Tag: police shooting

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Politics Texas

Texas Officials to Rename Road – Sandra Bland Parkway

 

Arrested on the most minor of charges and found dead in her jail cell days later, Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old woman who was thrown in jail after being stopped on a minor traffic infraction, is now getting a road in Texas named after her.

Justice???

The City Council in Prairie View, Texas, voted Tuesday to change the name of University Drive to Sandra Bland Parkway, the local KHOU-TV reported. Bland, the 28-year-old Chicago-area woman who was found dead in her jail cell in a county jail just days after she was arrested by a Texas trooper, was expected to begin a new job at Prairie View A&M University before she died.

University Drive stretches from State Highway 290 to Owens Road, where the university’s campus begins. Before the five-member City Council voted to rename the road, family and friends of Bland held a “walk of solidarity” Tuesday afternoon with university student.

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Mike Brown Mike Brown Shooting

Missouri Police Union Announced “Darren Wilson Day” on Anniversary of Mike Brown Shooting

One year later, as unrest and protest returned to Ferguson Missouri marking the first year anniversary of the shooting of Mike Brown, the police union in Missouri is apparently having its own celebration. The union has taken to Facebook and proclaimed Brown’s death as Darren Wilson Day. You remember Darren Wilson right? He is the police officer who served and protected Mike Brown by pumping multiple bullets into Brown’s body as Brown ran away.

A post Sunday on the Facebook page of a Missouri police union declared the one-year anniversary of the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown to be “Darren Wilson Day,” after the police officer who killed him, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The post on the page of the Columbia Police Officers’ Association incited outrage in the college town, including among city officials. Protestors gathered Monday outside the police department, according to the newspaper.

The post said the shooting had nothing to do with race and referred to Wilson, who was a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, as an “innocent, but persecuted, officer,” according to the Post-Dispatch. It also said Wilson was innocent because of “the fact that he was thoroughly investigated… and found he did NOTHING wrong,” according to the report.

The post was shared almost 60 times, according to an ABC affiliate.

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Domestic Policies Express Yourself Mike Brown Shooting News Politics Racial profiling Racism

Acting Stupidly Would be an Improvement

Remember the halcyon days of 2009, when the country was embroiled in the first racial controversy of the brand new Obama presidency? You know, when the Cambridge, Massachusetts police thought that the world-renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for essentially breaking into his own house because the front door was stuck? 

Those were the good old days when it was possible to accuse the president of playing the race card (as if racism was ever a gentlemanly card game), when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 still had some teeth, and when accusing the policeman of “acting stupidly” made Obama the butt of jokes and the target of righteous anger because he didn’t support law enforcement. The best thing we can say about that epsiode?

At least nobody was shot dead.

Little did the country know that the innocuous “Beer Summit” would be the last time that civility entered the conversation. Conservatives, and even a few liberals, thought that Obama had breached the wall of silence too quickly in his term. That he had to tread lightly and be careful because as the nation’s first African-American president, he had to stay above the fray and not remind polite society that we have a bit of a complicated history when it comes to race. And guns. And law enforcement behavior. Seems quaint, yes?

I believe that police officers, perhaps more than any other public service job, have the most difficult environment in which to work. The police have to be correct almost 100% of the time. I support effective, proactive, respectful, sometimes forceful police work. Recent events have shown, however, that many police officers, and the criminal justice systems in towns and cities across this country, have not been held accountable for their actions or have lied about what’s actually happened at traffic stops and crime scenes. This must stop.

I’m hoping that the Republican candidates in this week’s debates will address the issue and that we’ll hear more from the Democrats as well. But this needs to be done rather quickly because the real issue is trust. Right now, that level is dangerously low.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured South Carolina

Police Officer Indicted in Shooting of Unarmed South Carolina Black Man

In this case the video existed, and it showed the final moments of Walter Scott’s life as he ran away from the officer who ended up shooting him in the back. Earlier this week, the grand jury in South Carolina indicted officer Michael Slager on a murder charge.

