Author Archives: Mike

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Jamaica Could Copy & Paste From Others That Did It Before, But Even That Is Too Difficult

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Frustrated with pol­i­tics, a young man a few days ago told me he believes that polit­i­cal par­ties should be done away with.
Curious, out of the same frus­tra­tion he shared, I asked him what his solu­tion to polit­i­cal par­ties was. He believes indi­vid­ual can­di­dates should be vot­ed into office based on their beliefs and ideas with­out par­ty affiliations.
I was intrigued by the idea but quick­ly caught myself when I won­dered how 435 mem­bers in the US Congress and 100 Senators, all with dif­fer­ent plat­forms, oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent­ly, would work.
It would­n’t!
People are so fed up with politi­cians that they have decid­ed to try any­thing to get their busi­ness attend­ed to. In the United States, enough peo­ple turned out in 2016 to elect Donald J Trump President through the twist­ed elec­toral col­lege process.
Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote by over 7 mil­lion votes but still became pres­i­dent, some­thing George Bush had done in 2000.
By 2020 American vot­ers turned out in record num­bers to cor­rect their mon­u­men­tal error of elect­ing Trump, whose lega­cy will be one that will live in infamy.
See our open dis­cus­sion on polic­ing, crime, and pol­i­tics in the youtube anti-crime forum in link here https://​www​.face​book​.com/​m​i​k​e​.​b​e​c​k​l​e​s.9

The frus­tra­tions that peo­ple get from politi­cians are entire­ly under­stand­able. In tiny Jamaica, for instance, noth­ing gets done for the peo­ple with­out grand­stand­ing and posturing.
Take, for instance, the crit­i­cal issue of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform that is bad­ly need­ed if Jamaicans are gen­uine­ly to be able to gov­ern them­selves. After much push­ing and prod­ding from many quar­ters and reg­u­lar folks like this writer, the Governing par­ty announced that they had begun con­ver­sa­tions about unteth­er­ing the Island from Britain a year ago.
What that process entails, we do not know. Still, we could only guess that dis­cus­sions had begun around writ­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion or amend­ing the present one to give Jamaicans full agency over their own des­tiny, free and clear of for­mer colo­nial slavemasters.
I mean, this seems like a no-brain­er, right? Not so in Jamaica because sit­ting down in good faith and tak­ing a seri­ous look at what is out­dat­ed isn’t work­ing; it is too much to ask of the mem­bers of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that take turns gov­ern­ing the Island.
Trinidad and Tobago did it, Barbados did it, and though Jamaicans love to brag and chat a lot, Jamaicans can­not write a con­sti­tu­tion by the peo­ple for the peo­ple and of the peo­ple. Where is the lead­er­ship in the region that Jamaicans loved to talk about so much?
Other than mur­der­ing each oth­er as the largest English ‑speak­ing Island in the region, what are we lead­ing on? Even if Jamaica did every­thing right and became a repub­lic that gov­erns itself free from out­side dic­tates today, we would only be a fol­low­er behind Trinidad and Tobago and tiny Barbados. That ought to silence some unbri­dled mis­guid­ed brava­do, but it won’t.

We are now learn­ing that noth­ing sub­stan­tive has been done a full year after talks were sup­posed to com­mence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties. The Government blames the oppo­si­tion for fail­ing to nom­i­nate two of its mem­bers to sit on the Constitutional Reform Committee. * (high­ly irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior by the oppo­si­tion).
On the oth­er hand, the oppo­si­tion argues that the exec­u­tive and judi­cial branch­es of Government should be decol­o­nized togeth­er and expressed con­cerns on oth­er mat­ters, such as the review and pos­si­ble amend­ment of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom.* (Great point by the oppo­si­tion, on the issue of com­plete decol­o­niza­tion. However, the oppo­si­tion can­not con­tin­ue to stand in the way of progress in our coun­try by con­stant­ly talk­ing about the rights and priv­i­leges we should afford the worst ele­ments amongst us)
Jamaica needs con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and a new path to self-gov­er­nance. One that is free from for­eign pow­ers’ dic­tates. The oppo­si­tion can­not demand, on the one hand, full de-annex­a­tion from Britain while show­ing that it is still up to its old ways of empow­er­ing crim­i­nals, couched in lan­guage of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms on the other.
Nevertheless, the oppo­si­tion is cor­rect in its asser­tion that quote;“On the main issue on the table, in terms of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, which is for Jamaica to move from being ruled with a head of state, if not gov­erned by a monarch based in the UK (United Kingdom), to hav­ing a Jamaican head of state – a pres­i­dent – that as part of that process, we don’t do it in a piece­meal way, but we com­plete our decol­o­niza­tion, achieve full sov­er­eign­ty and polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence by mov­ing away from the [King’s] Privy Council as our final court and acced­ing to the juris­dic­tion of the Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court.”

The gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion is unten­able. Quote: “We con­sid­er it unfor­tu­nate that the par­lia­men­tary Opposition is twin­ning acces­sion to the appel­late juris­dic­tion of the CCJ (Caribbean Court of Justice) to the move to abol­ish the con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chy and estab­lish the repub­lic of Jamaica.”
In oth­er words, the gov­ern­ing par­ty wants to decou­ple Jamaica from Britain while main­tain­ing the UK Privy Council as the final court of appeals for Jamaicans.
How does that work? It makes ratio­nal sense that Jamaica move like oth­er small­er nations have already done to a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic in a ful­some way.
As a strong sup­port­er of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, I under­stand that the Government may have con­cerns about the effi­ca­cy and char­ac­ter of the Caribbean Court of Justice as a final court of appeals.
Politics and ego have so tar­nished our own Jamaican judi­cia­ry that it makes per­fect sense that the gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er its imme­di­ate con­cerns are with a Caribbean court of jus­tice, have those concerns.
As I have repeat­ed­ly stat­ed, cor­rup­tion in the judi­cia­ry is not just about mon­ey chang­ing hands. It’s about improp­er­ly includ­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy in the inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws.
The gov­ern­ment has every right to be con­cerned about that, assum­ing it is a part of its con­cerns. The open left­ist ide­ol­o­gy spout­ed from the insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing in the Caribbean from which most judges come should be a grave con­cern for all Jamaicans. The same insti­tu­tions pro­vide the bulk of those jurists across the region.
With that said, much can be done to ensure that Judges adhere to prin­ci­ples through strict codes of ethics and conduct.
There are some judges in Jamaica who con­tin­ue to oper­ate like demigods, even though they are unelect­ed bureau­crats. This is true from the most senior judge down to the last mag­is­trate on the totem pole.
Jamaica can ful­ly de-annex from Britain while show­ing lead­er­ship in how judges are allowed to oper­ate, not as unac­count­able demigods but as answer­able pub­lic servants.
Judges who do not like to obey rules are free to go prac­tice law at the pri­vate bar.

