Author Archives: Mike

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North Carolina Police Shoot Unarmed Disabled Resident Complying With Commands

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We try to doc­u­ment some of the atroc­i­ties, but despite our best efforts, we can only doc­u­ment a minute por­tion of what is hap­pen­ing in the United States under the guise of policing.
It is crit­i­cal that mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, main­tain records and not trust main­stream media enti­ties to do so based on their inabil­i­ty to report police crimes before the advent of social media and cell­phone cameras.(mb)

Earlier this month, footage of a dis­turb­ing police-involved shoot­ing was pub­licly released. A home sur­veil­lance video showed a hus­band and his wife sleep­ing in their mobile home when they were awak­ened by cops on speak­ers demand­ing they come out­side. Tired and dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed, the North Carolina cou­ple oblig­ed. As the man opened the door with his hands up, with­in sec­onds, he was shot sev­er­al times and fell back­ward onto his floor.

The vic­tim was lat­er iden­ti­fied as 41-year-old Jason Harley Kloepfer. Authorities con­firmed the inci­dent hap­pened on Dec. 12 in Murphy, North Carolina. Law enforce­ment offi­cials were dis­patched to the scene for what was believed to be an armed, hostage sit­u­a­tion. On Dec. 13, Cherokee County Sheriff Dustin Smith addressed the shoot­ing in a Facebook post. Apparently, after “rec­og­niz­ing there was an armed sus­pect present and the poten­tial for a hostage sit­u­a­tion,” the Cherokee Indian Police Department SWAT Team showed up at the res­i­dence. From there, Kloepfer is accused of engag­ing “in a ver­bal alter­ca­tion with offi­cers” and “con­front­ed” them before being shot.

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After the footage was made pub­lic, Smith refut­ed his ini­tial claims. “Neither myself nor Chief Deputy Justin Jacobs were on the scene at the time of the shoot­ing, so we relied on infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to us from the Cherokee Indian Police Department,” he said on Facebook last week. He added, “The first time I ever saw video footage from the shoot­ing was on Jan. 18, 2023.” Without a sin­gle apol­o­gy to the dis­abled res­i­dent, the sher­iff seem­ing­ly blamed the inci­dent on his depart­ment not hav­ing its “own tac­ti­cal team” to han­dle hostage sit­u­a­tions. “I will be ask­ing coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers for the funds to cre­ate such a unit when bud­get nego­ti­a­tions for the next fis­cal year begin,” he continued.

In the video footage, mem­bers of the North Carolina SWAT team are heard say­ing, “F**k, bro, f**k!” Another one alerts his peers that their unjust actions were filmed, adding, “Hey, cam­eras, cam­eras!” Kloepfer suf­fered from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds and was charged with com­mu­ni­cat­ing threats and resist, obstruct and delay. “I can’t talk [too] much about details right now as this is [a] major, major case [that’s] still evolv­ing,” Kloepfer shared on Facebook on Jan. 20. (From Yahoo).

See Kloepfer’s state­ment below.

FILE — In this June 22, 2015, file pho­to pro­vid­ed by the Columbus, Ohio, Division of Police is the divi­sion’s offi­cial por­trait of Columbus, Ohio, police offi­cer Bryan Mason. A fed­er­al jury on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023, has found that Mason did not vio­late a Black teenager’s civ­il rights when he shot and killed the boy while respond­ing to a report­ed armed rob­bery. (Columbus Division of Police via AP, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

A fed­er­al jury has found that a white Ohio police offi­cer did not vio­late a Black teenager’s civ­il rights when he shot and killed the boy while respond­ing to a report­ed armed robbery.
Jurors reached their ver­dict Wednesday in a law­suit filed by Tyre King’s grand­moth­er. It chal­lenged the police account of the shoot­ing, alleg­ing that the 13-year-old’s death result­ed from exces­sive force, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and a fail­ure by the police depart­ment to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate and dis­ci­pline offi­cers for racial­ly moti­vat­ed or uncon­sti­tu­tion­al behavior.
Columbus offi­cer Bryan Mason shot King in the head and tor­so on Sept. 14, 2016, as the teen ran from police and after King reached for what police lat­er dis­cov­ered was a BB gun in his waist­band, author­i­ties have said. The gun, found at the scene, was designed to look like a real firearm and equipped with a laser sight. The suit also named the city and its police depart­ment as defen­dants, but a fed­er­al judge ruled last sum­mer that there is no evi­dence the city and the police depart­ment vio­lat­ed Tyre’s civ­il rights, mean­ing they could not be held legal­ly liable.
The family’s law­suit cit­ed wit­ness­es who said Mason used a racial slur after fir­ing and that the BB gun Tyre report­ed­ly had wasn’t vis­i­ble. Mason, who has said he feared a “gun­fight,” con­tend­ed that he act­ed rea­son­ably to pro­tect him­self and denied hav­ing direct­ed a slur toward the teens. A grand jury decid­ed not to bring charges against him. Sean Walton, a lawyer for King’s fam­i­ly, said that they respect­ed the jury’s deci­sion, adding that the pan­el “was giv­en a hard deci­sion they should have nev­er been faced with.” But in the state­ment issued Thursday, Walton also sharply crit­i­cized how the city han­dled the mat­ter, say­ing offi­cials “used every tool at their dis­pos­al to avoid being held account­able for killing a child.” He called on the city “to do what it takes to start pro­tect­ing the peo­ple of this city and stop trau­ma­tiz­ing fam­i­lies, wit­ness­es and those who have the courage to speak truth.” Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein thanked the jury for its efforts. “It is sad and dif­fi­cult when any life is cut short, espe­cial­ly that of a 13-year-old like Tyre King. We thank the judge and jury for tak­ing the time to hear and under­stand the facts of this case, and we respect their deci­sion,” Klein said

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Court Sanctioned Pre Textual Traffic Stops A Tool Police Use To Escalate Violence

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As Police con­tin­ue to mur­der more and more peo­ple of col­or each year, politi­cians across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, repub­li­cans in par­tic­u­lar, remain tone-deaf to the calls of the black and brown com­mu­ni­ty that these killings [must] stop.
In a gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple by the peo­ple and of the peo­ple, the peo­ple are the main sub­ject, it fol­lows; there­fore, if those elect­ed to make it stop refuse to act, the peo­ple must take the nec­es­sary steps to stop the killings.
Everyone that chose not to bury their head in the dirt has seen count­less police cit­i­zen video inter­ac­tions on vary­ing social media plat­forms of police offi­cers act­ing way out­side the bounds of the laws in their deal­ings with mem­bers of the pub­lic, usu­al­ly black and brown people.
It is also obvi­ous that white sup­port for police vio­lence and the Supreme Court, the head of the judi­cial branch of gov­ern­ment, step­ping out­side its remit and leg­is­lat­ing a pol­i­cy, not in the con­sti­tu­tion, ‘qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, has cre­at­ed blan­ket impuni­ty in American policing.
Consequently, police depart­ments and their unions have become ver­i­ta­ble sep­a­rate gov­ern­ments onto them­selves as they oper­ate accord­ing to their own laws and prac­tices. Accountability is not a part of that par­a­digm, even as they oper­ate year­ly with increased bud­gets financed by the tax-pay­ing public.
As an arm of state gov­ern­ments, police depart­ments have become unac­count­able organs of state oppres­sion and, sad­ly, state-sanc­tioned mur­der.https://mikebeckles.com/5‑fired-memphis-officers-charged-with-murder-in-death-of-tyre-nichols/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​f​a​l​l​-​r​i​v​e​r​-​s​e​t​t​l​e​s​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​l​a​w​s​u​i​t​-​h​e​r​e​s​-​h​o​w​-​m​u​c​h​-​i​t​-​c​o​st/

Probable Cause and Traffic Stops
They plant drugs dur­ing some of these pre­tex­tu­al stops.

PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS

Pretextual stops are traf­fic stops con­duct­ed by the police not because a mem­ber of the dri­ving pub­lic has com­mit­ted a minor traf­fic infrac­tion per se’, but may have a bro­ken tail­light or failed to sig­nal in time before a turn. It is impos­si­ble to avoid a pre­tex­tu­al traf­fic stop because what­ev­er the rea­son the cop gives for the stop is made up and sub­ject­ed to their stan­dard after they had already decid­ed to effec­tu­ate a stop on a motorist in the first place.
This uncon­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing mir­rors the 2002 Tom Cruise movie ‘minor­i­ty report’. The film, an action-detec­tive thriller set in Washington, D.C. in 2054, depict­ed police uti­liz­ing psy­chic tech­nol­o­gy to arrest and con­vict mur­der­ers before they com­mit a crime.
Only pre­tex­tu­al stops and stop-and-frisk polic­ing in the United States are not sav­ing lives. It is a dan­ger­ous tool for crim­i­nal cops who are a grave dan­ger to the public.
I say this with the heav­i­est of hearts, but as what obtained for nor­mal­cy unrav­els in the coun­try, the courts, the enti­ty entrust­ed to inter­pret the laws, have become a major rea­son for the unraveling.
From a wom­an’s right to choose, vot­ing rights, dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics, police vio­lence, and on and on, the courts have been wrong on every issue.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​d​r​i​v​i​n​g​-​u​n​r​e​g​i​s​t​e​r​e​d​-​t​r​u​c​k​-​d​r​i​n​k​i​n​g​-​b​e​e​r​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​t​e​e​n​-​t​a​k​e​s​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​a​nd/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​e​m​p​h​i​s​-​m​a​n​-​d​e​a​d​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​b​e​a​t​i​ng/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​w​h​o​-​p​o​s​t​e​d​-​p​o​r​n​o​g​r​a​p​h​y​-​a​n​d​-​p​e​s​t​e​r​e​d​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​a​m​o​n​g​-​t​h​o​s​e​-​a​l​l​o​w​e​d​-​t​o​-​s​t​a​y​-​o​n​-​d​u​ty/

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a cop mur­ders Patrick Lyoya.A bul­let to the back of the head of mis­ter Lyoya dur­ing a pre­tex­tu­al traf­fic stop.


The court has decreed that police can fol­low a motorist for as long as they want to find a rea­son to make a pre­tex­tu­al stop. (U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Whren v. United States (1996).
Police insist the stops are use­ful for inves­ti­gat­ing drugs and weapons pos­ses­sion, human traf­fick­ing, and drunk­en dri­ving, among oth­er crimes.
It is a lie!
Black motorists, espe­cial­ly young men, have long not­ed how often they get stopped for pet­ty traf­fic or equip­ment vio­la­tions — fail­ure to sig­nal, bro­ken license plate light, tint­ed win­dows, etc. Studies have shown pre­tex­tu­al stops to be racial­ly biased. Police stop and search Black motorists more often than dri­vers of oth­er races, with lit­tle to no effect on crime.
Pretextual traf­fic stops are the equiv­a­lent of pedes­tri­an stop and frisk. Technically they are tools that can help good police offi­cers to do their jobs more effec­tive­ly. However, when these tools are placed into the hands of racist, une­d­u­cat­ed ego­ma­ni­acs, they become ter­ri­fy­ing weapons against minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide. Studies have shown PRETEXUAL STOPS to be racial­ly biased.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​t​r​o​i​t​-​a​r​e​a​-​t​e​e​n​-​f​i​l​e​s​-​f​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​l​a​w​s​u​i​t​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​b​e​a​t​e​n​-​k​i​c​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​s​h​o​c​k​i​n​g​-​v​i​d​e​o​-​s​h​o​w​s​-​n​y​p​d​-​r​u​t​h​l​e​s​s​l​y​-​b​e​a​t​i​n​g​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​g​i​r​l​-​v​i​d​eo/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​a​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​-​n​u​m​b​e​r​-​o​f​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​l​a​s​t​-​y​e​ar/

Police drag an elder­ly black lady from her car dur­ing a traf­fic stop.

