Here is a typical example of the Racism we talk about, when the highest court is so immoral and corrupt that it leaves in place the shooting death of a naked, unarmed human being by state agents.
How does a country move forward or even speak to injustice in others when it is so rotten at its own core? (mb)

Supreme Court rejects case of Oklahoma teen killed by police

The Supreme Court won’t hear a civ­il rights case brought by the par­ents of a teenag­er who was naked and unarmed when he was fatal­ly shot by an Oklahoma police offi­cer in 2019.
The high court on Monday reject­ed with­out com­ment the law­suit bought by the par­ents of Isaiah Lewis. Police have said that the 17-year-old was shot after he broke into a home in Edmond and attacked two offi­cers. They have said that a stun gun had no effect on him.
Lewis’ lawyers wrote that on the day he was shot he had inad­ver­tent­ly smoked mar­i­jua­na laced with PCP. His par­ents argued that he was expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis and that police used exces­sive force. An autop­sy report found Lewis suf­fered a total of four gun­shot wounds to his face, thighs and groin. A fed­er­al tri­al court judge had allowed the law­suit against the offi­cer who shot Lewis to go for­ward, but a three-judge pan­el of the 10^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed that rul­ing. The Supreme Court’s deci­sion not to take the case leaves the appeals court rul­ing in place.

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Police chief fires officer, releases video of shooting death.

A north­ern Virginia police offi­cer was fired Thursday after fatal­ly shoot­ing a man last month who had alleged­ly stolen two pairs of sun­glass­es from a busy shop­ping mall. Police also released video of the dead­ly encounter.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis announced the dis­missal at a press con­fer­ence where he also played body cam­era footage show­ing the shoot­ing of Timothy McCree Johnson out­side Tysons Corner Center on Feb. 22.
Two offi­cers who chased Johnson that night fired their weapons, Davis said. The one who fired the fatal round into his chest has been dis­missed from the depart­ment, and the oth­er offi­cer remains on restrict­ed duty as the inves­ti­ga­tion continues.
The offi­cer who was fired, Sgt. Wesley Shifflett, exhib­it­ed “a fail­ure to live up to the expec­ta­tions of our agency, in par­tic­u­lar use of force poli­cies,” Davis said.

Caleb Kershner, an attor­ney for Shifflett, said his client will appeal his dis­missal and expects to be exon­er­at­ed. He said Shifflett act­ed as he was trained to do, using lethal force if he has a rea­son­able belief his life is in dan­ger. Kershner said Shifflett saw Johnson reach­ing for his waist­band as though reach­ing for a weapon. “You have to make a split-sec­ond deci­sion, and it’s a life-or-death split-sec­ond deci­sion,” Kershner said. The video itself shows a night­time chase that last­ed less than two min­utes, with the offi­cers run­ning after him out of the mall, through a park­ing garage, across a street and into a wood­ed area. In a slow-motion ver­sion of the video that police played at Thursday’s press con­fer­ence, it sounds as though two shots were fired after an offi­cer yelled “get on the ground” but just before shout­ing “stop reach­ing.” A third shot is also heard. The video is dim­ly lit and it is dif­fi­cult to see Johnson in any detail once they are out of the mall.

Print shop own­er Carlos Pena is deal­ing with the dam­age caused by a SWAT raid after a fugi­tive holed up in his North Hollywood store. (Brian van der Brug /​Los Angeles Times)For 13 years, Carlos Pena has run NoHo Printing & Graphics in North Hollywood. He has stayed here even as this stretch of Lankershim Boulevard became sketch­i­er, even as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced him to lay off all his employ­ees. “It’s a very cre­ative field of work, but not very prof­itable,” the Salvadoran immi­grant told me half-jok­ing­ly as we walked inside his shop. “But it’s mine.” What was once the show­room was now stripped down to nails, ply­wood and beams. Industrial-sized air con­di­tion­er units and fans sat where dis­play cas­es and T‑shirt racks once were, a reminder of the day last sum­mer when Pena’s life changed forever

On Aug. 3 just after lunch, the 55-year-old was work­ing on an order when he heard what sound­ed like a heli­copter and some­one on a mega­phone. Pena opened the back door, looked toward the street and saw U.S. Marshals Service agents yelling and ges­tur­ing his way. Before he could shut the door, a man hit him on the shoul­der with a met­al object, kicked him out, then holed up inside.