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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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Anti-Crime Forum…Full Discussion

OUR SECOND ANTI-CRIME FORUM

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​m​i​k​e​.​b​e​c​k​l​e​s.9

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In The Face Of White Supremacist Threats Nation Seems Disintrested

In the 2006 bul­letin, the FBI detailed the threat of white nation­al­ists and skin­heads infil­trat­ing police to dis­rupt inves­ti­ga­tions against fel­low mem­bers and recruit oth­er suprema­cists. The bul­letin was released dur­ing a peri­od of scan­dal for many law enforce­ment agen­cies through­out the coun­try, includ­ing a neo-Nazi gang formed by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department mem­bers who harassed black and Latino com­mu­ni­ties. Similar inves­ti­ga­tions revealed offi­cers and entire agen­cies with hate group ties in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. Reported NPR​.ORG.
But the rise of white suprema­cist groups has been noth­ing new, even as far back as 2006 when the FBI final­ly decid­ed to warn the nation about their infil­tra­tion into law enforce­ment agencies.
At the time, the then FBI direc­tor James Comey’s agency was warn­ing about the threat describ­ing it as a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat; Comey him­self was telling a gath­er­ing of police chiefs that “because of insuf­fi­cient data on the use of force, Americans actu­al­ly have no idea” whether racial bias in polic­ing is real­ly an epi­dem­ic.”
Pointing to pub­lic out­rage over police killings of African-Americans, Comey said “the absence of good infor­ma­tion” and data has aid­ed the grow­ing belief that police offi­cers tar­get par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties.
With those utter­ances and oth­ers, includ­ing telling the same gath­er­ing that police offi­cers across the coun­try were afraid to do their jobs because of what he char­ac­ter­ized as the ‘Ferguson effect, in ref­er­ence to the polic­ing killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, James Comey iden­ti­fied him­self as part of the prob­lem with law enforce­ment in America.
By the time Donald Trump fired James Comey, he had already done even more dam­age, includ­ing cost­ing Hillary Clinton the pres­i­den­cy when he, in unprece­dent­ed fash­ion, took it upon him­self to announce crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions of sec­re­tary Clinton mere weeks before the elections.
Threats against President Obama rose to lev­els pre­vi­ous­ly unseen against pres­i­dents pre­ced­ing him. All pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents were white men.
But the threats posed by white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing law enforce­ment were not con­fined to police depart­ments. There are cred­i­ble reports after the January 6th insur­rec­tion at the US capi­tol by right-wing sedi­tion­ists that the FBI itself is a hotbed of Trumpism and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic support.
Many of the sedi­tion­ists who attacked the capi­tol a full two years ago today were serv­ing mem­bers of law enforce­ment, the US mil­i­tary, and past mem­bers of both. Some have already been con­vict­ed for the crimes they com­mit­ted that day two years ago.
If the American peo­ple who believe in democ­ra­cy can­not trust and depend on the peo­ple, they pay to pro­tect the nation from coup d’e. tat attempts like what hap­pened on January 6th, 2021, because they are part of the prob­lem, how much con­fi­dence should they have in the future?
Many experts now acknowl­edge that the grow­ing threat posed by white Christian nation­al­ism is America’s great­est nation­al secu­ri­ty threat. But they have all been a day late and a dol­lar short. Who did not see this was a fes­ter­ing sit­u­a­tion that was being ignored because of who the per­pe­tra­tors were?
In September 2020, the Department Of Homeland Security, in a draft Memo, acknowl­edged the gravest ter­ror threat to the United States was from white Supremacists.
According to Politico, Two lat­er draft ver­sions of the same doc­u­ment describe the threat from white suprema­cists in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent lan­guage. But all three drafts describe the threat from white suprema­cists as the dead­liest domes­tic ter­ror threat fac­ing the U.S., list­ed above the imme­di­ate dan­ger from for­eign ter­ror­ist groups.
The inci­dents of armed mili­tia mem­bers show­ing up at state capi­tols and dis­rupt­ing gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ings lead­ing up to the January 6th attack may only be a pre­cur­sor to big­ger things. Yet there is no indi­ca­tion that the United States Government has done any­thing sub­stan­tive to stamp out the bur­geon­ing threat of white home­grown ter­ror­ism threat­en­ing the repub­lic’s very existence.
There is no evi­dence of any threat posed by peo­ple on the polit­i­cal left, con­trary to what Rupert Murdoch’s organs of dis­in­for­ma­tion would have you believe.
It was not ANTIFA that attacked the cap­i­tal; it was right-wing white suprema­cists who sup­port­ed Donald Trump. The acronym ANTIFA is short for anti-fas­cist; anti-fas­cists can­not be fas­cists simultaneously…
In recent times there have been attacks on pow­er sta­tions in sev­er­al states across the country.
USA Today reported:

Since September 2022, attacks or poten­tial attacks have been report­ed on at least 18 addi­tion­al sub­sta­tions and one pow­er plant in Florida, Oregon, Washington, and the Carolinas. Several involved firearms.

  • In Florida: Six “intru­sion events” occurred at Duke Energy sub­sta­tions in September, result­ing in at least one brief pow­er out­age, accord­ing to the News Nation tele­vi­sion net­work, which cit­ed a report the util­i­ty sent to the Energy Department. Duke Energy spokesper­son Ana Gibbs con­firmed a relat­ed arrest, but the com­pa­ny declined to com­ment further.
  • In Oregon and Washington state: Substations were attacked at least six times in November and December, with firearms used in some cas­es, local news out­lets report­ed. On Christmas Day, four addi­tion­al sub­sta­tions were van­dal­ized in Washington State, cut­ting pow­er to more than 14,000 customers.
  • In North Carolina: A sub­sta­tion in Maysville was van­dal­ized on Nov. 11. On Dec. 3, shoot­ings that author­i­ties called a “tar­get­ed attack” dam­aged two pow­er sub­sta­tions in Moore County, leav­ing tens of thou­sands with­out pow­er amid freez­ing temperatures.
  • In South Carolina: Days lat­er, gun­fire was report­ed near a hydropow­er plant, but police said the shoot­ing was a “ran­dom act.”

According to the same report, the Federal Bureau Of Investigations has not said a word about the inves­ti­ga­tions into these inci­dents or even if an inves­ti­ga­tion is happening.
But why would any­one be sur­prised by this when there are serv­ing mem­bers of the FBI, paid with tax­pay­er’s dol­lars, who refused to par­tic­i­pate in inves­ti­gat­ing the sedi­tion­ists who invad­ed the capi­tol two years ago?
The larg­er ques­tion, how­ev­er, is, what exact­ly are these attacks on the pow­er grids a pre­cur­sor to?
There is a litany of secu­ri­ty agen­cies in the United States, so many Americans do not even know some of them exist even though their tax dol­lars are pay­ing for them.
There is no short­age of secu­ri­ty agen­cies in the United States; the fol­low­ing is a list of some of those agencies

Intelligence Community Member Agencies

  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence
  • Central Intelligence Agency
  • National Security Agency/​Central Security Service
  • Defense Intelligence Agency
  • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  • National Reconnaissance Office
  • Department of State
  • Department of Defense
  • Department of Justice
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • Drug Enforcement Administration
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of Treasury
  • Department of Energy — Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
  • Army Intelligence
  • Air Force Intelligence
  • U.S. Navy, Naval Intelligence
  • U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity
  • Coast Guard Intelligence

Sen. Linda Lopez, D‑Albuquerque, shows bul­let holes in her garage door after her Westside home was shot at last month on Thursday, Jan. 5 , 2023, in Albuquerque, N.M. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS.