POLICE LIE UNDER OATH IN COURT AND TO CITIZENS WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE/​ALL LEGAL …

The Supreme Court has decreed that police are allowed to lie to cit­i­zens, yet cit­i­zens are impris­oned if they lie to the police. Frazier V Cupp (1969).
Time​.com had this to say about the deci­sion by the high­est court. “Many Americans do not know that U.S. police are per­mit­ted to lie about evi­dence to some­one they bring into the sta­tion for ques­tion­ing. This is not law­ful in most west­ern coun­tries. Incomprehensibly, they are even per­mit­ted to lie to chil­dren.
This decep­tion has tricked count­less inno­cent peo­ple into con­fess­ing to crimes they did not com­mit. Examples of their lies include, “We have sur­veil­lance footage of you that night,” “Your shoe prints were at the crime scene,” “Cell phone records prove you were there,” “You failed the poly­graph,” “Your DNA was on the vic­tim,” and “Your friend said she wasn’t with you like you said” are some all-too-com­mon but real exam­ples of police lying to cit­i­zens and gain­ing false con­fes­sions that land them in prison some­times for decades.…

https://mikebeckles.com/3‑indianapolis-cops-shoot-man-apparently-asleep-in-his-car/

Ultimately, most of them are igno­rant, lying, vio­lent crim­i­nals. The rest are com­plic­i­ty in sup­port of the mur­der­ous system.


In 1993, 41-year-old Gary Gauger woke up on the fam­i­ly farm in Ill. and found his par­ents stabbed to death. Detectives said they found blood-soaked clothes in his bed­room and a bloody knife in his pock­et — both lies. They also false­ly claimed that he failed a poly­graph. Gauger broke down and con­clud­ed that he must have killed his par­ents dur­ing an alco­hol-induced black­out. After five years in prison, includ­ing time spent on death row, he was released; two motor­cy­cle gang mem­bers were lat­er con­vict­ed of the mur­ders.
In 1973, a Conn. police sergeant accused 18-year-old Peter Reilly of killing his moth­er. No wit­ness­es or phys­i­cal evi­dence impli­cat­ed Reilly, who had no his­to­ry of vio­lence. Yet after hours of inter­ro­ga­tion and denials, the sergeant told Reilly he failed a poly­graph exam. Eventually, this dis­ori­ent­ing result led Reilly to ques­tion his own inno­cence. “This test is giv­ing me doubts right now,” he con­ced­ed. Led to believe that he blocked the event from con­scious­ness, Reilly lat­er said, “Well, it real­ly looks like I did it.” Later, he con­fessed to slash­ing his mother’s throat with a razor. After Reilly was con­vict­ed and impris­oned, the pros­e­cu­tor dis­cov­ered excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in his case file, and all charges were dismissed.

It does­n’t mat­ter who the black motorist is, pre­tex­tu­al stops are used to inflict vio­lence on a mil­i­tary offi­cer in uni­form who broke no law.

No sane per­son wel­comes gov­ern­ment intru­sion into their lives. Police traf­fic stops are inci­dents of gov­ern­ment intru­sion. No sane cit­i­zen would be opposed to the police being able to stop motorists for legit­i­mate rea­sons when there is a clear and bla­tant abuse of road traf­fic laws. However, the con­tin­ued court-sanc­tioned assault on our fourth amend­ment rights against gov­ern­ment intru­sion into our sacred spaces con­tin­ues unabat­ed with increas­ing­ly dead­ly con­se­quences as immune police offi­cers act with increas­ing impuni­ty. America’s traf­fic laws give police way too much pow­er to vio­late the rights of American citizens.
We are dan­ger­ous­ly close to a police state cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court; the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty for black and brown peo­ple is that we are the col­lat­er­al dam­age to bring­ing the coun­try to a com­plete police state con­trolled by the filthy rich and pow­er­ful and their polit­i­cal underlings.
It is a three-tiered oli­garchy sys­tem of the mighty rich at the top, the politi­cians, and the courts leg­is­lat­ing and val­i­dat­ing unjust laws. The police are on the bot­tom, exe­cut­ing unjust laws.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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5 Fired Memphis Officers Charged With Murder In Death Of Tyre Nichols

It is cas­es like these that made me an activist against police vio­lence. As a for­mer police offi­cer, I want every­one to know just how noble law enforce­ment is when done right. Policing is not about ego, bru­tal­i­ty, or lack of account­abil­i­ty; it is about car­ing for and pro­tect­ing the peo­ple we swore to serve.
Anyway, you will notice a glar­ing dif­fer­ence in the swift arrest of these crim­i­nals in uni­form, as opposed to oth­er killings where the crim­i­nals in uni­form look dif­fer­ent. You decide what that dif­fer­ence is.(mb)

Cops arrest­ed in bru­tal beat­ing death of Tyre Nichols.

Five for­mer Memphis police offi­cers have been charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der and oth­er crimes in the arrest and death of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who died three days after a con­fronta­tion with the offi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop, records showed Thursday. S
Shelby County Sheriff’s Office online records show that Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith were in cus­tody. All five are charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der, aggra­vat­ed assault, aggra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping, offi­cial mis­con­duct and offi­cial oppres­sion. Defense attor­ney William Massey con­firmed to The Associated Press that his client, Emmitt Martin III, had been charged and had turned him­self in. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if Smith had a lawyer to speak on his behalf about the charges. Blake Ballin, the lawyer for Mills, said he planned to hold a news con­fer­ence lat­er Thursday. Second-degree mur­der is a class A felony pun­ish­able by 15 to 60 years in prison under Tennessee law. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said he would pro­vide an update on the state’s inves­ti­ga­tion Thursday after­noon. Video footage of the arrest has not been made pub­lic, but offi­cials have pledged to release it this week or next week.
Read the full sto­ry here. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/national-international/5‑memphis-cops-charged-with-murder-in-tyre-nichols-death/2959524/

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White Women Continue To Glorify In The Destruction Of Black Bodies…

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Throughout the dark, despi­ca­ble peri­od of slav­ery, Jim Crowe, to the present, an often over­looked group, has been instru­men­tal in its grue­some­ness; white women. The stink of their sins will for­ev­er leave a stench and a scar­let let­ter on them and their descen­dants into perpetuity.
They can try all they want to ‘white­wash’ his­to­ry to relieve their guilt, but both are sure to fail. They can try to sup­press America’s mur­der­ous his­to­ry against black peo­ple, but word will get out. And they cer­tain­ly will not ease their con­science from the tor­ment of those crimes.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​e​h​i​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​t​o​x​i​c​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​h​i​d​e​s​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​i​n​-​p​l​a​i​n​-​s​i​g​ht/
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to inci­dent after inci­dent where white women steeped in the knowl­edge that their weak mon­strous, sub-human male coun­ter­parts would com­mit any crime, includ­ing mur­der, to pro­tect their faux fragili­ty have lever­aged that weak mon­stros­i­ty to the per­il of count­less black peo­ple from the begin­ning of this exper­i­ment called America.
Many enslaved men and women have been tor­tured beyond imag­i­na­tion and even­tu­al­ly mur­dered because a despi­ca­ble lying white woman decid­ed to lever­age that weapon with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.
Entire towns have been burned to the ground, and their inhab­i­tants slaugh­tered like dis­eased cat­tle on the lies of lying white women. The white liar who had Emmit Till slaugh­tered by the equal­ly sub­hu­man horde remains alive and unpros­e­cut­ed for her crimes. This alone should give one a good per­spec­tive of jus­tice in the United States.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​w​o​m​e​n​-​c​o​m​p​l​i​c​i​t​-​i​n​-​o​p​p​r​e​s​s​i​n​g​-​o​t​h​e​r​s​w​i​l​l​f​u​l​l​y​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​t​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​o​w​n​-​p​e​r​i​o​d​-​o​f​-​o​p​p​r​e​s​s​ion/​

Beyond act­ing as agi­ta­tors and fus­es to the flames of vio­lence and hatred indued in their male con­tem­po­raries, they act as ter­mites, con­sis­tent­ly eat­ing away at the wood­work of racial harmony.
So it was no sur­prise that a group of those hate­mon­gers, Republicans as you may have already guessed, gath­ered at a Greek restau­rant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to hear Jonathan Mattingly, a for­mer cop with the Louisville Metro Police Department who was among the team who per­formed a botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor while she was in her apart­ment in 2020.
Patrons of the Restaurant could hear the sounds of gun­shots and unset­tling police footage from an upstairs event held by the local Republican group of white women .…..
Restaurant patron Cayce Johnson told The Courier-Journal that audio from the event could be heard through­out the restau­rant and that Mattingly, now a con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit (big sur­prise there), was intro­duced to “rau­cous applause.” It is impor­tant to remem­ber Mattingly was the first cop to enter Ms. Taylor’s apart­ment on 13 March 2020, as police exe­cut­ed a search war­rant and used a bat­ter­ing ram to break down her door.
The search war­rant was obtained from a judge on lies and fab­ri­cat­ed state­ments by mem­bers of the Louisville Metro Police Department.
Though Mattingly has not been charged with a crime, detec­tive Brett Hankison was charged with civ­il rights vio­la­tions, alleg­ing that the now-for­mer cop “will­ful­ly used uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly exces­sive force, while act­ing in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as an offi­cer, when he fired his ser­vice weapon into Taylor’s apart­ment through a cov­ered win­dow and cov­ered glass door.”
Last year, the US Department of Justice indict­ed three oth­er cops involved in the scheme– Kelly Goodlett, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany – on charges of con­spir­a­cy, obstruc­tion of jus­tice and civ­il rights vio­la­tions for alleged­ly con­spir­ing to mis­lead the judge who approved the search war­rant on Ms. Taylor’s home.
Another restau­rant patron, Katelyn Jones, told CNN that she could not see what was hap­pen­ing upstairs but heard the sounds of sirens and gun­shots that drowned out their din­ner con­ver­sa­tion. “Towards the end of our meal, the lights shut off, and we heard police radio chat­ter and sirens on a record­ing. We heard the gun­shots, too, and it was so loud and chaot­ic. It was real­ly loud.

