told a different story. The police officer tried to get out of his vehicle just before the shooting, but Brown pushed him back into the car, said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar.

Brown “physically assaulted” the officer, Belmar said, and the teen tried to get the officer’s weapon. Brown was shot about 35 feet from the vehicle, the chief said, declining to provide more details.

“The genesis of this was a physical confrontation,” he said, adding that his department has been called in to conduct an independent investigation.

Ferguson Police said its cars are not equipped with dashboard cameras.

Shell casings collected at the scene were from the officer’s weapon, Belmar said.

Anger over the shooting gripped many in Ferguson. Some shouted at police who were at the vigil.

Stoic police in riot gear watched as young men knelt before them, hands up to symbolize surrender

But one officer can be heard on video yelling back, calling protesters “animals.”

“We will stay out here as long as you are!” protesters screamed at police.

Demonstrators held their hands in the air and chanted, “We are Michael Brown.” Others held signs that said, “No justice, no peace.” Another sign read, “Police stops should not = dead kids.”

The gathering became more intense as some people broke windows at a store and began taking things from it. They threw rocks and bottles. Gunshots rang out.

Antonio French, an alderman in St. Louis, said a QuikTrip gas station was looted and an ATM dragged out.

“This QuikTrip is where things started (Saturday) with this case, based on various accounts,” French said.

The slain teenager and a friend were “accused of stealing gum from the store or some sort of cigarettes,” the alderman said.

Lost control


“Last night, everything lost control,” Knowles said Monday on CNN’s “New Day.”
He was asked about the officer who called protesters “animals.”

“The officers did their best. They’re only human,” Knowles responded, adding that not every police officer present was from the Ferguson department.

A rally is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday in front of the Ferguson Police Department.

Knowles said he wants to let the independent investigation into Brown’s death take its course. He plans to meet with Brown’s parents soon and will meet this evening with clergy in Ferguson and African-American leadership in the town.

Whatever the investigation’s findings, “we will deal with that,” he said.

Multiple gunshots


A medical examiner will issue a ruling on how many times Brown was shot.
“It was more than just a couple,” Belmar said.

Witnesses said Brown did nothing to instigate the shooting and appeared to be surrendering when he was killed. Brown was spending the summer in the neighborhood with his grandmother Desuirea Harris, she told KMOV.

“My son just turned 18 and graduated high school and he didn’t bother nobody,” his mother, Lesley McSpadden, told CNN affiliate KSDK.

Brown was supposed to start classes at Vatterott College on Monday, she said.

“People have a lot of anger and are frustrated,” French said. “They don’t have recourse in the system, and it happens often in this country, and it has boiled over. I think people are angry and looking for a reason to let it out tonight.”

Family retains Trayvon Martin lawyer


“We don’t know what happened, and there are lots of conflicting stories,” Knowles said. “Unfortunately, there will have to be some time taken to understand what happened. Hopefully, we will get to an understanding, and justice will be served.”

The officer who shot Brown is on paid administrative leave during the investigation and will be available to talk to county homicide detectives.

He has been with the force for six years and will be required to undergo two psychological evaluations before returning to duty, Belmar said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has instructed the Justice Department’s civil rights division to monitor the developments in the case.

The FBI said it is assisting police in its investigation and will review the findings.

Benjamin Crump, the lawyer who handled Trayvon Martin’s case, will represent the family. Martin, 17, was killed in 2012 by a Florida neighborhood watch organizer, who was acquitted of murder charges.