On and on it goes; in addi­tion to those agen­cies, there are 18,000 law enforce­ment agen­cies across the coun­try. According to sta​tista​.com, there are cur­rent­ly 660,288 full-time law enforce­ment offi­cers employed in the United States.
Yet, not a sin­gle agency fore­saw or did any­thing to pre­vent the MAGA horde that descend­ed on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Not a sin­gle agency lift­ed a fin­ger to stop it.
Imagine the blood­bath if the horde attacked the capi­tol that day were black peo­ple. Imagine the bod­ies strewn across the steps and the lawn as far as the eyes can see.
There is prece­dent for that kind of blood­bath against blacks in Philadelphia by the Police, even when black cit­i­zens had not even com­mit­ted any act near­ly as egre­gious as what hap­pened two years ago in Washington, DC.
But it isn’t just about attacks on the Capitol and on pow­er grids or kid­nap­ping threats against a gov­er­nor they hate; they are now engaged in shoot­ing up the homes and offices of Democratic politi­cians, and the main­stream media is com­plic­i­ty silent as it happens.
Today HuffPost report­ed the homes or offices of five elect­ed Democratic offi­cials in New Mexico, includ­ing the new attor­ney gen­er­al, have been hit by gun­fire over the past month.
The attacks come amid a sharp rise in threats to mem­bers of Congress and two years after sup­port­ers of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and sent law­mak­ers run­ning for their lives. Local school board mem­bers and elec­tion work­ers across the coun­try have also endured harass­ment, intim­i­da­tion, and threats of violence.
Despite these seri­ous threats and more, the bulk of the nation’s 660,288 full-time law enforce­ment offi­cers seems to be more inter­est­ed in over-polic­ing black neigh­bor­hoods, writ­ing tick­ets and mur­der­ing black cit­i­zens over bro­ken tail­lights and for turn­ing with­out signaling.

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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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Shocking Video Shows NYPD Ruthlessly Beating Black Girl (video)

A video is cir­cu­lat­ing on social media of an NYPD cop beat­ing on a 14-year-old girl, accord­ing to the New York Daily News. The offi­cer was report­ed to have struck the girl nine times and also hit the oth­er teens who were try­ing to pull him off of her and shield her from the punch­es. The offi­cer was sus­pend­ed as a result.

On Tuesday, at the bus stop near Edwin Markham Middle School, Kyonna Robinson saw her 12-year-old sis­ter get into a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion with anoth­er girl. The report says Robinson jumped into the fight to defend her sis­ter when the police arrived. The cop, iden­ti­fied as Nicholas Scalzo, went to arrest Robinson’s sis­ter when Kyonna inter­ject­ed, lead­ing to anoth­er phys­i­cal altercation

Photo: BrandonKleinPhoto (Shutterstock)
Photo: BrandonKleinPhoto (Shutterstock)

A video is cir­cu­lat­ing on social media of an NYPD cop beat­ing on a 14-year-old girl, accord­ing to the New York Daily News. The offi­cer was report­ed to have struck the girl nine times and also hit the oth­er teens who were try­ing to pull him off of her and shield her from the punch­es. The offi­cer was sus­pend­ed as a result.

On Tuesday, at the bus stop near Edwin Markham Middle School, Kyonna Robinson saw her 12-year-old sis­ter get into a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion with anoth­er girl. The report says Robinson jumped into the fight to defend her sis­ter when the police arrived. The cop, iden­ti­fied as Nicholas Scalzo, went to arrest Robinson’s sis­ter when Kyonna inter­ject­ed, lead­ing to anoth­er phys­i­cal altercation.

“I asked the cop ‘What are you guys doing? And he pushed me and I hit him two times,” she told reporters. “It hap­pened so quick, I couldn’t even think straight. I just thought they were going to break up the fight and take us to the precinct.”

What fol­lowed is where the video picks up as Scalzo is record­ed repeat­ed­ly pound­ing on Robinson’s head with his fists. She punched back a few times before try­ing to flee.

YouTube player

As a result, Robinson was arrest­ed for obstruc­tion of arrest, and her younger sis­ter was arrest­ed for assault.

Read more about the inci­dent from the NY Daily News:

Police brought Kyonna to the hos­pi­tal, though her moth­er, Taneesha Robinson, was not aware of that until hours lat­er, she said.

“I was informed that my child had been tak­en to the doctor’s and that kind of caught me a lit­tle bit off guard,” said Robinson, 39. “I wasn’t sure why she had to go to the doctor.”

When her girls were released from police cus­tody and they arrived back home, Robinson saw the video. “I had no idea about it,” the moth­er said. “I was hurt. It’s upset­ting when a female was hit by a male but this is a juve­nile by a police offi­cer, so it just brings it to anoth­er notch.”

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell sus­pend­ed Scalzo with­out pay after the swift sur­fac­ing of the video. The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau is also inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent, the report says.

Mayor Eric Adams com­mend­ed the sus­pen­sion but also insist­ed this shouldn’t hin­der the community’s trust of the police.

Sir, it is only day five of the new year, and we’re see­ing police beat­ings — of teenagers at that. A lot more than a sim­ple state­ment needs to be done to mend the rela­tion­ship between the peo­ple and the police.

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Police Officer Arrested After Two High School Cheerleaders Killed In High-speed Crash

Two high school cheer­lead­ers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have been killed in a car crash involv­ing a police offi­cer who was in a high-speed pur­suit of a sus­pect fol­low­ing a home inva­sion. Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 15, were killed in the crash on Saturday night. They were stu­dents and cheer­lead­ers at Brusly High School out­side Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Liam Dunn, Maggie’s broth­er, was also in the vehi­cle at the time of the crash. He’s in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, accord­ing to People. “He will need surg­eries. Has a bro­ken femur, tab­u­la [sic], left wrist, frac­tured skull, and a few oth­er issues. We are ask­ing for prayers,” Kenny Wayne post­ed on Facebook. “We don’t know why God took our daugh­ter, but I bet she is run­ning shop up there.”

Officer David Cauthron, 42, from Addis, south of the Lousiana cap­i­tal has been arrest­ed and now faces two counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide and one count of neg­li­gent injur­ing, accord­ing to WBRZ. It remains unclear if he has hired an attor­ney to speak on his behalf. According to District Attorney Tony Clayton, the offi­cer is on admin­is­tra­tive leave. Mr Clayton said Mr Cauthron “has a lot of ques­tions to answer per­tain­ing to his speed and sheer neg­li­gence”. “For these kids to not to have been able to start the New Year is inex­cus­able, but we’ll fol­low the facts first,” he told WBRZ. “I just can’t put my arms around why (the offi­cer) was dri­ving at that rate of speed in pur­suit of this vehi­cle. This offi­cer is fac­ing some seri­ous issues.”

Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 15, were killed in a car crash involving a police officer (Facebook / Brusly High School Cheerleading)

Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 15, were killed in a car crash involv­ing a police offi­cer (Facebook /​Brusly High School Cheerleading)

“If it involves putting human life in dan­ger, stop the damn pur­suit. It’s just not worth the risk,” he added. According to the author­i­ties, the crash took place as the offi­cer was chas­ing Tyquel Zanders, The Advocate report­ed. Mr Zanders was detained after his vehi­cle stalled and now faces charges of home inva­sion, theft of a vehi­cle and aggra­vat­ed flight, accord­ing to The Advocate. Brusly High School Principal Walt Lemoine said in a state­ment that the extent of the loss­es “are far-reach­ing in our school com­mu­ni­ty as Maggie’s moth­er, Erin Martin, and sis­ter, Tori Hill, work at our school. Caroline’s old­er sis­ter is a senior at Brusly High and has younger sib­lings in our school sys­tem”. “Their loss­es are sure to raise many emo­tions, con­cerns, and ques­tions for our entire school, espe­cial­ly our stu­dents,” he added. He not­ed that the school has a group of staffers to han­dle crises “com­prised of pro­fes­sion­als trained to help with the needs of stu­dents, par­ents and school per­son­nel at dif­fi­cult times such as this”. 

The cheer­lead­ing team wrote on Facebook: “As we mourn the trag­ic deaths of Maggie Dunn and Caroline Gill please keep their fam­i­lies, friends, and the BHS com­mu­ni­ty in your thoughts and prayers.” “Their enthu­si­asm and bright smiles will be missed more than can be imag­ined,” the team said. According to WBRZ, the police offi­cer was trav­el­ling at 86 miles an hour (138kph) and didn’t brake before the crash. The out­let report­ed that wit­ness­es said he ran a red light, which had been red for about 20 sec­onds before he reached the inter­sec­tion. “I want the pub­lic to have con­fi­dence in its DA’s office that we will fol­low the facts, and we should let the facts lead us to what­ev­er the out­come should be,” Mr Clayton said. Yahoo news​.com

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After Five Rounds Of Horse Trading Kevin McCarthy Still Cannot Grasp The Speaker’s Gavel…

There is a real-time dra­ma play­ing out in the United States House of Representatives on this sec­ond day of what should be the sec­ond day of the 118 Congress. Before any new Representatives can be sworn in, there is the lit­tle house­keep­ing for­mal­i­ty of elect­ing a house speaker.
Having won a small major­i­ty in that body, it fell to Republicans to elect a speak­er, and there­in lies the problem.

Kevin McCarthy

A can­di­date for speak­er must secure a min­i­mum of 218 votes to become speak­er of the house. Although Republicans won 222 seats in the 2022 midterms, Kevin McCarthy has not got­ten 217 of his col­leagues to elect him speaker.
On the right flank of Kevin McCarthy stands Twenty or so hard-right Republicans who have refused to budge from their nev­er-Kevin stance.
Until the writ­ing of this arti­cle and the fifth vote to elect a speak­er, Kevin McCarthy could only sit and look at the speak­er’s gav­el but could not grasp it.
On the oth­er side of the aisle, the Democrats have main­tained a unit­ed pos­ture, with every cau­cus mem­ber sup­port­ing Hakeem Jefferies, their new­ly mint­ed leader, for speak­er of the house.
Sadly for Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jefferies of the minor­i­ty par­ty has secured more votes than he has. Unfortunately for the American peo­ple, the speak­er is not elect­ed on the plu­ral­i­ty or who­ev­er gets the most votes, or Jefferies would have already been sit­ting in the speak­er’s chair. The speak­er must get a min­i­mum of 118 votes.
At the end of the fifth round of vot­ing, the unof­fi­cial count was.
McCarthy 201.
Jefferies 212.
Donalds. 20.
Others 0.
Present 1.
Enough to make Kevin McCarthy’s head itch.

This uncer­tain­ty in the US con­gress has­n’t hap­pened since 1923. According to NBC news, the last time a speak­er vote went to mul­ti­ple bal­lots was in 1923, when Speaker Frederick Gillett, R‑Mass., won re-elec­tion on the ninth ballot.
Kevin McCarthy has three options as the house con­tin­ues to vote, (a) hope his emis­saries can con­vince the hold­outs to stand down, (b) ask the Democrats to give him the votes he needs or © remove him­self from con­tention, a humil­i­at­ing prospect that is dif­fi­cult to imagine.
A uni­ty gov­ern­ment with the Democrats sole­ly to make McCarthy ful­fill his dream to become speak­er would seri­ous­ly frac­ture the Republican par­ty and have even more far-reach­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences for Mccarthy and his caucus. 

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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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Raining On The JCF Parade…

It is the start of a new year, and as always, we look back at what was accom­plished and where we can make some changes for bet­ter outcomes.
Of course, you all know that my top­ic has always been crime and will con­tin­ue to be so until we achieve a lev­el of crime that is not tol­er­a­ble but more manageable.
The Police report­ed that 1498 mur­ders were report­ed to them for 2022, rep­re­sent­ing an over­all 2% increase over the pre­vi­ous year.
In the same breath, Fitz Bailey, the Deputy Commissioner of police with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime, claims that good polic­ing strate­gies are to be cred­it­ed with the decrease in major crimes in cer­tain areas while in the same breath allud­ing to the fact that crime went up in oth­er areas and over­all across the country.
“It’s just the polic­ing strat­e­gy that we have deployed, to put it blunt­ly, that cre­at­ed that lev­el of decrease. If you look at the begin­ning of the year, you saw where [crime fig­ures] were run­ning away, and we con­stant­ly, from an orga­ni­za­tion lev­el, at the strate­gic and oper­a­tional lev­el, sat down and looked at the strate­gies and imple­ment­ed vary­ing types of ini­tia­tives. There was addi­tion­al deploy­ment in terms of man­pow­er that assist­ed with that decline,” Bailey told local media.
So increased num­bers of man­pow­er in cer­tain areas is the equiv­a­lent of strate­gic and oper­a­tional machi­na­tions!
This made me laugh, and truth be told, I gen­er­al­ly give the police a lot of lat­i­tude, under­stand­ing that they need all the sup­port they can get fight­ing crime in an ungrate­ful crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing society.
However, I can­not in good con­science sup­port a bunch of malarky that makes no sense.
How can the crime chief claim any cred­it when over­all crime went up by two per­cent­age points?

Jamaica’s crime-fight­ing strategy.….