Creative direc­tor at the Grio​.com Toure’ in ref­er­ence to the inci­dent, yes­ter­day wrote, ‘Mattingly has told his sto­ry many times — in the book and in var­i­ous inter­views — but for some rea­son, this Republican group need­ed him to come to its event and tell his sto­ry again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lion­iz­ing peo­ple who kill Black peo­ple.’ You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed peo­ple at a BLM rally.
Toure’ went on…It also reminds me of the way white peo­ple in this coun­try would take pho­tographs of lynch­ing and turn them into post­cards as a way of cel­e­brat­ing the destruc­tion of a Black body and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white power.
Can some­one shout “Amen”?
This is not just pre­pos­ter­ous or shock­ing any­more; at some point in time, we must rec­og­nize them for what they are, not who they are. A vile sub­hu­man species that flour­ish and rev­els in the car­nal­i­ty and gore of black slaughter…

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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Airing Footage Of Breonna Taylor’s Death In A Diner Is Yet Another Example Of The GOP Celebrating Black Death At The Hands Of Police

It isn’t enough that cops can kill Black peo­ple with lit­tle to no con­se­quences, but now Republicans are using our trau­ma to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

Bowling Green, Kentucky is less than two hours from Louisville, the city where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police offi­cers while in her home in 2020. Her death was one of the more shock­ing deaths by police in recent years, and so her name rings out in the Black com­mu­ni­ty with a spe­cial pow­er. The Justice Department has charged four offi­cers with fal­si­fy­ing the affi­davit used to obtain the search war­rant in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights laws; one offi­cer plead­ed guilty. Breonna’s fam­i­ly received a $12 mil­lion set­tle­ment, but her death con­tin­ues to be trau­ma­tiz­ing for Black peo­ple, and the trau­ma­tiz­ing hap­pened again last week in Bowling Green.

There’s a restau­rant there that host­ed a Republican group — I’m not going to name them — which came togeth­er to lis­ten to Jonathan Mattingly speak. Mattingly was one of the three offi­cers who fired shots at Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker dur­ing the raid of her home. During the raid, Mattingly was shot by Walker, who thought the cops were intrud­ers. Mattingly, now a retired offi­cer, is the author of a book about the shoot­ing, which I will not name, but in it, he whines about “the woke mob,” so, you know who he is. He also thinks he and Breonna are some­how equal. In his book, he says, “I want my sto­ry to make a dif­fer­ence. I want soci­ety to stop insist­ing on some­one to blame for every cri­sis and tragedy. I don’t want anoth­er Breonna Taylor or anoth­er John Mattingly.” Gross. I don’t know how he became one of the vic­tims here, but white vic­tim­hood is so pow­er­ful it can leap a loco­mo­tive in a sin­gle bound.

Mattingly has told his sto­ry many times — in the book and in var­i­ous inter­views — but for some rea­son, this Republican group need­ed him to come to its event and tell his sto­ry again. This is part of the right’s bizarre fetish of lion­iz­ing peo­ple who kill Black peo­ple and their allies. You see the way they have made Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero because he killed peo­ple at a BLM ral­ly — right-wing star slash lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said Rittenhouse is a hero who deserves a Congressional Gold Medal. Wow.

The Republican group who host­ed Mattingly said he “has the right to share his expe­ri­ence” and I mean, yeah, sure, Mattingly does have the right to share his expe­ri­ence, but of all the peo­ple in the world, why are they so inter­est­ed in hear­ing his wide­ly avail­able sto­ry again? They also said “Other indi­vid­u­als with first­hand expe­ri­ence relat­ing to this case are wel­come to request an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to our orga­ni­za­tion as well,” but there’s one liv­ing indi­vid­ual who was there who tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry — Kenneth Walker. I am sure they are not inter­est­ed in hear­ing his first­hand expe­ri­ence. If we’re being real, we know this was not a gen­uine “let’s just hear what he has to say” sit­u­a­tion. We know they weren’t there to get down to the truth. They want­ed anoth­er chance to lux­u­ri­ate in their pro-cop narrative.

But there’s more. The night that Mattingly spoke, most of the restau­rant was still open to guests and, at some point, they all were forced to be part of the show. According to some of the guests, the lights in the restau­rant dimmed, and both audio and police body­cam footage were broad­cast in the restau­rant. Can you imag­ine sit­ting in some mid-lev­el restau­rant try­ing to get through a meal when some­one starts blast­ing footage of a Black per­son get­ting killed by police? That’s traumatizing.

It’s already trau­ma­tiz­ing that we are bom­bard­ed by these images via tra­di­tion­al media and social media, con­stant­ly com­ing up against these lit­tle snuff films where Black lives are end­ed. We are shown these images so often, and they are so sear­ing and painful that I know that most Black peo­ple have about 20 or 25 Black killings in their mem­o­ry that they can call up at any time. We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings. If I just call out the names of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice … we see the footage in our minds. We car­ry that around with us all the time, and it’s some heavy emo­tion­al bag­gage. I don’t know what impact that’s hav­ing on all of us, but it’s sure­ly corrosive.

Those poor din­ers had the images and the sound of Breonna’s death played while they ate. It’s cru­el and unusu­al, but it also reminds me of the way white peo­ple in this coun­try would take pho­tographs of lynch­ing and turn them into post­cards as a way of cel­e­brat­ing the destruc­tion of a Black body and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white power.

The pres­i­dent of the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP chap­ter, Ryan Dearbone, said, “It is beyond rep­re­hen­si­ble to sub­ject any­one, let alone chil­dren and cus­tomers of African-American descent, to such inde­cent expo­sure, graph­ic and upset­ting images while they were attempt­ing to enjoy their meal. Such dis­turb­ing occur­rences must not be tol­er­at­ed espe­cial­ly in places of pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion. At a min­i­mum, these acts are devoid of human­i­ty and vio­late the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human decency.”

Amen.

Touré, theGrio.com
Touré, theGrio​.com

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Cop Driving Unregistered Truck, Drinking Beer Who Shot Teen Takes The Stand…

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The lev­el of com­fort white peo­ple have is shock­ing when young black kids are abused, shot, or mur­dered by police. Flip the script, and the vic­tim of the vio­lence is a white kid, and the response is so very pre­dictably different.
When black kids are abused and killed, the nar­ra­tive is they should have fol­lowed instruc­tions if only they learned to over author­i­ty; they come from bro­ken homes, and on and on it goes.
On the rare occa­sion the vic­tim, through mis­ad­ven­ture, is white and the nar­ra­tive changes, ‘cops can­not be trust­ed,’ ‘they are liars’, they should all go to jail for life.…..It makes me laugh.…not at the vic­tim; I laugh at the bla­tant hypocrisy.
No case stands out more than this one.
If this wannabe Rambo knew the car’s dri­ver was white, he would nev­er have pulled his weapon, much less fired into the vehi­cle. They all want to be heroes, and why not shoot some black kid, and get them paid vaca­tion and promotions?
If they are charged, they are like­ly to be exon­er­at­ed, whether it is a jury or bench tri­al. All they have to do is lie.
We did our own dig­ging and found that the offi­cer in the case below has a his­to­ry of vio­lent behav­ior, yet he was allowed to con­tin­ue as a police offi­cer, keep a gun, and work among chil­dren in their school. See the video.

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Off-duty Pawtucket Connecticut police offi­cer Daniel Dolan was dri­ving an unreg­is­tered truck with an open beer beside him on the June evening in 2021 when he pur­sued a speed­ing car with inten­tions, he tes­ti­fied at tri­al Tuesday, of hav­ing a “father­ly chat” with the motorists about the dan­gers of errat­ic dri­ving. As a mid­dle-school resource offi­cer, “that’s what I do all day long,” he said. “I call them father­ly chats.” Instead, Dolan end­ed up shoot­ing and wound­ing Dominic Vincent out of fear for his life, he tes­ti­fied, as the then-18-year-old sat behind the wheel of his car out­side a West Greenwich piz­za shop. “At that moment I believed I was going to fall in front of the vehi­cle … and get dragged down the road,” Dolan told a Superior Court jury.

Dolan takes the stand in his own defense

Dolan, fac­ing four felony charges of unjust­ly shoot­ing Vincent, took the wit­ness stand in his own defense Tuesday, insist­ing he shot Vincent after aim­ing through the wind­shield to stop the car he said was bear­ing down on him. Dolan actu­al­ly shot through the driver’s side pas­sen­ger win­dow, wit­ness­es and bal­lis­tic experts tes­ti­fied — an undis­put­ed fact that pros­e­cu­tors say proves he was not in harm’s way when he fired.

Under direct ques­tion­ing by his defense lawyer Michael Colucci, Dolan, 40, explained his years as a Marine and his three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan before join­ing the Pawtucket Police Department in 2015. Most recent­ly he had been a resource offi­cer at Slater Middle School. He said he encoun­tered Vincent’s black Audi on the way home to Coventry on Interstate 95 on the evening of June 23, 2021, when it sped past him so fast he could feel the wind shift over the road. Dolan said he sus­pect­ed the car was “flee­ing from the police,” and that its pass­ing oth­er vehi­cles in the break­down lane at more than 100 mph “showed a dis­re­gard for human life.” Still, Dolan said he didn’t decide to pur­sue the car until he took his nor­mal exit off the high­way, Exit 6 at the time, and saw it about 500 feet down Nooseneck Hill Road. He sped after it to get a license-plate num­ber to pass on to local police, he said, but then noticed it pulling into Wicked Good Pizza and fol­lowed it into the park­ing lot. Even then, Dolan said his inten­tion was only to “observe” the vehi­cle. But then Dolan said the car made an “aggres­sive” move toward his Ford-350 truck as he attempt­ed to pull in beside it. Vincent tes­ti­fied ear­li­er he had pulled in and start­ed to swing around in the small lot to head back out once they had picked up a pre-ordered pizza.

Dominic Vincent, of West Greenwich, who was shot by off-duty Pawtucket police offi­cer Daniel Dolan in 2021, lis­tens at a news con­fer­ence held after the shoot­ing. Behind him are his par­ents, Lisa and Robert Vincent.

Dolan then jumped out of the truck and approached the car, show­ing his badge. Vincent and two friends tes­ti­fied that they saw this man in car­go pants, a T‑shirt and a base­ball cap as a threat, not a police offi­cer, and tried to back away from him. Dolan walked toward the car as it backed out of the park­ing lot, all the time show­ing his badge and yelling for the dri­ver to stop. Dolan said he “found him­self” in front of the car and shot only after it had hit him. “I was knocked back­wards and to my right.”

