Austin Cops Murder Unarmed Man On Camera, (video)

The dai­ly reck­less, & wan­ton use of dead­ly force by American cops all across the coun­try con­tin­ues. Police depart­ments are allowed to inves­ti­gate them­selves, result­ing in a total lack of trust between the pub­lic and the depart­ments.
Their inves­ti­ga­tions gen­er­al­ly end up with what­ev­er atroc­i­ty they com­mit­ted being ruled with­in depart­men­tal guide­lines.
Even when they com­mit mur­der, local and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors gen­er­al­ly refuse to pros­e­cute them, the log­ic being that they are the very same peo­ple pros­e­cu­tors rely on to gath­er evi­dence and help to pros­e­cute mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic when they run afoul of the law.
Judges give their tes­ti­mo­ny much more cre­dence than an aver­age per­son giv­ing evi­dence, even as there is a nev­er-end­ing list of videos show­ing cops plant­i­ng evi­dence on inno­cent cit­i­zens and in their con­struc­tive pos­ses­sion.
On the rare occa­sion that American cops are pros­e­cut­ed, they gen­er­al­ly ask for a bench tri­al. A bench tri­al is one in which evi­dence is heard by a judge with­out a jury and a ver­dict is arrived at by the same judge.
Hardly are police offi­cers ever con­vict­ed when they receive a bench tri­al.
Across the coun­try judges, pros­e­cu­tors and police are gen­er­al­ly indis­tin­guish­able in tone. Police unions are major donors to the cam­paigns of elect­ed judges and where applic­a­ble, that of pros­e­cu­tors of their choice as well. This cre­ates a con­flict, but no one bells the cat, so it per­sists.
The aver­age cit­i­zen faces a stiff uphill climb to get a fair shake when the police are the crim­i­nals.
When the vic­tim of police crimes is black or brown, jus­tice is often just a pipe dream.

In addi­tion to the awe­some pow­ers they are giv­en, includ­ing to take life, they are also giv­en a spe­cial lay­er of pro­tec­tion that most oth­er cat­e­gories of work­ers do not have. That extra shield is called [Qualified immu­ni­ty]. Qualified immu­ni­ty pro­tects a gov­ern­ment offi­cial from law­suits alleg­ing that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed a plain­tiff’s rights, only allow­ing suits where offi­cials vio­lat­ed a “clear­ly estab­lished” statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al right.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is not immu­ni­ty from hav­ing to pay mon­ey dam­ages, but rather an immu­ni­ty from hav­ing to go through the costs of a tri­al at all. Accordingly, courts must resolve qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty issues as ear­ly in a case as pos­si­ble, prefer­ably before dis­cov­ery.(Law​.cor​nel​.edu)
Doctors have to pay for insur­ance so too are lawyers forced to have insur­ance against mal­prac­tice.
Literally, every pro­fes­sion­al must have insur­ance except the police. Yet when police offi­cers betray their oaths, and on the rare occa­sions that they are held account­able for their crimes, the finan­cial cost is borne by the very same aggriev­ed tax­pay­ing public.

Because there is a need to keep the for-prof­it pris­ons and jails full. And because of America’s insti­tu­tion­al­ized built-in racism which tar­gets poor black and brown peo­ple for over-polic­ing and sub­se­quent mass incar­cer­a­tion, nei­ther the states nor the Federal gov­ern­ment will lift a fin­ger to rein in the reck­less killings of inno­cent unarmed peo­ple by out of con­trol rene­gade police.
Additionally, all across the coun­try, police depart­ments have become a hotbed of white nation­al­ism and bare­ly below the sur­face tox­ic racism against peo­ple fo col­or. Well over a decade ago the FBI warned about this trend. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department took some active steps to cur­tail some of the killings and ille­gal activ­i­ties. Many depart­ments were forced to enter into con­sent decrees with the Justice Department led by Eric Holder, to insti­tute a change in poli­cies and pro­to­cols.
The Trump jus­tice depart­ment, begin­ning with for­mer Alabama’s Republican US Senator Jeff Sessions, and now William Barr, has since dis­con­tin­ued most of those con­sent decrees. In addi­tion to that, Trump him­self has encour­aged police to be more aggres­sive and vio­lent toward the peo­ple they come in con­tact with.
“When you arrest them and place your hand on top of their heads before they enter the car, don’t be so nice, you can remove your hand,” Trump told a bunch of cheer­ing cops.
To their cred­it, a few Police chiefs pushed back against Trump’s dan­ger­ous state­ments, they reit­er­at­ed that they would con­tin­ue to ensure that their depart­ments pro­tect the rights of all citizens.