YouTube footage shows mar­shals with heavy artillery and bul­let­proof vests tak­ing posi­tions around NoHo Printing and on near­by rooftops. They then stand down when Los Angeles Police Department SWAT vehi­cles roll into the park­ing lot behind the shop. Popping sounds soon give way to plumes of tear gas.

For 13 hours, Pena wait­ed in a near­by restau­rant as the stand­off con­tin­ued with some­one the cops said was a fugi­tive. He wait­ed so long that the restau­rant even­tu­al­ly asked him to leave because it need­ed to close.

“It was like a movie,” said Pena, shak­ing his head, his voice world-weary. “Out of 10 mil­lion busi­ness­es, that stu­pid dude chose mine.”

Two days lat­er, mar­shals let Pena return to NoHo Printing. Client projects were strewn across the floor. Holes were smashed into doors, walls and even the ceil­ing, which the fugi­tive climbed into by plac­ing a lad­der on a copi­er. He had some­how escaped.

“Look, look,” Pena kept repeat­ing while swip­ing through pho­tos on his smart­phone. “This is a $9,000 print­er that the fugi­tive stood on and broke.”

The worst part, he said, was the stench of tear gas. “You couldn’t be next to it for even a minute with­out gagging.”

No neigh­bor­ing busi­ness­es suf­fered dam­age. Pena had to toss out all his mate­ri­als — ink ton­ers, vinyl rolls, pack­ing mate­ri­als. His land­lord had to strip out all the dry­wall and insu­la­tion. The claim Pena filed with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that although the fugi­tive did destroy equip­ment, it was SWAT’s tear gas that left NoHo Printing “[un]inhabitable.”

A few years ear­li­er, Pena had switched to a cheap­er insur­er, who said events like this weren’t cov­ered under his pol­i­cy. The L.A. city attorney’s office denied his claim in August with no expla­na­tion. The U.S. Marshals Service ini­tial­ly reject­ed his claim, say­ing he hadn’t asked for a spe­cif­ic amount. When he replied with a detailed invoice for about $60,000, the agency denied him again.

Though mar­shals had pur­sued the fugi­tive to NoHo Printing, they argued that LAPD SWAT had engaged in the stand­off, not them. The cer­ti­fied let­ter end­ed by pro­vid­ing Pena with the LAPD’s address and the sug­ges­tion to “pur­sue your claim direct­ly with” the department.

In response to my query, the U.S. Marshals Service said, “Our office can­not offer sub­stan­tive com­ments regard­ing adju­di­ca­tion” of Pena’s claim. When I called up the LAPD’s media depart­ment to con­firm details of the Aug. 3 raid, Officer Drake Madison sug­gest­ed I file a pub­lic records request.

When I sent a list of ques­tions about Pena’s case and also asked what the LAPD pol­i­cy was when offi­cers dam­age a busi­ness in the search for a sus­pect, LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz replied that while Pena’s claims “are under con­sid­er­a­tion, we are unable to com­ment further.”

Pena’s tra­vails make Job seem as lucky as that guy who recent­ly won a $2‑billion Powerball jackpot

Since the U.S. Marshals Service and the LAPD would­n’t give me any answers, I called up two peo­ple who would.

Attorney Arnoldo Casillas, who spe­cial­izes in police mis­con­duct, does­n’t see too many cas­es like Pena’s but con­sid­ers them “my pro bono respon­si­bil­i­ty” because they are so hard to pursue.