Prosecution tries to discredit Dolan

During cross-exam­i­na­tion, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Guglielmo, chief of the office’s civ­il-rights divi­sion, sought to dis­cred­it Dolan’s tes­ti­mo­ny. Guglielmo said Dolan didn’t just find him­self in front of the car as if he float­ed down in front of it. “You pur­pose­ly walked in front of it, did­n’t you?” he asked. “Unintentionally,” Dolan said. Not true, Guglielmo said, not­ing Dolan had, on three sep­a­rate occa­sions in his offi­cial state­ments to inves­ti­ga­tors, said that he walked in front of the car. Guglielmo read those parts of the state­ments to the jury. And “nowhere in any of those reports did you ever say you were bumped by the car, did you?” again Guglielmo asked. “You come in here expect­ing the jury to believe you were bumped, knocked back­ward by that car, right?” “Yes, sir.” So “now you are chang­ing you sto­ry,” said the pros­e­cu­tor. “You want this jury to believe that this whole [episode] hap­pened because you want­ed to give some father­ly advice?” “Yes, sir.” “But you had no author­i­ty to stop this car, did you?” Guglielmo chal­lenged; Dolan could have called in the plate num­ber to Coventry police, but he did­n’t. “You were dri­ving an unreg­is­tered truck with an open beer bot­tle in the front seat,” Guglielmo said, and “you pulled in there with the idea you were going to teach this lit­tle punk kid a les­son, isn’t that right?”

“No, sir.”

Dolan said he took only one sip of the beer and passed a field sobri­ety test. “You are cre­at­ing an incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, aren’t you?” “No, sir,” Dolan answered. Asked why he jumped out of his truck so fast if he only want­ed to “observe” the sit­u­a­tion, as he had ear­li­er tes­ti­fied, Dolan said he “pulled out of the truck look­ing for a tac­ti­cal advan­tage at that point,” want­i­ng to get to the occu­pants of the car before they got out and pos­si­bly sur­round­ed him. “You’re talk­ing like this is a take­down of al-Qaeda,” said Guglielmo. “This is a piz­za stand!”(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Yahoo).

I could not help but bring you some of the com­ments to you, these are not the com­ments when the vic­tims are black.

  • If the ver­dict goes true to form, this guy will walk free. Unfortunately, in this coun­try even if police lie on the stand, juries are loathe to con­vict when they claim, “I was in fear for my life”. Seems if he was, he would have mind­ed his own busi­ness, call the police and report a cal­lous dri­ver, and moved on. But, drunk dri­ving and car­ry­ing a gun while angered is a recipe for a crime. But, he has a badge and that pro­tects him.

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    • Do you think it’s by acci­dent the jurors are cho­sen who are sym­pa­thet­ic to police?

    • Right or left it seems all feel the need to exag­ger­ate and fan the fla/​/​/​mes. First in this case I believe he is total­ly guilty and should be sen­tenced upon a con­vic­tion. But drunk ? There was an open alco­holic con­tain­er in the car ? He wasn’t charged with DWI even though the arrest­ing offi­cers knew this was a bag of po/​/​/​op that you would want to charge every­thing pos­si­ble and let the DA hash it out. Second, how can you say cops can just lie on the stand because they were in fear for their life. I am pret­ty sure in the course your life you have nev­er expe­ri­enced sit­u­a­tions that most cops do on a reg­u­lar basis and if you did you would have to change your under­gar­ments fre­quent­ly. I’m more fix­at­ed that he was dri­ving an unreg­is­tered truck ? Couple that with the open con­tain­er and that is the first clue as to this indi­vid­u­als mindset.

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      • A field sobri­ety test is sub­jec­tive (up to the Officer giv­ing the test) and Dolan was nev­er giv­en a breath­a­lyz­er or blood test, even though there was an open beer bot­tle, so there is no legal proof he was dri­ving drunk. BUT he had an open con­tain­er of alco­hol in the vehi­cle (ille­gal), admit­ted to drink­ing while dri­ving (ille­gal) and was dri­ving an unreg­is­tered truck (ille­gal), and had no legal author­i­ty to make a traf­fic stop in that area.

        Former Officer Dolan’s tes­ti­mo­ny to jus­ti­fy his shoot­ing did not match what he told offi­cers at the scene or the phys­i­cal evi­dence, i.e. he lied under oath

        3

      • The cops don’t lie on the stand because they’re in fear for their life. They lie on the stand and say that they’re in fear for their life. Because up to now, lying under oath has worked pret­ty well for them.

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    • Haha dri­ving a huge F350 while drink­ing beer with a gun and a police offi­cer at that.

      This is a dis­play of total dis­re­gard for human life, bad apple cop ya’ll

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  • Some guy in a pick­up aggres­sive­ly pulls along side me and jumps out with a gun point­ed at me, I’m in fear of “my” life. I put the car in reverse and try to get away. That guy then jumps in front of my car, still point­ing his gun at me, I’m still in fear of “my” life.

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    • The “in fear of my life” Defense only works for cops not against them.….Y’All Qaeda saw to this.….

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  • Driving around break­ing a dozen rules , reg­u­la­tions and laws , and HE’S wor­ried about oth­ers , what a peach . He needs a few years in prison to rethink his voca­tion because he’s cer­tain­ly not police offi­cer mate­r­i­al . He him­self should’ve been stopped for obvi­ous reasons .

    7

  • Fatherly chat? Who’s his role mod­el— Marvin Gaye’s father?

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The Idea That The Black Community Is A Community That Fully Embraces Homosexuality, Lesbianism, And Transsexuality Is A Damn Lie.

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AMERICA’S HISTORY OF RACISM

It starts as the first drop of rain or snowflake; in short order, the ground is cov­ered with snow or sat­u­rat­ed with water. America has always had a seri­ous hatred for its black cit­i­zens. The ani­mus nev­er went any­where; it was always under the sur­face as the storm clouds hov­ered just over­head until they became too heavy, and down came the downpour.
All it requires in the United States is that Black Americans demand equal treat­ment under the law, and imme­di­ate­ly the hatred comes rush­ing to the sur­face in a tor­ren­tial gush of putrid anger.
People con­tin­ue to expect and even argue that America is get­ting bet­ter racial­ly, and I beg to dif­fer; things are not improv­ing. The hatred that char­ac­ter­ized America since its incep­tion is just as ran­cid and tox­ic today.
The can­cer of racism is being taught and hand­ed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion of white peo­ple. Unfortunately for Blacks who want to be accepted.….…..just to get along, their quest for a just and equi­table soci­ety remains a mirage in a desert of dead­ly racial hatred.
You can leg­is­late con­se­quences, but you can­not change peo­ple’s hearts. You can make it so that crimes com­mit­ted against peo­ple with race as a motive are met with swift and deci­sive jus­tice but in the hearts of peo­ple remain hatred and animosity.
It was the law that Blacks were 3⁄5 of a human being. It was the law that Blacks had no right that a white per­son was oblig­at­ed to respect. It was the law that inter­ra­cial mar­riage was a felony.
Since the gov­ern­ment and the courts were heav­i­ly invest­ed in writ­ing, pass­ing, and val­i­dat­ing unjust laws against its own cit­i­zens, why are we sur­prised that the aver­age per­son would be steeped in racial hatred?

PANDERING TO RACIST WHITE IGNORANCE

Donald Trump under­stood that if he stoked the seem­ing­ly dying embers of racism that lay smol­der­ing under the ash­es, he would get a mas­sive realign­ing of the American polit­i­cal order along racial lines.
Experts argue Trump has approx­i­mate­ly 48% of the elec­torate on his side. Pew Research report­ed that in 2016 48% report­ed vot­ing for Hillary Clinton and 45% for Donald Trump; by com­par­i­son, the offi­cial nation­al vote tal­ly was 48% for Clinton and 46% for Trump. This is not sci­en­tif­ic; how­ev­er, if we were to build out that vote and extend it to the entire US pop­u­la­tion of 330 mil­lion and assume that if every­one could vote, the num­bers would remain the same, Trump would have 151, 800,000 on his side.
Donald Trump strate­gized that he did not need to appeal to non-white vot­ers; he did not need them. It would make no sense to run a white pow­er cam­paign and appeal to non-white vot­ers simultaneously.
The more out­ra­geous his rhetoric, the more hard­ened his white sup­port became. His strat­e­gy won him the pres­i­den­cy in 2016, and even though he lost the pop­u­lar vote by two per­cent­age points, he was elect­ed pres­i­dent in the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­toral college.

Republican Governor Brian Kemp, sur­round­ed by white men, signs the vot­er sup­pres­sion bill into law while the Slave Plantation Painting Hangs In the Background.

ASSAULT ON BLACK HISTORY

The assault in Florida by Ron DeSantis on African/​American his­to­ry should be a wake-up call for the forty-some­thing mil­lion blacks in the United States.
Ron Desantis, who has pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, is not unaware of Trump’s dis­re­spect to blacks dur­ing his cam­paign and through­out his dis­as­trous four years in the white house.
Desantis has made it clear that he will be tak­ing the same path but more so to the right of Donald Trump. Consequently, Desantis has set him­self up as the mod­ern iter­a­tion of George Wallace.
Still, it will con­tin­ue with a few com­plaints and protests here and there but no con­cert­ed sus­tained black pow­er actions that make it clear those actions will not be tol­er­at­ed. Brian Kemp signed anti-vot­ing laws in Georgia under a pic­ture of an old slave plan­ta­tion flanked by six oth­er white men, and blacks did nothing.
Desantis’ barefaced attack on Black History, or what he char­ac­ter­ized as the “woke mob” is the equiv­a­lent of what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the Civil Rights fights of the 1960s.
In the 1960s, the black com­mu­ni­ty had iden­ti­fi­able lead­ers they could dis­par­age and even­tu­al­ly assas­si­nate; today, there is no stand­out leader in the black com­mu­ni­ty, even among the elect­ed US Senators.
The FBI’s J Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro pro­gram ensured that Black lead­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed. So Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Dr. King, and many more were terminated.
Today poten­tial black lead­ers are gun-shy to step for­ward in lead­er­ship part­ly because of the threat that their own gov­ern­ment pos­es to their phys­i­cal exis­tence and part­ly from fire com­ing from their own ranks.
Black Americans are the most vicious against their own kind; not only do they ques­tion the edu­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions of poten­tial lead­ers, they bad mouth their very right to speak on the issues.