It does not mat­ter that the vio­lence in par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal areas trends down when those areas are flood­ed with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, à la ZOSOs, and SOEs if crime goes up expo­nen­tial­ly in oth­er areas.
This is exact­ly what occurred, as this writer has been warn­ing for years will con­tin­ue to be the out­come of this whack-a-mole strategy.
So let us sort through the facts and not spend a lot of time on this rather easy sub­ject. I have every respect for the work of the rank-and-file of the JCF.
They have always done the hard work with­out prop­er com­pen­sa­tion, lead­er­ship, train­ing, or sup­port and with inad­e­quate tools to do their jobs.
I also under­stand that some, not all, of the men and women of the rank and file con­tin­ue to work hard despite those defi­cien­cies; some, on the oth­er hand, are dead­wood as it has always been.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​c​k​-​a​-​m​o​l​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

So let us cut to the chase with all respect to the crime chief DCP Fitz Bailey that it was spe­cif­ic polic­ing strate­gies that brought down vio­lent homi­cides in cer­tain divi­sions; I beg to differ.
I have three words for mis­ter Bailey, WORLD CUP SOCCER.
That part!
The data clear­ly shows that crime trends down when­ev­er we have world cup soc­cer. I under­stand that the police would like to take cred­it for the low­er crime sta­tis­tics in parts of the coun­try due to ZOSOs and SOEs or a slow­ing over­all of killings com­pared to ear­li­er in the year. Still, pol­i­cy­mak­ers rely on data to for­mu­late poli­cies; if we con­tin­ue to mis­rep­re­sent the data in front of us, we wind up with bad policies.
So let us stop with the self-con­grat­u­la­tions because more Jamaicans were mur­dered in 2022 than in 2021, and more would have died if we did not have Jamaicans glued to their tele­vi­sions watch­ing football.
I hate to rain on any­one’s parade, but I can­not ignore the facts.

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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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Police Killed A Record Number Of People Last Year

It gets worse every year; and while it per­sists, courts push the bound­aries of creduli­ty to give them cov­er, where­upon they kill with greater impuni­ty and with greater bar­barism. (mb)

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1,176 people were killed in encounters with police last year, a third of them during a traffic stop, mental health and welfare check, or non-violent offense.

By Trone Dowd

American police killed more peo­ple last year than they have in near­ly a decade, accord­ing to a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that has tracked and pub­lished data on dead­ly state vio­lence since 2013.
Mapping Police Violence’s 2022 track­ing found that 1,176 peo­ple died dur­ing encoun­ters with police last year, the high­est num­ber the orga­ni­za­tion has ever record­ed. Samuel Sinyangwe, the cre­ator of the project, said the num­ber includes any­one who was killed by police, be it by shoot­ing or oth­er forms of force. According to Mapping Police Violence, police killed the equiv­a­lent of 3.2 peo­ple per day in 2022 — and there were only 12 days in the whole year when a dead­ly police encounter was not reported. 

More than a third of those killed by police encoun­tered the author­i­ties dur­ing a traf­fic stop, a men­tal health and wel­fare check, or a non-vio­lent offense. All three of these caus­es for a police stop have been tar­get­ed for reform in mul­ti­ple states because of how dead­ly they can be for civil­ians, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are not white. Elected lead­ers in Minnesota, California, and Pennsylvania for exam­ple, have passed leg­is­la­tion or enforced new poli­cies de-pri­or­i­tiz­ing non-pub­lic safe­ty traf­fic stops. Aurora, Colo. has seen a sig­nif­i­cant push to reform how police inter­act with the men­tal­ly ill, and to give them the tools to deesca­late these sit­u­a­tions at risk of becom­ing violent.

As has been true for the last nine years, Mapping Police Violence’s data shows that Black peo­ple made up a dis­pro­por­tion­ate chunk of those killed by cops in 2022, account­ing for 24 per­cent of those killed, despite mak­ing up just over 13 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. One in three peo­ple killed by the police was flee­ing the cops when they were killed, with Black, Hispanic, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders at least five to eight per­cent more like­ly to be killed while run­ning or dri­ving away com­pared to their white counterparts.

Perhaps the most alarm­ing is how lit­tle account­abil­i­ty there has been as the num­ber of police killings con­tin­ues to grow. Though some of the high­est pro­file instances of police vio­lence saw a con­vic­tion in recent years, includ­ing that of Derek Chauvin in 2021, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of offi­cers still face no legal con­se­quences when they take a life. According to the data, 98.1 per­cent of offi­cers involved in the death of a cit­i­zen between 2013 and 2022 faced no charges. Less than 0.3 per­cent of offi­cers were convicted.

The five depart­ments in the coun­try with the most dead­ly inci­dents were also locat­ed in some of the dens­est cities. The Los Angeles Police Department topped the list with 15 killings last year, fol­lowed by the Houston Police Department with 14 and the New York Police Department with 13. Members of the Albuquerque Police Department and the Phoenix Police Department killed 11 and 10 peo­ple respectively.

While 2022 was a record year, data shows that police vio­lence has been on the rise nation­al­ly since 2019. Last year 1,140 peo­ple were killed by police, just five deaths short of the pre­vi­ous record high set in 2018.

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Police Officers Who Posted Pornography And Pestered Women Among Those Allowed To Stay On Duty

By Jack Hardy

Police offi­cers who preyed upon women and post­ed home­made pornog­ra­phy to social media are among hun­dreds allowed to keep their jobs in recent years.

An inves­ti­ga­tion by the Telegraph found that the country’s rank-and-file con­tin­ues to be plagued by offi­cers whose wrong­do­ing online ranges from sex­u­al harass­ment to racism.

Most received lit­tle more than a slap on the wrist after their behav­ior came to light, with some fac­ing no reper­cus­sions from inter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary probes.

The rev­e­la­tions, which come amid an unprece­dent­ed cri­sis of con­fi­dence in British polic­ing, are said by one for­mer chief con­sta­ble to be “the tip of the iceberg.

Just 6pc of investigated officers were dismissed.

The Telegraph can dis­close that at least 921 offi­cers have been inves­ti­gat­ed for their con­duct in WhatsApp mes­sages, texts, social media mes­sages, or posts since the start of 2017.

Yet only six per­cent of the inves­ti­ga­tions led to the offi­cers being dis­missed, accord­ing to the data obtained from 29 police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Many forces were found to have giv­en out writ­ten warn­ings for behav­ior that many would con­sid­er wor­thy of imme­di­ate dis­missal, includ­ing the abuse of police pow­ers for sex­u­al gain and send­ing inde­cent images to col­leagues via social media.

Reprimanded offi­cers also rou­tine­ly escaped with light pun­ish­ments such as “reflec­tive prac­tice” — think­ing about what they have done — or “man­age­ment action”, which amounts to a ver­bal dress­ing down by a superior.

A Metropolitan Police offi­cer who sent a racist WhatsApp mes­sage, a Cleveland Police offi­cer who demand­ed “nude pics” from a female pro­ba­tion­er, and a Durham Constabulary offi­cer who sent sex­u­al videos to col­leagues are all among those giv­en “reflec­tive practice.”

Similarly, a scold­ing was deemed suf­fi­cient for a Durham Constabulary offi­cer who used his work phone to try to “get close” to a mem­ber of the public’s wife and a Metropolitan Police offi­cer who bom­bard­ed an indi­vid­ual with “unwant­ed” texts, calls, and emails.