He brought up the LAPD’s botched det­o­na­tion of a cache of fire­works in a South L.A. neigh­bor­hood in 2021 that left cars over­turned, homes wrecked and some res­i­dents still unable to return.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore quick­ly apol­o­gized, but “they’re fight­ing tooth and nail to not pay any­thing,” Casillas said. “I’m not sug­gest­ing [Pena’s case] is at the same lev­el, but $60,000 in dam­ages is not a small amount.”

State and fed­er­al statutes “give police a cer­tain amount of dis­cre­tion” when pur­su­ing sus­pects. “Some dish­es are going to break,” he said, so the dam­age “has to be egre­gious to the point that it’s malicious.”

Pena’s claim with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that SWAT fired 31 tear gas can­is­ters inside his shop, which sure sounds egre­gious to me.

It’s hard to get com­pen­sa­tion with­out know­ing the intri­ca­cies of the sys­tem — vic­tims need to file a spe­cif­ic claim with­in six months of the inci­dent and file it the right way, Casillas said.

“I’ve seen cas­es where a law­suit is filed, and the police say they only received a com­plaint, not a claim, and the law­suit can’t go any­where. It’s a pet­ty bulls— way get­ting around to not pay­ing any­thing. They tru­ly don’t care.”

Tanishia G. Wright, direc­tor of the L.A. County dis­trict attorney’s office’s Bureau of Victim Services, called Pena’s case “a very tricky one. … [LAPD] real­ly put him at an extreme injus­tice for that.”

She said her office “luck­i­ly” doesn’t see many sim­i­lar cas­es. It refers peo­ple to the California Victims Resource Center, which offers reim­burse­ment for qual­i­fy­ing dam­ages. Wright’s office has an unclaimed vic­tim resti­tu­tion fund, and “we can tap into that” to try to make up any dif­fer­ence, she said.

When I asked about the LAPD’s pol­i­cy when offi­cers dam­age the prop­er­ty of inno­cent peo­ple, Wright stayed silent.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. “Honestly, I should know. I’m curi­ous to know. We may have vic­tims that might have these questions.”

Both Casillas and Wright offered to speak to Pena about his case.

Pena is enough of a neigh­bor­hood fix­ture that cus­tomers such as Eric Walter have tried to help him nav­i­gate the ordeal.

“In an ide­al world, he should get com­pen­sa­tion for lost rev­enue,” said Walter, a retired ath­let­ic direc­tor for the near­by Oakwood School who has been a cus­tomer for near­ly a decade. “But at this point, he’d be hap­py just to get back to business.”

“My claim is going to be denied,” Pena said. His pierc­ing blue eyes had a thou­sand-yard stare. “If that hap­pens, I’m going to have to sell my house. My busi­ness is final­ly going to be dead.”

We walked to the back room, clut­tered with messy cab­i­nets, a desk and a tub of T‑shirts with an air-tight seal that saved it from the raid.

Pena now works from home, going to his shop only to use the two machines that sur­vived the raid — a cut­ter, along with a copi­er that needs a $1,200 part he can’t afford.

His land­lord is pur­su­ing claims with the LAPD and an insur­er and isn’t charg­ing any rent in the meantime.

“Everyone else gets help,” Pena replied, refer­ring to the recent bribery scan­dals that have plagued City Hall. “Look at all the mon­ey going around the city, and they can’t do any­thing to help?”

We now stood out­side his store­front. A sten­ciled ad on his win­dow offered a spe­cial: Anything print­ed on a T‑shirt for $6.50.

Pena let out a bit­ter laugh. It has been a rough cou­ple of years. His father was suf­fer­ing health issues. He lost his moth­er to COVID-19 in 2020, while he was bat­tling the dis­ease him­self. Even though they were in the same hos­pi­tal, doc­tors did­n’t allow him to say goodbye.

“When doors are closed, they all shut down for you,” he said. “I’ve been going through hell and back. Everything is pour­ing down on me.”

This sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Deputies accused of shoving guns in mouths of 2 Black men

Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s depart­ment being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Justice Department for pos­si­ble civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been involved in at least four vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and anoth­er with last­ing injuries, an Associated Press inves­ti­ga­tion found.

Two of the men allege that Rankin County sher­if­f’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths dur­ing sep­a­rate encoun­ters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trig­ger, leav­ing the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back togeth­er. In one of the two fatal con­fronta­tions, the man’s moth­er said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he could­n’t breathe.

Police and court records obtained by the AP show that sev­er­al deputies who were accept­ed to the sher­if­f’s office’s Special Response Team — a tac­ti­cal unit whose mem­bers receive advanced train­ing — were involved in each of the four encoun­ters. In three of them, the heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ments don’t indi­cate if they were serv­ing in their nor­mal capac­i­ty as deputies or as mem­bers of the unit.

Such units have drawn scruti­ny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severe­ly beat­en by Black mem­bers of a spe­cial police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols’ death led to a Justice Department probe of sim­i­lar squads around the coun­try that comes amid the broad­er pub­lic reck­on­ing over race and polic­ing sparked by the 2020 police mur­der of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In Mississippi, the police shoot­ing of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was vis­it­ing a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hos­pi­tal records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lac­er­at­ed tongue and bro­ken jaw.

Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he point­ed a gun at them; depart­ment offi­cials have not answered mul­ti­ple inquiries from the AP ask­ing whether a weapon was found at the scene. Jenkins’ attor­ney, Malik Shabazz, said his client didn’t have a gun.

“They had com­plete con­trol of him the entire time. Six offi­cers had full and com­plete con­trol of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”

Rankin County, which has about 120 sher­if­f’s deputies serv­ing its rough­ly 160,000 peo­ple, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly white and just east of the state cap­i­tal, Jackson, home to one of the high­est per­cent­ages of Black res­i­dents of any major U.S. city. In the coun­ty seat of Brandon, a tow­er­ing gran­ite-and-mar­ble mon­u­ment topped by a stat­ue of a Confederate sol­dier stands across the street from the sher­if­f’s office.

In a notice of an upcom­ing law­suit, attor­neys for Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said on the night of Jan. 24 the deputies sud­den­ly came into the home and pro­ceed­ed to hand­cuff and beat them. They said the deputies stunned them with Tasers repeat­ed­ly over rough­ly 90 min­utes and, at one point, forced them to lie on their backs as the deputies poured milk over their faces. The men restat­ed the alle­ga­tions in sep­a­rate inter­views with the AP.

When a Taser is used, it’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged into the device’s mem­o­ry. The AP obtained the auto­mat­ed Taser records from the evening of Jan. 24. They show that deputies first fired one of the stun guns at 10:04 p.m. and fired one at least three more times over the next 65 min­utes. However, those unredact­ed records might not paint a com­plete pic­ture, as redact­ed records show that Tasers were turned on, turned off or used dozens more times dur­ing that period.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was brought in to inves­ti­gate the encounter. Its sum­ma­ry says a deputy shot Jenkins at approx­i­mate­ly 11:45 p.m., or about 90 min­utes after a Taser was first used, which match­es the time­frame giv­en by Parker and Jenkins. The deputy’s name was not dis­closed by the bureau.

Police say the raid was prompt­ed by a report of drug activ­i­ty at the home. Jenkins was charged with pos­sess­ing between 2 and 10 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and aggra­vat­ed assault on a police offi­cer. Parker was charged with two mis­de­meanors — pos­ses­sion of para­pher­na­lia and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. Jenkins and Parker say the raid came to a head when the deputy shot Jenkins through the mouth. He still has dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing and eating.

Another Black man, Carvis Johnson, alleged in a fed­er­al law­suit filed in 2020 that a Rankin County deputy placed a gun into his mouth dur­ing a 2019 drug bust. Johnson was not shot.