THE SO-CALLED WOKE MOB

Without an iden­ti­fi­able head of black America, it becomes dif­fi­cult to decap­i­tate black lead­er­ship through tar­get­ed assas​si​na​tions​.No lead­er­ship head, who do you tar­get to kill?
So the next best thing is to attack the entire race, which Ron Desantis is doing in Florida to out-Trump Donald Trump as the next pres­i­den­tial con­test begins to take shape.
The vilest, most rep­re­hen­si­ble can­di­date who can show nean­derthal whites that they will be bet­ter at keep­ing blacks in their place will be the next Republican stand­out for 2024.
The prob­lem with attack­ing edu­ca­tion and whether black his­to­ry is taught in Florida’s schools, uni­ver­si­ties, and col­leges will most assured­ly back­fire on Desantis and oth­ers try­ing to sup­press black history.
Obviously, Ron Desantis is not a stu­dent of his­to­ry, or he would have known that the more you try to sup­press knowl­edge, the more curi­ous peo­ple become to learn. He would have known that despite the many and var­ied attempts to remove the bible from the earth, it is the book with the largest num­ber in print by far.
I am not con­cerned about a small-time igno­ra­mus posi­tion­ing him­self as a lit­tle god; what con­cerns me are the issues that some with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty have tak­en onto them­selves as they take the lib­er­ty to speak for the entire black community.
The idea that the black com­mu­ni­ty is a com­mu­ni­ty that ful­ly embraces homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and trans­sex­u­al­i­ty is a damn lie.
A bunch of unmar­ried col­lege-edu­cat­ed women who hate men, who are engaged in les­bian and left­ist fem­i­nist ide­ol­o­gy speak for them­selves and those they rep­re­sent; they do not speak for the major­i­ty of black fam­i­lies in the United States.
Therefore, con­sci­en­tious black Americans must unshack­le them­selves from this most vocal part of the black com­mu­ni­ty that ties black­ness to hard-left fem­i­nism, hatred of men, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and trans­sex­u­al­ism. I am con­fi­dent I speak for the major­i­ty when I say that most black peo­ple and fam­i­lies do [not] align with the foregone.
We see it dai­ly when­ev­er the ques­tion of race comes up; this vocal ele­ment in the media, which is black and homo­sex­u­al, black issues are tied to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, Lesbianism, and transsexualism.
It is not who we are. This must be con­demned like we con­demn the likes of Donald Trump, Brian Kemp, and Ron Desantis.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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Govt, Groveling On It’s Knees To FBI For Help…

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Over the years, I have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the Government of Jamaica and the Island’s pri­ma­ry law enforce­ment agency, the Jamaican Constabulary Force. Having served for almost a decade in the (JCF) gave me a bird­s­eye view of the agen­cy’s lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. As a con­se­quence, I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly argu­ing that despite the obvi­ous efforts of suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties to sti­fle the agency, there is much more the JCF could have done and can do to make itself a bet­ter agency. A bit of imag­i­na­tion, research, and inge­nu­ity would have gone a long way in trans­form­ing the agency from a Barney-Fyffe laugh­ing stock to a pre­mier law enforce­ment agency in the region.
Unfortunately, the polit­i­cal direc­torate and the force’s lead­er­ship have con­vinced them­selves that crime-fight­ing out­comes will improve if they cre­ate a top-heavy agency laden with peo­ple with mul­ti­ple degrees.
This has not hap­pened as vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to reach aston­ish­ing pro­por­tions. Why? Well, to begin with, degrees can­not fight crime; sea­soned, moti­vat­ed law enforce­ment offi­cers with intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties do.


Today, as it was decades ear­li­er, the JCF, even at its very best, is a third-rate law enforce­ment agency whose offi­cers seem clue­less and pathet­i­cal­ly uncer­tain in their approach in even the most seri­ous cas­es they are tasked with investigating.
Like a bro­ken record, I have begged the coun­try’s lead­er­ship to bet­ter train, com­pen­sate, sup­port, and moti­vate law enforce­ment agents so that they can secure the coun­try. Alas, this has­n’t hap­pened, which has led peo­ple in some quar­ters to argue that maybe the pol­i­cy­mak­ers do not want crime reduced because it would affect what they have going on. One of the most bla­tant bits of BS per­pet­u­at­ed is the idea that there can be pros­per­i­ty for the Jamaican peo­ple simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the nation expe­ri­enc­ing a pan­dem­ic of vio­lent crimes. It can­not hap­pen. In short, crime impov­er­ish­es nations; no nation can grow to any degree when it is inun­dat­ed with vio­lence and fear. For a coun­try to be its best, there must be an envi­ron­ment of trust and secu­ri­ty with­in so that the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive.
There is no short­age of entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in Jamaica; what we have too much of are vio­lence and fear.

Everyone should hang their head in shame, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, that our gov­ern­ment is forced to ask for help from the American Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) to get to the bot­tom of the grow­ing finan­cial scan­dal involv­ing invest­ments of Usain Bolt and oth­ers. We can argue that it is okay to ask for help, but the sad real­i­ty is that our pre­mier law enforce­ment agency can­not fol­low a mon­ey trail to its con­clu­sion when the rub­ber meets the road. Law enforce­ment agen­cies across the globe col­lab­o­rate every day in the fight against transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works; this is not that. This is the Jamaican gov­ern­ment con­ced­ing that the JCF is out of its league in cas­es of this mag­ni­tude. That is what all Jamaicans should feel shame about. This results from suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the PNP & JLP, starv­ing the JCF of resources, train­ing, sup­port, ade­quate pay, and back­ing. In addi­tion, unwar­rant­ed polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the force’s day-to-day oper­a­tions ren­ders it almost use­less as a crime-fight­ing enti­ty. Whether it is vio­lent or white-col­lar crime, the writ­ing is on the wall; the JCF is not up to the task.
Thanks to the two crim­i­nal gangs that oper­ate as polit­i­cal par­ties in our coun­try. There is no short­age of smart peo­ple in Jamaica; our coun­try lacks lead­er­ship. Deliberate sab­o­tage of law enforce­ment by both polit­i­cal par­ties has forced them to go grov­el­ing on their knees to for­eign pow­ers to solve prob­lems Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of solv­ing, giv­en the train­ing and tools.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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Crisis Of Leadership Makes Jamaicans Vulnerable To All Kinds Of Ills…

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The safe­ty fea­tures of a for­eign car built for the Jamaican mar­ket are gen­er­al­ly infe­ri­or to those built for the United States, Canada, and Great Britain mar­kets. Of course, even though a car may be from Toyota, Nissan, or Mazda-Japanese brands, they are most like­ly built to a more exact­ing stan­dard in the United States, Canada, and England.
Why is this so? Is it because those are wealthy and pow­er­ful nations? That may be a part of it; nev­er­the­less, the sim­ple answer is that those gov­ern­ments ensure that prod­ucts com­ing into their coun­try are of a stan­dard they are com­fort­able with.
They cre­ate stan­dards for cars enter­ing their mar­kets and all oth­er prod­ucts their con­sumers use. This process is not a one-off process where con­gress or the par­lia­ment pass­es laws, and that’s the end of it. It is a con­tin­u­ous eval­u­a­tion process. In some cas­es, the laws passed have sun­set claus­es, mean­ing after sev­er­al years, con­gress revis­its a law to see whether it has worked the way it was intended.

Usain Bolt

This is not about cars, the American con­gress, the British House of Commons, or the Canadian Parliament. It is about the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives doing the work they were sent to do.
We live in a world that is con­tin­u­ous­ly chang­ing; our peo­ple are con­nect­ed to oth­ers thou­sands of miles around the globe, all with­in a nano-sec­ond at the click of a mouse. Consequently, the parliament/​congress must be ever vig­i­lant on behalf of their nation.
Old and archa­ic laws must be updat­ed or rewrit­ten as cir­cum­stances change, and new laws must be enact­ed to deal with emerg­ing eventualities.
Can any­one truth­ful­ly say that the Jamaican par­lia­ment has been up to the task laid out in the foregone?
This brings me to the ques­tion of the theft of invest­ment monies belong­ing to for­mer sprint star Usain Bolt and oth­ers. Where there are lax rules gov­ern­ing any part of the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor, crim­i­nal ele­ments will sure­ly be pry­ing and prod­ding to exploit those weaknesses. 


Theft, scams, and swin­dling are all too com­mon in the dig­i­tal age, and it is not unique to Jamaica by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. The ques­tion, how­ev­er, must be, what are the pro­vi­sions in place statu­to­ri­ly to pro­tect all Jamaicans, not just Usain Bolt?
The theft of monies from Usain Bolt is only news because he is Usain Bolt.
But this is not new; peo­ple have been los­ing their hard-earned sav­ings in insti­tu­tions that strict oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures in law should gov­ern. And what has the Jamaican leg­is­la­ture done about it? What have they done about Jamaica Public Services Company’s monop­oly and how it oper­ates with total impuni­ty and incom­pe­tence in the space?
What has the leg­is­la­ture done about the Registrar General Department or Motor Vehicle Department that has been allowed to con­tin­ue for decades as a cesspool of cor­rup­tion, to the point it is the norm to pay and receive a dri­ver’s license even if you can­not dri­ve an automobile?
Try apply­ing for a birth cer­tifi­cate, and you will prob­a­bly die from old age if not from the coun­try’s inor­di­nate­ly high vio­lent crime rate. These issues can be reme­died with sim­ple leg­is­la­tion that makes it manda­to­ry for Jamaicans to receive the ser­vices they pay for with­in a cer­tain time stip­u­lat­ed in the law.


Knowing how long you will have to wait to receive an answer from a gov­ern­ment agency is not nov­el. Every Jamaican apply­ing to enter the United States, Canada, or Great Britain knows the timeline.
The prob­lem plagu­ing the nation is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. There is no short­age of pon­tif­i­ca­tors vying in the par­lia­ment for air­time, and there is no short­age of wannabe lead­ers wait­ing for their turn at the slop trough of the pub­lic purse. What the pub­lic receives in return is incom­pe­tence and not much else.
Where is the leg­isla­tive urgency that is required to pro­tect the Jamaican people?
On the oth­er hand, if the peo­ple can­not get pro­tec­tion from the mur­der­ers run­ning wild and killing at will, why would they expect those in pow­er to pro­tect their hard-earned resources?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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(Breaking News)Ex-counterintelligence Head In FBI’s N.Y. Office Arrested On Charges Of Money Laundering And Violating Russia Sanctions

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The for­mer head of coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence for the FBI’s New York City office was arrest­ed over the week­end on charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing and vio­lat­ing sanc­tions on Russia, three senior law enforce­ment offi­cials told NBC News. An FBI spokesman con­firmed the arrest of Charles McGonigal, who was appre­hend­ed at JFK air­port in New York on Saturday after return­ing on a flight from the Middle East.
Prosecutors allege that McGonigal worked with Russian oli­garch Oleg Deripaska, Deripaska asso­ciate Sergey Shestakov, and a third per­son to inves­ti­gate a rival Russian oli­garch in return for pay­ments from Deripaska.
According to pros­e­cu­tors, McGonigal, Shestakov and the third per­son tried to con­ceal Deripaska’s involve­ment through shell com­pa­nies, forged sig­na­tures and oth­er means.

The activ­i­ty alleged­ly occurred three years after McGonigal’s 2018 retire­ment from the FBI. A senior law enforce­ment offi­cial told NBC News a sec­ond case against McGonigal filed in fed­er­al court in Washington, D.C., will allege he took hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from a for­mer for­eign intel offi­cial while still serv­ing in the FBI.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, “As alleged, Charles McGonigal, a for­mer high-lev­el FBI offi­cial, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court inter­preter, vio­lat­ed U.S. sanc­tions by agree­ing to pro­vide ser­vices to Oleg Deripaska, a sanc­tioned Russian oli­garch. They both pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanc­tions removed, and, as pub­lic ser­vants, they should have known bet­ter.” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll said, “The FBI is com­mit­ted to the enforce­ment of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions designed to pro­tect the United States and our allies, espe­cial­ly against hos­tile activ­i­ties of a for­eign gov­ern­ment and its actors. Russian oli­garchs like Oleg Deripaska per­form glob­al malign influ­ence on behalf of the Kremlin and are asso­ci­at­ed with acts of bribery, extor­tion, and violence.”
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​/​e​x​-​c​o​u​n​t​e​r​i​n​t​e​l​-​h​e​a​d​-​f​b​i​-​n​e​w​-​y​o​r​k​-​m​c​g​o​n​i​g​a​l​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​r​c​n​a​6​6​995

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LA Police Union Makes Weak Defense For Officers In Keenan Anderson Incident

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Every year this behav­ior gets worse than the pre­vi­ous year. Police con­tin­ue to mur­der the inno­cent, men­tal­ly dis­tressed, and unarmed at alarm­ing rates with­out any seri­ous attempt to rein in this mur­der­ous rampage.