In one par­tic­u­lar­ly bizarre case, an offi­cer in London found to have “cre­at­ed, uploaded and dis­trib­uted pornog­ra­phy on social media” received noth­ing more than a ver­bal rebuke.

The Telegraph uncov­ered many cas­es where offi­cers faced “no action” at all for preda­to­ry or inap­pro­pri­ate behavior.

They include a Cleveland Police offi­cer who con­tact­ed a female mem­ber of the pub­lic he met dur­ing the course of his duties, to whom he made a com­ment over text about “the size of her breasts” before try­ing to pur­sue “an improp­er relationship”.

Even in cas­es where it was unclear what dis­ci­pline the offi­cers faced, a grim pic­ture is still paint­ed of the cul­ture in polic­ing’s dark recess­es.

In such inves­ti­ga­tions, offi­cers were found to have dis­trib­uted extreme pornog­ra­phy, tar­get­ed vul­ner­a­ble women for sex­u­al pur­pos­es, and stalked others.

‘Highly sexualized culture

Campaigners and polic­ing insid­ers say The Telegraph’s find­ings add to a grow­ing body of evi­dence that police mis­con­duct pro­ceed­ings are not fit for pur­pose.

Sue Fish, the for­mer chief con­sta­ble of Nottinghamshire Police, who has been out­spo­ken about sex­ism with­in the pro­fes­sion, said she was “unsur­prised but deeply angry.”

“That is the tip of the ice­berg — actu­al­ly get­ting to a mis­con­duct hear­ing — the num­ber of things that don’t get past any thresh­old, get any inves­ti­ga­tion, nev­er get report­ed,” she said.

“It paints a wor­ry­ing, mild­ly ter­ri­fy­ing picture.”

She sug­gest­ed the prob­lem was root­ed in polic­ing being “a macho pro­fes­sion” with a “high­ly sex­u­al­ized cul­ture”, where mis­con­duct pan­els were too ready to lis­ten to an accused offi­cers’ col­leagues singing their prais­es while vic­tims were marginalized.

“It fails and con­tin­ues to fail,” she said of the police dis­ci­pli­nary régime.

Harriet Wistrich, founder of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said: “The police lead­er­ship real­ly needs to get a grip on this and cre­ate a zero-tol­er­ance cul­ture for such misog­y­ny, or we will have yet more high-pro­file cas­es where serv­ing offi­cers are found to have car­ried out the most appalling crimes of sex­u­al vio­lence against women.”

Deniz Uğur, deputy direc­tor of End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “The out­comes of these mis­con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions shed a light on an insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture which enables offi­cers to evade account­abil­i­ty for abuse.

“It is clear that core process­es around the han­dling of mis­con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions are incon­sis­tent and need root-and-branch reform. The insti­tu­tion of polic­ing is bad­ly fail­ing women.”

‘Nobody is above the law.’

Chief Constable Craig Guildford, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for mis­con­duct, said: “The vast major­i­ty of police offi­cers and staff ful­fill their duties in serv­ing the pub­lic to the high­est stan­dard, but we rec­og­nize that there is a tiny minor­i­ty who con­duct them­selves in a way which gross­ly under­mines pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in policing.

“We will inves­ti­gate inci­dences of mis­con­duct and take robust action where necessary.

“It is down to every­one in polic­ing to main­tain the high­est stan­dards of integri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and to report any col­leagues who fall short of those standards.

“We rec­og­nize that if an offend­er is in a posi­tion of pow­er, it can be a bar­ri­er to a vic­tim report­ing. We need to make sure that strong process­es are in place so that vic­tims have the con­fi­dence to come forward.

“All forces have a ded­i­cat­ed team that inves­ti­gates com­plaints against offi­cers. These depart­ments work to strict guide­lines, run con­fi­den­tial report­ing phone lines for both the pub­lic and col­leagues to raise con­cerns, and are reg­u­lar­ly inde­pen­dent­ly inspected.

“Additionally, offences which are espe­cial­ly seri­ous must be referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, who will make a deci­sion as to whether to inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gate. Where an offi­cer faces alle­ga­tions of gross mis­con­duct, the case is heard by a pan­el led by an inde­pen­dent, legal­ly qual­i­fied chair.

“Officers will face crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and will be dealt with direct­ly based upon the evi­dence pre­sent­ed, as nobody is above the law.”

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3 Indianapolis Cops Shoot Man Apparently Asleep In His Car

COPS- Cowards On Patrol

In the United States the Police pos­es the great­est risk to the safe­ty of law-abid­ing citizens.

Two Indianapolis police inves­ti­ga­tions are under­way after three offi­cers shot a man who appeared to have been sleep­ing in his car, author­i­ties said.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s Critical Incident Response Team is con­duct­ing a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of the shoot­ing ear­ly Saturday on the city’s north­east side, and police Internal Affairs has begun an admin­is­tra­tive investigation.

Also, the civil­ian-major­i­ty Use of Force Review Board will con­duct a manda­to­ry hear­ing for any attempt­ed use of dead­ly force against a person.

The man is hos­pi­tal­ized in sta­ble condition.

The offi­cers involved in the shoot­ing are on admin­is­tra­tive leave.

Officers were dis­patched on a report of a sus­pi­cious vehi­cle in a dri­ve­way around 4 a.m., police said. They found a man who appeared to be sleep­ing in the driver’s seat armed with a gun.

An offi­cer knocked on a car win­dow and announced, “Police. Hands up,” Indianapolis police said.

It was­n’t clear what prompt­ed the offi­cers to open fire, but police said detec­tives found a hand­gun in the driver’s seat.

Several police body cam­eras were acti­vat­ed dur­ing the shoot­ing, the depart­ment said.

Police haven’t released the names of the injured man or the officers.

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Decades After Being Freed From Apartheid, Black South Africans Still Cannot Solidify And Self-rule…(video)