There is no rea­son for an offi­cer to place a gun in a suspect’s mouth, and to have alle­ga­tions of two such inci­dents is telling, said Samuel Walker, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at the University of Nebraska.

“If there are inci­dents with the same kind of pat­tern of behav­ior, they have their own set of rules,” he said. “So these are not just chance expe­ri­ences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”

Jenkins does­n’t know the name of the deputy who shot him. In the heav­i­ly redact­ed inci­dent report, an uniden­ti­fied deputy wrote, “I noticed a gun.” The unredact­ed sec­tions don’t say who shot Jenkins, only that he was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. Deputy Hunter Elward swore in a sep­a­rate court doc­u­ment that Jenkins point­ed the gun at him.

Elward’s name also appears in police reports and court records from the two inci­dents in which sus­pects were killed.

The sher­if­f’s depart­ment refused repeat­ed inter­view requests and denied access to any of the deputies who were involved in the vio­lent con­fronta­tions. The depart­ment has not said whether deputies pre­sent­ed a search war­rant, and it’s unclear if any have been dis­ci­plined or are still mem­bers of the spe­cial unit.

The news out­let Insider has been inves­ti­gat­ing the sheriff’s depart­ment and per­suad­ed a coun­ty judge to order the sher­iff to turn over doc­u­ments relat­ed to the deaths of four men in 2021. Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom expressed bewil­der­ment that the depart­ment had refused to make the doc­u­ments public.

“(The) day that our law enforce­ment offi­cers start shield­ing this infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic, all the while repeat­ing, ‘Trust us. We’re from the gov­ern­ment,’ is the day that should star­tle all Americans,” Odom wrote.

The AP request­ed body cam­era or dash­cam footage from the night of the Jenkins raid. Jason Dare, an attor­ney for the sheriff’s depart­ment, said there was no record of either.

Mississippi doesn’t require police offi­cers to wear body cam­eras. Incident reports and court records tie deputies from the raid to three oth­er vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men.

During a 2019 stand­off, Elward said Pierre Woods point­ed a gun at him while run­ning at deputies. Deputies then shot and killed him. In a state­ment to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained by the AP, Elward said he fired at Woods eight times. Police say they recov­ered a hand­gun at the scene of the Woods shooting.

Court records place Christian Dedmon, anoth­er deputy who shot at Woods, at the Jenkins raid.

Dedmon was also among deputies involved in a 2019 arrest of Johnson, accord­ing to the law­suit Johnson filed alleg­ing that one of the deputies put a gun in his mouth as they searched him for drugs. Johnson is cur­rent­ly impris­oned for sell­ing methamphetamine.

Other doc­u­ments obtained by the AP detail anoth­er vio­lent con­fronta­tion between Elward and Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. He died in July 2021 after being arrest­ed by Elward and Deputy Luke Stickman, who also opened fire on Woods dur­ing the 2019 stand­off. A grand jury declined to bring charges in the case last October.

In an inci­dent report, Elward wrote that while respond­ing to a van­dal­ism call, he repeat­ed­ly shocked Cameron with a Taser, punched and grap­pled with Cameron at the home of his moth­er, Monica Lee. He said after get­ting Cameron to his squad car, he again stunned him to get him to pull his legs into the vehicle.

After going back inside to retrieve his Taser, deputies returned to find Cameron unre­spon­sive. Elward wrote that he pulled Cameron from the car and per­formed CPR, but Cameron was lat­er declared dead at a hospital.

Lee, who wit­nessed the con­fronta­tion, told the AP that after sub­du­ing her son, Elward kneeled on his back for sev­er­al min­utes. She said when Stickman arrived, he kneeled on her son’s neck while hand­cuff­ing him, and that her son com­plained he could­n’t breathe.

Lee said she lat­er went out­side, hop­ing to talk to her son before the deputies drove him away.

“I walked out­side to tell him good­bye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground scream­ing and hollering.”

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