Mr. Scott was originally pulled over on April 4th for a busted break light, but is later seen on dash cam running away from the officer with the officer giving chase. A passerby later saw the final confrontation between the officer and the man and began recording the events on his cell phone. Moments later, Mr Scott is seen on cell phone video breaking away from the officer and attempted to run, but this time, he did not get too far. The unarmed man was shot in the back by the police officer and died.

Michael Slager was immediately fired from his job as a South Carolina police officer and later arrested.

Video

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Politics Tamir Rice

Report – Cleveland Police Charged 12 Year Old Tamir Rice with “Aggravated Menacing”

Tamir Rice was cut down, killed by Cleveland police before he turned 13 years old. The 12-year-old was shot and killed by police in less than 3 seconds after they encounter the minor in a park. And now, months after they killed the boy, it is being reported the Cleveland police filed charges against Tamir in an apparent attempt to justify killing him.

Cleveland police charged 12-year-old Tamir Rice with “aggravated menacing” and “inducing panic,” according to documents published by the Daily Kos on Wednesday.

The incident report is dated Nov. 29, 2014, a week after Rice was fatally shot by 26-year-old Officer Timothy Loehmann within two seconds of encountering him at a local park. Neither Loehmann nor 46-year-old Officer Frank Garmback, who also responded to the call, administered medical treatment immediately following the shooting.

The document lists a “facsimile firearm” as part of the case narrative. Loehmann killed Rice believing him to be carrying an actual weapon. However, emergency dispatchers were originally told that the Airsoft rifle the boy had with him at the time was “probably fake.” Footage from the scene also shows the officers handcuffing Rice’s sister.

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Politics

Two Police Officers Shot and Killed in Mississippi

CNN is reporting that two police officers were shot dead in Mississippi late Saturday. It was the first time in 30 years that an officer was killed in the line of duty in Hattiesburg, the mayor said.

Officers Benjamin J. Deen, 34, and Liquori Tate, 24, were making a traffic stop when they were shot, Mayor Johnny DuPree said.

They were taken to a hospital, but did not survive.

“The men and women who go out every day to protect us, the men and women who go out every day to make sure that we are safe, were turned on tonight,” DuPree said.

Police have apprehended two suspects, Marvin Banks and Curtis Banks, he said.

After the shooting, the suspects stole a police vehicle, which they used to flee. It was later found abandoned, according to CNN affiliate WDAM. The two men both have criminal records.

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Politics

Laughable – Report that Freddie Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself,”

Now how in the world is this even possible? That Freddie Gray, the man handcuffed by Baltimore police and had to be taken to a police vehicle screaming in pain because he was physically unable to use his legs… how is it even possible that he was inside the vehicle, he was “intentionally trying to injure himself?”

This one does not pass the smell test.

A prisoner sharing a police van with Freddie Gray the night he died of spinal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore purportedly told investigators that Gray was “banging against walls” inside the vehicle and was “intentionally trying to injure himself,” The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The statement from the unidentified prisoner was contained in an application for a search warrant, the newspaper said. The warrant has been sealed by the court, but the Post said it had obtained the documents under the condition that the prisoner not be named.

The newspaper noted that the prisoner, al though sharing the police van, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him.

Police had weeks since Gray’s death to come up with a better story, you’d think they’ll have something better than this.

Categories
Mike Brown Mike Brown Shooting

Michael Brown’s Family Files Lawsuit Against The City of Ferguson

The civil lawsuit filed in St. Louis County, Missouri, names the city of Ferguson, former Police Chief Thomas Jackson and former police officer Darren Wilson as defendants, Reuters reports.

The lawsuit seeks $75,000 in compensation, as well as unspecified punitive damages, and calls for a court order prohibiting the use of police techniques “that demean, disregard, or underserve its African-American population”.

The shooting last August sparked protests and a national movement questioning police use of deadly force, especially against minorities in cities around the country.