As a child grow­ing up, I was quick­ly sen­si­tized to the crit­i­cal issue of apartheid in South Africa and the racial issues plagu­ing the for­mer colonies across the African continent.
Much of my per­son­al mil­i­tan­cy came from my con­tin­ued inter­est in learn­ing all that I could about the oppres­sion that those peo­ple endured. 
I also made it my busi­ness to inform myself about the racial issues in Jamaica, the west­ern world, and all across the globe where anti-back racism existed.
Growing up in the 70s, I was extreme­ly proud of Jamaican lead­ers’ role in the strug­gle to free South Africa from the bondage of white minor­i­ty rule and the igno­ble prac­tice of white supremacy.
I was blessed to wit­ness the dis­man­tling of white rule in South Africa and the inevitable elec­tions, which saw Nelson Mandela elect­ed President of the new South African State. 
Since the death of Mister Mandela, the long strug­gle and the count­less lives lost to gain free­dom from white oppres­sion have fad­ed from the minds of the new generation.
It appears that the same greed, graft, and cor­rup­tion that caused them to sell their broth­ers and sis­ters into slav­ery remains. The task, the need to build and solid­i­fy a strong Afro-cen­tric nation, appears to be out­side their capabilities.
Consequently, the nation of South Africa may be poised to once again be tak­en over by the white minor­i­ty and ruled for hun­dreds more years as slaves and third-class citizens.
If you are a Gazelle on the Serengetti, you will be eat­en. A Lion, on the oth­er hand, will always rule. The future of Black South Africans is in their own hands. If and when they are once again sub­ject­ed to white minor­i­ty rule, no one should lift a fin­ger to free them from it.
Whites liv­ing in the new South Africa should assim­i­late into being like every oth­er South African, no greater, no less; fail­ing to do so, they should find some­where else to live or face the consequences.
When you are in the major­i­ty and con­trol the reins of gov­ern­ment, you do not beg to stop racism; you crush it like a cock­roach and make sure those who would think of it piss their pants just doing so. (mb)
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​o​u​t​h​-​a​f​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​h​o​w​-​w​h​y​-​t​h​e​y​-​d​o​-​n​o​t​-​d​e​s​e​r​v​e​-​t​h​e​-​g​r​a​c​e​-​t​h​e​y​-​r​e​c​e​i​v​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​h​ip/

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WHITE MEN CHOKE BLACK BOYS AT SWIMMING POOL

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A dis­turb­ing video clip show­ing a group of white South African men ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing a group of Black boys has cap­tured the atten­tion of the world as well as the country’s pres­i­dent. The video post­ed to social media on Christmas Day depicts a few white adult males alleged­ly try­ing to pre­vent or eject a cou­ple of Black boys out of the Maselspoort Resort and Conference Centre’s pool locat­ed in Bloemfontein, South Africa, accord­ing to Times Live. The nation’s top elect­ed offi­cial reassert­ed the constitution’s aspi­ra­tion, say­ing there is no place for racism with­in the country’s bor­ders, while the pub­lic is blast­ing the men as racists. The video first shows the men telling one of the boys to leave the water. Then the men are seen hit­ting and push­ing the child. Another child jumps in to help and is lat­er grabbed by his neck, while a dif­fer­ent man comes up and pulls the kid’s hair. Some of the onlook­ers attempt­ed to stop the men, but their inter­ven­tion seemed to esca­late the ruckus. At the end of the video, a man is chok­ing one of the boys and then jump­ing into the water with him. Another man jumps in, and before the 31-sec­ond clip is over, he also looks to push him down under the water. One boy’s father described the incident.

“As we were relax­ing the boys came and told us that they are being pre­vent­ed from using the pool by a group of white adult males. They said they were told by the men that the pool is only reserved for peo­ple who are booked here,” he said. “We went there with my sis­ter to check on the kids and indeed when we arrived there, we engaged those white folks and they said ‘no, there was a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the kids.’” “They didn’t under­stand,” he con­tin­ued. “They thought that they were not res­i­dents at Maselspoort because the swim­ming pool can only be accessed by res­i­dents and the kids told them we are res­i­dents here. I also told them we are res­i­dents here and we have paid just as they have paid.” However, the men assault­ed the boys after the par­ents left, the father said. Roy Jankielsohn, leader of the Democratic Alliance Free State, urged the vic­tims’ par­ents to press crim­i­nal charges against the men fea­tured in the footage. At least one fam­i­ly, The Nakedi Family, has moved for­ward to get jus­tice for the boys, open­ing a com­mon assault case. The father said he was dis­ap­point­ed that the men were not charged with attempt­ed mur­der. “One of the guys tried to drown the boy, that is attempt­ed mur­der and it should have been reg­is­tered as so but police told us they are only open­ing an assault case,” he said. A police spokesper­son stat­ed the men have been ordered to appear in court.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa com­mend­ed the police for push­ing the mat­ter for­ward, cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple dock­ets, and sub­mit­ting to decide how or if the men should be pros­e­cut­ed. The pres­i­dent said Black and white South Africans have to work to erad­i­cate racist thoughts in the coun­try. “Our con­sti­tu­tion means exact­ly what it says when it declares that South Africa — and that means all of South Africa — belongs to all who live in it,” Ramaphosa said. “As Black and white South Africans, we should be unit­ed in con­demn­ing all man­i­fes­ta­tions of racism and attempts to explain or defend such crimes. Racism is not a prob­lem to be fought by Black South Africans only. The pres­i­dent added it was impor­tant for the cit­i­zens to come togeth­er and “defend” South Africa’s “con­tin­u­ing nation­al mis­sion of rid­ding [its] soci­ety of the divi­sions and the hurts of [its] past.” “We must also be unit­ed in rid­ding our soci­ety of the vio­lence we see in the videos of the inci­dent at the Free State resort, whether such vio­lence comes with racism or not,” Ramaphosa said. “It is deplorable that adults deal­ing with teenagers resort to vio­lence with such dis­turb­ing ease, hurt­ing peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly and offend­ing pro­vi­sions in our Bill of Rights around the secu­ri­ty of the per­son, includ­ing the right to dig­ni­ty and being free of violence.”

Ramaphosa said the law calls for let­ting “inves­ti­ga­tions take their course but under the rule of law we can and must also declare that racism has no place in our soci­ety and racists have no place to hide.” While the politi­cians are call­ing for peo­ple to uni­fy and for jus­tice through the sys­tem, peo­ple on social media are express­ing their out­rage. One of the boy’s sister’s video of the scuf­fle has been viewed over 20 mil­lion times. “Trying to stran­gle and drown chil­dren? I don’t care how much they drank. They would nev­er do this to white kids. They are racist. Full stop,” South African Annika Langa tweet­ed. Another Twitter user, Juwanna Othmani, from Brooklyn, New York, said, “The s – t we as Black peo­ple still going through across the world is dis­gust­ing. How TF is there still seg­re­ga­tion in #SouthAfrica in 2023?!!! This is only days ago. A WHITES ONLY POOL??? Are you sh – in me!!! Community, gov­ern­ment and polit­i­cal par­ties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and the ANC in the Free State also respond­ed, SABC News report­ed. A spokesper­son from the resort, Nick Mitchell, said the estab­lish­ment does not prac­tice or allow any kind of seg­re­ga­tion or racism. Hoping to dis­tance itself from the ugly inci­dent that hap­pened on its premis­es, it referred the details of the inci­dent to the police.“At this moment the police are han­dling the sit­u­a­tion. As men­tioned, there is the police case opened against the par­ties involved,” Mitchell said.

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Officer Fired After Dragging Woman On Ground To Jail Entrance

Big deal, this ani­mal will be hired by the next depart­ment down the road and giv­en a raise.

Officer fired after drag­ging woman on the ground to jail entrance.