In June of 2016 writ­ing for com​plex​.com Sara David in an arti­cle titled;
[The Supreme Court Sets a Dangerous Precedent By Ruling That Cops Can Break the Law] said, a divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in some cas­es, evi­dence of a crime can be used against a defen­dant even if police obtained it ille­gal­ly. According to the Associated Press, the 5 – 3 deci­sion drew “heat­ed dis­sents from lib­er­al jus­tices who warned that the out­come would encour­age police to vio­late people’s rights.” The rul­ing comes in a case in which South Salt Lake City Police Department nar­cotics detec­tive Douglas Fackrell stopped defen­dant Joseph Edward Strieff in 2006. Fackrell sus­pect­ed Strieff of being involved in drug activ­i­ty, but didn’t actu­al­ly have “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,” which is required by the U.S. Constitution for inves­ti­ga­to­ry stops.

In her dis­sent Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote stri­dent­ly;
The Court today holds that the dis­cov­ery of a war­rant for an unpaid park­ing tick­et will for­give a police officer’s vio­la­tion of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and check it for out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rants — even if you are doing noth­ing wrong. If the offi­cer dis­cov­ers a war­rant for a fine you for­got to pay, courts will now excuse his ille­gal stop and will admit into evi­dence any­thing he hap­pens to find by search­ing you after arrest­ing you on the war­rant. Because the Fourth Amendment should pro­hib­it, not per­mit, such mis­con­duct, I dissent.

The Atlantic reports that dur­ing ques­tion­ing, Fackrell “relayed Strieff’s per­son­al infor­ma­tion to a police dis­patch­er — a rou­tine prac­tice dur­ing police stops — and learned Strieff had an out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rant.” The detec­tive then arrest­ed Strieff based on that war­rant, and found a small amount of metham­phet­a­mine on his per­son; Strieff was charged and con­vict­ed for unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion. On Fackrell, U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her pop­u­lar dis­sent, “In his search for law­break­ing, the offi­cer in this case him­self broke the law.”

In her wis­dom, the learned Associate Justice Sotomayor was right on the mon­ey. quote, Do not be soothed by the opinion’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage:
Since then police across the coun­try has been on a ram­page, stop­ping motorist and even pedes­tri­ans, demand­ing their Identification. There are count­less videos of some of those encoun­ters on social media plat­forms in which peo­ple walk­ing down the streets are stopped and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions demand­ed from them by the police.
Failure to slav­ish­ly and prompt­ly hand over your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to these over­lords gets the pre­dictable response, “you are ham­per­ing my inves­ti­ga­tion”. There was no inves­ti­ga­tion, to begin with, but the ille­gal fourth amend­ment infringe­ment based on no crime, is now deemed to be a law­ful inves­ti­ga­tion with which cit­i­zens must com­ply, or risk arrest, being bad­ly beat­en or killed.
Well, there is your Supreme court for you, a court many peo­ple see as their last resort for jus­tice.
The same court that ruled slav­ery was legal. Jim crow was legal. Separate but equal was legal. Black peo­ple were only ³⁄₅ of a human being. Interracial mar­riage was ille­gal. Affirmed cit­i­zens unit­ed, (cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple). Will not inter­vene to save an inno­cent con­demned man’s life because his brief was not filed in time.

THE DAILY RECKLESS & WANTON USE OF DEADLY  FORCE BY AMERICAN RAMBO COPS CONTINUES UNCHECKED.
THEIR UNLAWFUL AND UNCONSCIONABLE USE OF LETHAL FORCE  PLACES NOT JUST THE LIVES OF PEOPLE UNDER THEIR SCRUTINY IN DANGER, BUT ALSO THE LIVES OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

The may­or of Austin, Texas, says he’s “dis­turbed” by a video he has seen of the fatal shoot­ing of a man by an Austin police offi­cer as the man drove away from police. 
Mayor Steve Adler says in a state­ment Monday that 42-year-old Mike Ramos does not appear to be threat­en­ing, but was fatal­ly shot and that “there are many questions.” 

Austin police chief Brian Manley said Monday that he under­stands com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns about the shoot­ing and that police, the dis­trict attor­ney, and oth­er agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing while offer­ing con­do­lences to Ramos’ family. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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