Lawyer Carl Douglas, far left, holds a news con­fer­ence to announce fil­ing a $50 mil­lion in dam­ages claim against the city of Los Angeles over the death of Keenan Anderson, seen pic­tured on posters, in Los Angeles Friday, Jan. 20, 2023.

As expect­ed, a police union has entered from stage right to defend the actions of their offi­cers this month. The Los Angeles Police Department became the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the viral arrest of BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ cousin Keenan Anderson, who died fol­low­ing the traf­fic stop. Now, they’re under scruti­ny from the pub­lic giv­en Anderson’s death was spec­u­lat­ed to be the third traf­fic stop by the LAPD that turned fatal this year (and we’re only in January). The LAPD Shootings and Critical Incidents web­site has not doc­u­ment­ed the inci­dents, includ­ing Anderson’s.

According to an ABC7 report, the Los Angeles Police Protective League made a state­ment on the two men who were shot and Anderson who was Tased. The report says all three men were suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and instead of the LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit being called, the cops respond­ed. Even Police Chief Michel Moore was con­cerned about it.

In a five-page waste of time, writ­ten to the may­or and city coun­cil, the LAPPL defend­ed the offi­cers and point­ed toward the MEU’s lack of resources as rea­son for the fatal out­come of each case.

More from ABC7 Los Angeles:

But police union offi­cials say the offi­cers did noth­ing wrong and that the out­comes of the three cas­es would not have been dif­fer­ent had men­tal health eval­u­a­tors been sum­moned, since those eval­u­a­tors are not allowed to inter­act with vio­lent sus­pects until armed offi­cers are able to secure the scene and make sure there are no threats.

“In all three inci­dents that we talked about today, noth­ing would have changed if an MEU unit was at the scene,” said Detective Jamie McBride, the LAPPL Board Director. “In any of these inci­dents, they have to be ren­dered safe first before a men­tal eval­u­a­tion unit can come up.”

McBride says LAPD’s poli­cies and pro­to­cols are clear: It’s Mental Evaluation Units and Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Teams, known as SMART, are clas­si­fied as sec­ond responders.

Well, the offi­cers involved in Anderson’s case will be eval­u­at­ed on just how well they fol­lowed pro­to­col on both state and fed­er­al lev­els.

Attorney Benjamin Crump and O.J. Simpson’s for­mer defense attor­ney Carl Douglas announced the fil­ing of a wrong­ful death claim, seek­ing $50 mil­lion in dam­ages, Friday. The claim was filed on behalf of Anderson’s 5‑year-old son, per the LA Times.

“Mr. Anderson did noth­ing to jus­ti­fy this use of seri­ous and unrea­son­able force against him.… The Claimants are informed and believe that because of implic­it bias, each of the unknown involved police offi­cers assumed Mr. Anderson pre­sent­ed a seri­ous threat to someone’s safe­ty, and then assault­ed, bat­tered and tased him at least six times in response.,” read the claim. “- the City of Los Angeles neg­li­gent­ly trained these police offi­cers as to the appro­pri­ate cir­cum­stances and tech­niques to deploy when using non­lethal force, includ­ing tasers, lead­ing to the actions and fail­ures to act as alleged here.”

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Fall River Settles Another Police Civil Rights Lawsuit. Here’s How Much It Cost.

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FALL RIVER — The city has set­tled anoth­er civ­il rights law­suit against the Fall River Police Department, this time with an $80,000 award.

This lat­est set­tle­ment is one in a string of offi­cer-relat­ed civ­il law­suits that has cost the city hun­dreds of thou­sands of dollars.

Corey Ferreira, a Fall River native and a cor­rec­tions offi­cer with the Commonwealth, filed the law­suit in fed­er­al court against patrol offi­cers Derek Oagles, Frederick Mello and for­mer FRPD offi­cer Thomas Roberts in June 2020.

Ferreira suf­fered seri­ous injuries includ­ing bro­ken ribs, and a col­lapsed lung that required emer­gency room med­ical staff insert­ing a breath­ing tube in his chest, dur­ing an arrest out­side The Cove Restaurant on Aug. 17, 2017, as he and a friend were wait­ing for a cab. He said the injuries were sus­tained while he was in hand­cuffs and on the ground.

The city settled the case on Jan. 9

Ferreira’s attor­ney, Georgi J. Vogel-Rosen, indi­cat­ed in an email that she was pleased with the out­come of the civ­il case against the city.

“Corey Ferreira suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant injuries, includ­ing a col­lapsed lung, bro­ken ribs, and per­ma­nent nerve dam­age. He spent 20 months fight­ing base­less crim­i­nal charges, until they ulti­mate­ly were dis­missed by the District Attorney. This set­tle­ment fur­ther vin­di­cates him and allows him to put this ter­ri­ble trau­ma behind him,” wrote Vogel-Rosen. “Lawsuits such as this one send a mes­sage to police depart­ments that vio­la­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights expose cities and towns to sub­stan­tial liability.

Ferreira, who has worked in the state prison sys­tem for the past 15 years, said it cost him $10,000 in legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to fight the felony assault charges for alleged­ly fight­ing with the offi­cers. He said the Bristol County District Attorney’s office dropped the case on the first day of tri­al when some of the police offi­cer wit­ness­es failed to appear. He said the charges could have cost him his career as a cor­rec­tions officer.

“What I went through was a night­mare. It is ter­ri­fy­ing to know that there are police offi­cers in this city get­ting away with false accu­sa­tions and bru­tal­i­ty this severe with­out being held account­able,” said Ferreira.

After an alleged beat­ing by Fall River police offi­cers in 2017, Corey Ferreira required emer­gency aid at a local hos­pi­tal. The Fall River native and cor­rec­tions offi­cer just set­tled a law­suit for $85,000 with the city. 

According to the terms of the set­tle­ment agree­ment pro­vid­ed by City Solicitor Alan Rumsey, the city and the offi­cers involved do not admit to any wrong­do­ing or lia­bil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the 2017 inci­dent, and Ferreira can­not take any fur­ther action.

Taser death:Fall River set­tles civ­il rights law­suit relat­ed to 2016 stun gun death, but denies wrongdoing

Roberts was fired from the police depart­ment for stat­ing false­hoods in police reports after he tes­ti­fied in a grand jury against fel­low offi­cer at the time, Michael Pessoa who is set to go to tri­al start­ing in February for assault­ing three men in custody.

Awaiting tri­al:Former Fall River cop Michael Pessoa will face three tri­als for using exces­sive force

Settlements and still pending civil rights lawsuits

Just in the past sev­en months, the city has shelled out $460,000 in police-relat­ed civ­il set­tle­ments, includ­ing the Ferreira case.

Most recent­ly, the city paid out $65,000 this past sum­mer in a claim against city police offi­cer Nicholas Hoar for the assault on William Harvey, who was in cus­tody at the FRPD head­quar­ters in December 2020 after an arrest on a domes­tic complaint.

Hoar was indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury for the alleged assault in November for the alleged assault against Harvey after an FBI probe, and is free with­out bail while he awaits tri­al. He is cur­rent­ly on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave from the police department.

Details sought:As inves­ti­ga­tion in shoot­ing death of 19-year-old con­tin­ues, few details revealed

Hoar claimed he used a police baton to sub­due an unco­op­er­a­tive Harvey, but a police book­ing room video shows him shov­ing a hand­cuffed pris­on­er from behind into the cell.

Harvey has claimed that Hoar assault­ed him as he was being brought into the police sta­tion and was hos­pi­tal­ized dur­ing his arrest.

Taser death lawsuit

In May, the city set­tled a civ­il rights law­suit for $315,000 in the Taser-relat­ed death of 48-year-old Scott Macomber, which occurred in May 2016.

Fall River had already paid out an addi­tion­al $237,000 to set­tle two exces­sive-force law­suits involv­ing Pessoa, with anoth­er civ­il rights case pend­ing by of the for­mer officer’s alleged vic­tims in his crim­i­nal case.

Both Pessoa and Hoar are two of approx­i­mate­ly two dozen defen­dants in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit brought by the fam­i­ly of a 19-year-old New Bedford man shot by Hoar in the Fall River Industrial Park in 2017.

And the city is fac­ing a new law­suit filed at the end of December in fed­er­al court, this time with alle­ga­tions that a man was severe­ly injured by police in 2020, when police received a call about a per­son with a gun and respond­ed to the wrong apartment.

This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on The Herald News:

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Govt. Continue To Beg Jamaicans Not To Break Laws Rather Than Compel Lawbreakers To Obey Laws…

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Reduced to beg­ging motorists not to speed, the Jamaican Prime Minister demon­strat­ed that his gov­ern­ment is an abysmal fail­ure on the sem­i­nal issue of law and order. Of course, there are blink­ered hyper-par­ti­sans who will see this com­ment as a par­ti­san attack on Mister Holness and his gov­ern­ment instead of a truth­ful and objec­tive analy­sis of the facts.
A record 488 peo­ple were killed in traf­fic crash­es in Jamaica in 2022, accord­ing to the Ministry of Transport’s Road Safety Unit. The 488 peo­ple killed in 2022 exceed­ed the 487 who died in motor vehi­cle crash­es in 2021.
The data from the Ministry of Transport should be from the police, whose job it should be to mon­i­tor and pro­tect the motor­ing pub­lic from the car­nage on the roads from the igno­rant morons who jeop­ar­dize the lives of oth­er road users.
Unfortunately, Jamaica is no longer a place where any­one can feel safe in any regard, not from the maraud­ing morons dri­ving on the roads, not from the brutish mon­sters that con­tin­ue to mur­der at will with­out consequence.
Though shock­ing for such a small island, the excep­tion­al­ly high num­ber of road fatal­i­ties is only a tiny part of the true hor­ror of the insan­i­ty of what obtains on Jamaica’s roads; the bro­ken bod­ies they leave to suf­fer far exceed the fatalities.
Overtaking around blind cor­ners, uphill, down­hill, on the side­walks, dri­ving onto major thor­ough­fares from side­streets with­out stop­ping, drink­ing and dri­ving, exces­sive speed­ing, reck­less and dan­ger­ous dri­ving, wel­come to Jamaica, where every­one does as they please.
Where are the police, you ask? That’s a good ques­tion; they long ced­ed the streets to the hoodlums.