The lawsuit alleges that Wilson destroyed evidence after he shot Brown on the street of the St. Louis suburb last August, saying he washed blood off his hands and cleared and bagged the gun used in the shooting.

“We expect to put on evidence that you never heard about before, that you have never seen,” Anthony Gray, one of the lawyers for Brown’s family, said at a news conference on Thursday to discuss the lawsuit.

Gray said evidence had not been presented properly in the previous investigations.

Categories
Featured Racial profiling

Another Police Shooting Caught on Camera – Another Black Man dies – Video

Eric Harris is just another man gunned down by a police officer… a reserved police officer… with the incident caught on camera.

Harris was involved in an undercover drug operation when things went south. The video shows him exiting a car and running away,  being chased by police officers and Robert Bates, a 74 year old millionaire, who volunteered as a reserved cop. On the video, Harris is caught by one of the officers and is on the ground when the 74 year old apparently went for his taser and pulled his gun instead, shooting and eventually killing Harris.

“He shot me!” Harris yelled, before he died. “He shot me, man. Oh, my god. I’m losing my breath.”

“Fuck your breath,” another officer is heard yelling on the video.

Harris’ brother Andre spoke with CNN and explained his frustration.

“It was a situation where I didn’t necessarily think that a taser should even be used,” Harris said on New Day. “As you see the footage that was three or four, maybe five people on him. We hadn’t seen the whole tape so I’m not exactly sure how many people are on him. But there was enough people on top of my brother, knees on his head, to not even have to use a taser. For it to be that many people around him and him go to use a taser really didn’t make any sense.”

“And then with the taser being yellow and on his chest, for him to shoot my brother with a .357 makes no sense to me,” Harris said. “It was overkill.” Harris added he was pleased to see charges brought against Bates.

Video – Warning! Graphic Content.

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Featured Racism South Carolina

Jay Z App Review Interrupted by The Police Shooting of Another Black Man – Video

His goal was to give a review of the new Jay Z music streaming app, but then the news broke about another black man gunned down by another police officer, and in this edition of The Illipsis, Jay Smooth shared his thoughts on the killing of the 50 year old African American, Walter L. Scott.

“Why do they never try to save them?” Smooth asked.

Video

Categories
Politics

South Carolina Police Officer Arrested for Murdering Unarmed Black Man – Video

CNN is reporting that a  South Carolina officer has been charged with murder after a video surfaced that appears to show him shooting an unarmed man who was running away.

Michael Slager, an officer with the North Charleston Police Department, was arrested Tuesday, according to a statement from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED. If found guilty of murder, he could face up to life in prison or death.

The shooting took place Saturday morning after a traffic stop, SLED said. Video obtained by The New York Times shows what happened.

A black man, identified as 50-year-old Walter Scott, breaks away from the white officer. Something falls, and the officer fires eight shots at the man as he runs away. Scott, who appears to be unarmed, drops to the ground.

“I can tell you that as the result of that video and the bad decision made by our officer, he will be charged with murder,” North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey told reporters Tuesday. “When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And if you make a bad decision — don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a citizen on the street — you have to live by that decision.”

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BLM Featured

NY Judge Rules – Eric Garner’s Grand Jury Documents Will Remain Secret

The ruling came Thursday from the New York Supreme Court after formal requests were made by civil rights groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society the city’s public advocate, and the NAACP.

“The failure to indict the officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner has left many wondering if black lives even matter,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. “Sadly, today’s decision will only leave many asking that same question again.”

Veteran New York Supreme Court Justice William E Garnett said in the ruling that he did not believe the civil rights lawyers had established a compelling enough reason for warrant a disclosure of the grand jury minutes.

“What would they use the minutes for? The only answer which the court heard was the possibility of effecting legislative change,” he wrote. “That proffered need is purely speculative and does not satisfy the requirements of the law.”

The Garner family was not a part of the petition but supported calls for the release of the grand jury transcripts. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and his daughter, Erica Garner were present in court for the oral arguments.

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