The police force is nowhere near what it should be with staffing, equip­ment, train­ing, pay, and sup­port from the gov­ern­ment & peo­ple, but it damn sure isn’t where it used to be.
Decades ago, the force was much small­er and less equipped; the pay was even more shit­ty, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence was ram­pant, and there was no sup­port from either polit­i­cal par­ty, but the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple were behind their police force.
The stan­dard of suc­cess was the data points, low­er mur­der sta­tis­tics, few­er rapes, few­er rob­beries, and break-ins, and on the nation’s streets, the traf­fic police made their pres­ence felt.
In all of this, many traf­fic cops were accused of cor­rup­tion, the force nev­er fig­ured out a way to fix that, but there was a police pres­ence, and errant behav­ior on the roads had consequences.
Despite a much larg­er force, new and sophis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment, and bet­ter pay, the force pro­duces far less for the Jamaican peo­ple than it did decades earlier.
The Commissioner of police is allowed to skate by even as Rome burns; his polit­i­cal boss­es make excus­es for him even though there is no rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his con­tin­ued employ­ment out­side politics.
But Commissioner Antony Anderson is not the only prob­lem with the Constabulary. God knows, only in Jamaica can a per­son be giv­en the most senior job for a dis­ci­pline in which he has absolute­ly no experience.
Most of the offi­cers below Anderson are a bunch of posers with mul­ti­ple degrees from the University of the West Indies who could not find jobs else­where, so they become police offi­cers. They are giv­en com­mand with­out any knowl­edge of polic­ing and, in most cas­es, nev­er slapped a pair of hand­cuffs on a criminal.
The Jamaican tax­pay­ers are left hold­ing the bag for those mis­fits who are very good at talk­ing but not much else.
In the mean­time, the roads are a drag-rac­ing hell, and your chance of get­ting mur­dered is 1 in over 47,000.
Those are not good odds!

The gov­ern­ment could alle­vi­ate many issues plagu­ing the coun­try by com­mit­ting to a tick­et­ing sys­tem that allows the police to arrest scofflaws and throw them in jail. A com­put­er­ized sys­tem that lets the police know right away that a dri­ver has a war­rant for unpaid tick­ets. Passing a road traf­fic act that actu­al­ly has teeth and is not a joke. These are not nov­el ideas, just ideas that oth­er nations have used for years, some­times decades.
Maintaining Jamaica as a par­adise for crim­i­nals and law­break­ers seems to be the intent of both polit­i­cal par­ties and their func­tionar­ies. Why else would they not adopt what oth­er nations have already done successfully?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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Black Military Officer Pepper-sprayed By Rogue Cop Receives Less Than K$4 In Jury Verdict

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No, this is not a joke. There is an unex­plained, irra­tional affin­i­ty between cops and a cer­tain seg­ment of America that caus­es things like these to occur.
Maybe the mem­bers of that jury still believe a Black man has no right that any­one is oblig­ed to respect.
I mean, black sol­diers return­ing from Korea and Vietnam were treat­ed like garbage after fight­ing America’s wars, so it should come as no sur­prise that despite the fact that this mil­i­tary offi­cer in uni­form had bro­ken no law, a jury of Karens and Kens have no regard for his right to dig­ni­ty. (mb)

PHOTO: FILE - In this image taken from Windsor, Va., Police body camera footage, Lt. Caron Nazario is helped by an EMT after he was pepper-sprayed by Windsor police during a traffic stop in Windsor, on Dec. 20, 2020. (AP)
In this image tak­en from Windsor, Va., Police body cam­era footage, Lt. Caron Nazario is helped by an EMT after he was pep­per-sprayed by Windsor police dur­ing a traf­fic stop in Windsor, on Dec. 20, 2020. (AP)

A Black sol­dier in uni­form who was pep­per-sprayed in his car by Virginia police offi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop has been award­ed less than $4,000 in a mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit against the two offi­cers. The jury award­ed 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario a total of $3,685 in the law­suit against Windsor, Virginia, police offi­cers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker. The offi­cers faced four counts: assault, bat­tery, false impris­on­ment and ille­gal search. Gutierrez was ordered to pay $2,685 in dam­ages, no mal­ice, under lia­bil­i­ty for assault. He was cleared of all oth­er charges. Crocker was liable for an ille­gal search, no mal­ice. He was ordered to pay $1,000 in dam­ages. He was cleared of all oth­er charges. Nazario’s lawyer, Tom Roberts, said it was a “sad day” and that the ver­dicts fail to send the mes­sage to oth­er police offi­cers that “this con­duct is unacceptable.”Trial begins for Virginia police officers being sued by Army officer over traffic stop | CNN

“It is open sea­son on cit­i­zens in Virginia and across the coun­ty,” Roberts said in a state­ment. “Citizens will not rest assured that scenes like this are not repeat­ed with impuni­ty. MORE: Black sol­dier suing police over vio­lent stop caught on cam­era The offi­cers pulled over Nazario on the evening of Dec. 5, 2020. Body cam­era footage showed Gutierrez pep­per spray Nazario when he would not get out of the car. One of the offi­cers wrote in the police report that Nazario elud­ed police because he did­n’t stop right away. Nazario stat­ed that he want­ed to pull over in a well-lit area. “I’m hon­est­ly afraid to get out,” Nazario said dur­ing the traf­fic stop. “Yeah, you should be,” Gutierrez replied. Police said they pulled him over for not hav­ing a vis­i­ble rear license plate, but in the footage, a tem­po­rary license plate can be seen in the rear win­dow of Nazario’s then-new SUV. Nazario was not charged in the incident.
Gutierrez was fired by the Windsor Police Department in 2021 for not fol­low­ing depart­ment pol­i­cy dur­ing the incident.

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Black Memphis Man Dead After Alleged Police Beating…

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It is dif­fi­cult to grasp that in 2023 this is hap­pen­ing to human beings, actu­al cit­i­zens of any coun­try, much less in a coun­try that pre­tends to lec­ture oth­er nations about human rights.
Worse yet, the image of the bru­tal­ized cit­i­zen is not that of a per­son who ordi­nary crim­i­nals assault­ed; agents of the state bru­tal­ized him.
No one old enough can for­get the images of Haitian immi­grant Abner Louima. On the fate­ful August 9, 1997, evening that Haitian immi­grant Abner Louima suf­fered through the sadis­tic police bru­tal­i­ty of the New York Police Department …
After the mon­sters act­ing under the col­or of law arrest­ed mis­ter Louima on pet­ty charges of being engaged in a scuf­fle out­side a night­club, he was tak­en to the police station.
(During the trip to the sta­tion house, offi­cers alleged­ly stopped twice to beat Louima, who was hand­cuffed. At the 70th Precinct sta­tion house, two offi­cers, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, alleged­ly shout­ed racial slurs, and Volpe alleged­ly shoved a wood­en stick (believed to be the han­dle of a toi­let plunger or broom) into Louima’s rec­tum and mouth. Volpe report­ed­ly bor­rowed gloves from anoth­er offi­cer and walked through the sta­tion house with the wood­en stick, which was cov­ered with blood and excre­ment; the gloves were recov­ered, but the wood­en stick was not found on the scene. Louima was placed in a hold­ing cell, where oth­er inmates com­plained that he was bleed­ing. An ambu­lance was even­tu­al­ly request­ed to take him to a hos­pi­tal, but he was held for three hours in the cell, bleed­ing fol­low­ing the alleged beat­ing and tor­ture.80 Once at the hos­pi­tal, doc­tors con­firmed Louima’s seri­ous inter­nal injuries were con­sis­tent with his alle­ga­tions; inter­nal organs were rup­tured, and his front teeth had been bro­ken. For the first three days of his two-month hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, Louima was report­ed­ly hand­cuffed to his bed) . (hrw​.org)

Twenty-six years after Abner Louima’s case, police con­tin­ue to oper­ate with increased impuni­ty and deprav­i­ty, in case after case in state after state. The sto­ry­line dif­fers, but the vic­tims remain Black men. The depraved mon­sters doing the assaults and killings remains white American police officers.
The sem­i­nal ques­tion in light of the unchang­ing real­i­ty must be, what is behind police sense of impunity?
The answer.…. Racism, pro­tec­tion from cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors and judges, and qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty the doc­trine the Supreme Court took upon itself to leg­is­late despite not being a leg­isla­tive body.(mb)

Abner Louima

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People protest­ed out­side a Memphis police sta­tion over a man’s death after a con­fronta­tion with police offi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop.
Family, friends, and sup­port­ers of Tyre D. Nichols released bal­loons Saturday to hon­or the life of the 29-year-old Memphis man and protest­ed out­side a police sta­tion near the site of the Jan. 7 traf­fic stop.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is con­duct­ing a use-of-force inves­ti­ga­tion at the request of Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy; bureau offi­cials said last week. Nichols “suc­cumbed to his injuries” on Tuesday, the agency said with­out describ­ing the nature of his injuries.
Nichols, who was Black, was arrest­ed after offi­cers stopped him for reck­less dri­ving, police said. There was a con­fronta­tion as offi­cers approached the dri­ver, and the sus­pect ran before he was con­front­ed again by pur­su­ing offi­cers who arrest­ed him, author­i­ties said.
“Afterward, the sus­pect com­plained of hav­ing a short­ness of breath, at which time an ambu­lance was called,” and Nichols was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, police said. Due to his con­di­tion, police con­tact­ed Mulroy’s office, and he request­ed the state bureau’s inves­ti­ga­tion, author­i­ties said. Rodney Wells told WREG-TV on Saturday that his step­son end­ed up suf­fer­ing a car­diac arrest and kid­ney fail­ure because of a beat­ing by officers.

In this pho­to pro­vid­ed by WREG, Tyre Nichols’ step­fa­ther Rodney Wells, right, holds a pho­to of Nichols in the hos­pi­tal after his arrest, dur­ing a protest in Memphis, Tenn., Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023. (Jordan James/​WREG via AP) ASSOCIATED PRESS.

“When we got to the hos­pi­tal, it was dev­as­tat­ing,” Wells said. “All of that still should not occur because of a traf­fic stop. You shouldn’t be on a dial­y­sis machine look­ing like this because of a traf­fic stop. That’s inhumane.”
Protesters said author­i­ties should release body cam­era footage of the arrest.
“The least they can do is be trans­par­ent with the moth­er, father, and the fam­i­ly and show that video to them about what hap­pened to their son,” com­mu­ni­ty activist Kareem Ali told WMC-TV.
Nichols’ old­er sis­ter, Keyana Dixon, said dur­ing the bal­loon release that the offi­cers who pulled Nichols over were in an unmarked vehi­cle, accord­ing to The Commercial Appeal.
“If he did run, it was because he was scared,” Dixon said. “A traf­fic stop is sup­posed to be a traf­fic stop for any­body, and they were in an unmarked vehi­cle, so I already knew what he thought.”
The news­pa­per said it could­n’t inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm the details described by the fam­i­ly. The Memphis Police Department referred ques­tions to the state bureau, which said it was still inves­ti­gat­ing. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @Yahoonews.

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Twelve Year-old Kid Killed By Cop Car That Rammed Fleeing Motorist

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Just another iteration of America’s ‘warrior’ cops on American streets acting as if the streets are war zones and they are action heroes.
— the way they lie is stunning.

The fam­i­ly of an Atlanta-area 12-year-old killed dur­ing a high-speed chase calls for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into a Georgia State Patrol trooper’s actions.
During a Jan. 10 news con­fer­ence, the par­ents of Le’Den Boykins stood on the steps of the Georgia State Capitol build­ing. They expressed sor­row and frus­tra­tion patrol offi­cers didn’t do more to save the lives of the chil­dren inside the car the night of the incident. 
“They decid­ed to ter­mi­nate somebody’s life for a speed­ing tick­et,” Le’Den’s father, Anthony Boykins, said
The inci­dent occurred dur­ing the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Sept. 10, 2021. Charlie Moore, 37, was dri­ving his Kia Sorento with his son and Le’Den Boykins inside.
Boykins, who his grand­moth­er was watch­ing at his Paulding County home while his par­ents were in Michigan at a funer­al, had been per­mit­ted to go out with his 14-year-old neigh­bor and Moore, the teen’s father, to earn some mon­ey clean­ing park­ing lots on the night of the crash, local sta­tion WXIA reported
Georgia State Patrol told NBC Moore “was ini­tial­ly pulled over short­ly after 1 a.m. by a troop­er for speeding.”

Dashcam video shows the traf­fic stop where Georgia State Patrol Officer David Petersen approached the driver’s side win­dow of Moore’s vehi­cle. Petersen claimed Moore tried to evade him. He asked Moore for his driver’s license, which Moore refused to pro­vide, prompt­ing Petersen to ask him to step out of the vehi­cle. Two Paulding County Sheriff’s deputies arrived sev­er­al min­utes into the traf­fic stop, and Moore asked for a super­vi­sor and ques­tioned what crime he had com­mit­ted. At this point, one deputy smashed the driver’s side win­dow, and Moore react­ed by speed­ing away. A high-speed chase last­ed rough­ly eight min­utes until Petersen hit the back left bumper of Moore’s Kia Sorento per­form­ing the PIT maneu­ver. Moore and the chil­dren inside flipped over into a road­side ditch. Petersen is heard say­ing, “PIT suc­cess­ful, PIT suc­cess­ful,” as the car goes into the embank­ment. The PIT maneu­ver is a method used by police to end pur­suits. The method occurs when a police vehi­cle hits the vehi­cle it is pur­su­ing near its back left or right tire. The vehi­cle is struck and then spun around, allow­ing police to stop the chase. The fam­i­ly claims the troop­ers should have act­ed dif­fer­ent­ly because there were chil­dren inside Moore’s vehi­cle. “They could put a road­block up and pro­tect those kids. They couldn’t fig­ure out any oth­er way than to flip that car over?” Anthony Boykins asked.

Anthony Boykins and Toni Franklin-Boykins stand at a news con­fer­ence. (Photo: Facebook/​Dontaye Carter)

While Georgia’s Department of Public Safety pol­i­cy does not explic­it­ly pro­hib­it the PIT maneu­ver because chil­dren are in the car, it requires offi­cers to con­sid­er children’s safe­ty. The Paulding County Sheriff’s Office on scene told WANF, “it was 1 a.m., and it was dark, and the troop­ers were hav­ing trou­ble see­ing who was in the vehi­cle.”
“They killed my son, and the first thing they did was lie to me. I asked them specif­i­cal­ly, did you know there were chil­dren in the car, and they gave a very clear answer, no, we did not know chil­dren were in the car,” Anthony Boykins said.
Radio traf­fic shared by Boykins’ attor­ney, Lee Merritt, indi­cates offi­cers on the scene knew chil­dren were in the vehi­cle. 
A dis­patch­er can be heard on police radio traf­fic say­ing, “there are chil­dren in the car.” An uniden­ti­fied offi­cer responds, say­ing, “There are kids in the car. We’ll try again if I can get up there and pass them.” “There’s the vehi­cle com­ing. They bet­ter stop before they get put in a ditch,” an uniden­ti­fied troop­er said. Merritt asked for the Paulding County pros­e­cu­tor to recuse him­self and allow a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to come in and take over the case last sum­mer. Atlanta NAACP President Gerald Griggs called for Georgia’s attor­ney gen­er­al to appoint a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor again at the news con­fer­ence. He also called for the Department of Justice to inves­ti­gate the case. “It’s been almost 500 days, and there’s still been no action. We’re demand­ing swift and account­able jus­tice in this case. Le’Den was a vic­tim,” Griggs said. “We want jus­tice for our son,” Anthony Boykins said.

Le’Den Boykins, 12, died inside a car that flipped over fol­low­ing a PIT maneu­ver by Georgia Trooper. (Photo: Facebook/​Toni Franklin-Boykins)

Petersen was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave dur­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by the GBI, then returned to work ear­ly last year, WXIA reports. The Georgia State Patrol told Atlanta Black Star, “We can­not com­ment due to the notice of poten­tial lit­i­ga­tion.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said its only role in the case was to con­duct the autop­sy, and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office said it could not com­ment. Moore was arrest­ed and booked into the Paulding County jail. He faces a slew of charges, includ­ing first-degree vehic­u­lar homi­cide, mur­der dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a felony, reck­less dri­ving, endan­ger­ing a child while DUI of alco­hol or drugs, and flee­ing to elude. He still awaits trial.(AtlantaBlackStar).

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The Lies And Disinformation Are All Part Of The Plan

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There is noth­ing remark­able or shock­ing about the Republican’s stance on Donald Trump tak­ing and keep­ing clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments and refus­ing to give them back.
There is noth­ing remark­able about their excite­ment that Biden’s peo­ple found clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at his prop­er­ties and noti­fied the nation­al archives and the FBI.
Finally, it is not sur­pris­ing that this was the open­ing Republicans were hop­ing for to cre­ate the false nar­ra­tive of what-about-ism.
Republicans have no inter­est in see­ing the gov­ern­ment work unless they are in charge. The inves­ti­ga­tion is the point in hear­ings that will come from this, as well as Hunter Biden’s lap­top and oth­er fish­ing expe­di­tions. This is the Biden administration’s Benghazi.
With Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, no one should be delud­ed about what the next two years will be about. McCarthy gushed about the results of the fraud­u­lent Benghazi hear­ings years ago, and he sees con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tions as a win­ning strat­e­gy for Republicans.
The Republicans who show up on FOX ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion’ net­works do not show up to debate events or make ratio­nal argu­ments of equiv­a­lence; they show up to build out pre-planned lies and disinformation.
No one should be under any illu­sions about their intent; they all know what they say are lies. The lies are a fea­ture, not a bug.

Armed vig­i­lantes turned up in Arizona around polling sta­tions. Mainstream media asked , are they break­ing the law?
Nothing was done about it.


Conscientious Americans shocked by what Republicans are doing, vot­er-sup­pres­sion laws, book burn­ings, polit­i­cal vio­lence, xeno­pho­bia, bla­tant racism, and oth­er anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic actions should under­stand that this is only the beginning.
The Republican par­ty is no longer a par­ty that believes in Democracy. From as far back as the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and maybe even far­ther back, the par­ty real­ized it had become a minor­i­ty party.
But for the Electoral College, in 2000, there would have been no pres­i­dent George W Bush. Still, there is an elec­toral col­lege, so we nev­er got to see what pres­i­dent Al Gore could have accom­plished as the 43rd President of the United States, despite receiv­ing 543 895 more votes than Bush.
Sixteen years lat­er, accord­ing to CNN, Senator Hillary Clinton would receive 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%) in a final vote tal­ly, yet lose the pres­i­den­cy to the rep­re­hen­si­ble nar­cis­sis­tic liar Donald Trump.
Convinced of his ille­git­i­ma­cy, Trump tweet­ed, “In addi­tion to win­ning the Electoral College in a land­slide, I won the pop­u­lar vote if you deduct the mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed ille­gal­ly.”
It was a lie, but lies were cen­tral to Donald Trump’s brand. His busi­ness­es, his per­sona, and every­thing about him was a lie. Nonetheless, Trump became an American icon despite it. His polit­i­cal cam­paign became a pos­si­bil­i­ty, launched arguably on the lie that President Barack Obama was born out­side the United States and, there­fore, illegitimate.
Pressed to pro­duce evi­dence to back up his claims, Trump lied that he had sent inves­ti­ga­tors to Hawaii, Obama’s birth­place, to find the evidence.….….which nev­er materialized.
Donald Trump chal­lenged the doc­u­ment when Obama pro­duced his long-form birth cer­tifi­cate refut­ing Trump’s lies.
Though Donald Trump was proven to be a lying char­la­tan and a despi­ca­bly self-serv­ing los­er, he would go on to win the Republican nom­i­na­tion and be elect­ed pres­i­dent in the elec­toral college.
Trump would be impeached twice by con­gress in his sin­gle term, a first-ever, but the Republican-con­trolled Senate failed to remove him for his high crimes and misdemeanors.
After los­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 2020, Donald Trump incit­ed an insur­rec­tion to storm Congress to stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote, a first in the nation’s history.

UNITED STATES — JANUARY 6: Trump sup­port­ers take over the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, as the Congress works to cer­ti­fy the elec­toral col­lege votes. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Conventional wis­dom would dic­tate that the Republican par­ty would ditch Donald Trump and his lies and seek to rein­gra­ti­ate itself with the plu­ral­i­ty of American vot­ers, large­ly by embrac­ing a raft of ideas amenable to them.
No, the stakes for the Republicans were too impor­tant to try a big-tent approach; in fact, the Democrats are the big-tent, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, les­bians, gays, and workers.
Republicans dou­bled down on Trumpism; they would pass laws to make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for peo­ple of col­or to vote, make it a crime for women to have abor­tions, and launch a war against immi­grants of col­or com­ing into the country.
They have no care about Black or Brown abor­tions; the idea is to ensure that white women do not abort a sin­gle white baby, regard­less of the risk to the mother.
In 2019 Brookings​.edu report­ed that for the first time, non-Hispanic white res­i­dents now make up less than half (49.9%) of the nation’s under age 15 pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to new­ly released 2018 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
The report stat­ed this phe­nom­e­non, which is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue, empha­sizes the need for insti­tu­tions that focus on chil­dren and young fam­i­lies to proac­tive­ly accom­mo­date the inter­ests of more racial­ly diverse pop­u­la­tions, as the lat­ter will be key play­ers in the country’s demo­graph­ic and eco­nom­ic future.
These sta­tis­tics only bore out what many whites in the United States already lived in fear of for decades and maybe since the for­ma­tion of the Republic.
If you believe the land you stand on is your God-giv­en birthright, then you also believe you have the right to decide who gets to live on that land or who enjoys the fruits thereof.
The Republican par­ty had long become the par­ty of white men, and so the bat­tle lines have long been drawn for America.
If the Republicans can­not win at the bal­lot box, they do not have the issues; they do not have the num­bers, and even with vot­er sup­pres­sion laws and intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, they will try to do it by force.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

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The Threat White Supremacy Poses To The Democratic Order Of The United States.(Video Presentation)

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