A Tampa police offi­cer has been fired after drag­ging a woman on the ground fol­low­ing an arrest, the depart­ment said in a state­ment. The Tampa police depart­ment fired offi­cer Gregory Damon fol­low­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that deter­mined he vio­lat­ed mul­ti­ple depart­men­tal poli­cies while book­ing a sus­pect into the Orient Road Jail on Nov. 17.
“Professionalism is not only expect­ed, it is demand­ed, in every encounter our offi­cers have with the pub­lic, regard­less of the arrestee being unco­op­er­a­tive or unpleas­ant in return. As law enforce­ment offi­cers, we are held to a high­er stan­dard,” said Interim Police Chief Lee Bercaw.

Body cam­era footage and sur­veil­lance footage cap­tured the incident.

According to offi­cials, Tampa police respond­ed to a call regard­ing an indi­vid­ual sleep­ing out­side the Tampa Family Health Center and refus­ing to leave despite requests made by employees.
Officers arrest­ed the woman, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been pro­vid­ed a warn­ing for tres­pass­ing on the same prop­er­ty the month pri­or. The woman refused to exit the patrol vehi­cle and told the offi­cer “I want you to drag me!”
“Damon took the indi­vid­ual by the arm, drag­ging her from the vehi­cle to the entrance of the jail where he then buzzed the door entrance, prompt­ing two deputies to come out­side and assist with rais­ing the indi­vid­ual from the ground and begin­ning the jail intake process,” the depart­ment said in a statement.
It con­tin­ued, “Rather than remain­ing pro­fes­sion­al, Damon him­self made rude and deroga­to­ry com­ments to the arrestee.”
The inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that Damon vio­lat­ed depart­men­tal poli­cies relat­ed to search­ing, trans­port­ing, response to resis­tance, treat­ment of peo­ple in cus­tody, stan­dard of con­duct, and more.

In 2013, Tampa revised its pol­i­cy on han­dling unco­op­er­a­tive peo­ple fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar inci­dent, accord­ing to the department.
It added spe­cif­ic lan­guage that advised offi­cers “that drag­ging an indi­vid­ual who is unco­op­er­a­tive is nev­er an appro­pri­ate prac­tice and instead, the cor­rect pro­ce­dure would be to request assis­tance from the book­ing staff.”
The depart­ment said that deten­tion deputies are required to help lift some­one from the trans­port vehi­cle and secure them in a restrain­ing chair to be rolled into the intake area.
“This for­mer officer’s actions were unac­cept­able and are not tol­er­at­ed at this depart­ment, which is why we act­ed swift­ly in ini­ti­at­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, reliev­ing him of his duties, and ulti­mate­ly ter­mi­nat­ing his employ­ment,” the depart­ment said in a state­ment. Damon was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able to respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Damon is not being rep­re­sent­ed by the Tampa Police Benevolent Association in this mat­ter, accord­ing to the organization.

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Two Battle Creek Police Officers Shoot, Seriously Injure Man On Christmas In Bedford Twp.

Two Battle Creek police offi­cers shot and seri­ous­ly wound­ed a man Sunday and have been placed on paid leave. Shortly after 2 p.m. Christmas Day, police respond­ed to the 200 block of North Birdsall Drive in Bedford Township when a woman report­ed her boyfriend assault­ed her, accord­ing to a Monday police depart­ment press release. The 22-year-old Battle Creek man left the area before offi­cers arrived. Police deter­mined there was enough prob­a­ble cause to arrest the man and tried to find him, the release states. At about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, the same woman called 911 again and report­ed the man had returned, was mak­ing sui­ci­dal state­ments, and had a knife, accord­ing to the release.

Three Battle Creek offi­cers near­by on an unre­lat­ed call respond­ed to North Birdsall Drive and heard yelling com­ing from the back­yard of the home. Officers found the man and woman argu­ing. Two oth­er peo­ple also were present, police said As offi­cers approached, police said the man pulled what to them appeared to be a dark-col­ored hand­gun from his waist­band. Officers told the man to drop the weapon and then two offi­cers fired their weapons and struck the man twice in the tor­so, police said. Police said the man dropped his gun and fell to the ground. Officers took two knives from the man and pro­vid­ed first aid. A police super­vi­sor took the man to a local hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. One of the offi­cers who shot the man has two years of expe­ri­ence and the oth­er 10. They have been placed on paid leave pend­ing the out­come of a Michigan State Police inves­ti­ga­tion, the release states. The shoot­ing remains under inves­ti­ga­tion and more infor­ma­tion will be release as it becomes avail­able, accord­ing to the release.

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Video From Arrest At Traffic Stop Shows Lakeland Police Officer Punching Suspect On Ground

American police offi­cers on black cit­i­zens. His crime not wear­ing a seat­belt. The ques­tion is, how long will peo­ple allow police to treat them this way and take it lying down?

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A video post­ed on social media shows a Lakeland Police offi­cer repeat­ed­ly punch­ing a sus­pect while arrest­ing him after a traf­fic stop.

Witnesses used phones to record videos dur­ing the inci­dent that occurred short­ly after mid­night on Sunday. In two clips post­ed the Facebook page of the sus­pect, Antwan Glover, four LPD offi­cers can be seen help­ing to sub­due him dur­ing the episode in the Paul A. Diggs neighborhood.

According to arrest affi­davits pro­vid­ed by LPD, offi­cers from the Street Crimes Unit were patrolling the 400 block of West Ninth Street in a black, unmarked Ford Explorer. The report described it as a “high crime/​drug area” and said pre­vi­ous arrests for drug and weapons charges had been made there.

An offi­cer noticed that the dri­ver of a black, four-door BMW was not wear­ing a seat­belt, the report says, and the offi­cer dri­ving the Explorer pulled up beside the car’s dri­ver-side door. An offi­cer shined a flash­light into the car and con­firmed that the dri­ver was not belt­ed, the report says, then ordered him to stop the vehicle.

The offi­cers deter­mined that Glover, 36, was the dri­ver. Glover opened his door but remained in the car, and Officer Anton Jefferson saw a “cannabis cig­ar” in plain sight near a cup hold­er, the report says. Jefferson wrote that he saw a “green leafy sub­stance” extend­ing from the cig­ar, con­firm­ing his sus­pi­cion that the cig­ar con­tained mar­i­jua­na. He wrote that he also smelled the aro­ma of burnt cannabis.

Jefferson asked Glover to leave the vehi­cle, the report says. As Glover was stand­ing up, Jefferson saw fel­low Officer Jason McLain reach­ing for a bag hang­ing from Glover’s neck, the report says. From that point, Jefferson described Glover resist­ing the offi­cers, pulling away as he reached for the bag and lat­er as he was being handcuffed.

As McLain tried to gain con­trol of Glover, the sus­pect pushed him, the report says. The offi­cers con­tin­ued to strug­gle with Glover, the report says, and the sus­pect was “escort­ed to the ground.”
(Hahahah).

Officer Dillon Cornn tried to move Glover’s hands behind his back, and Glover pulled his left arm free and put Cornn in a head­lock, the report says. Responding to the suspect’s “vio­lent behav­ior,” Jefferson shot Glover in the upper back with a Taser gun, the report says. Officers were then able to hand­cuff Glover, Jefferson wrote.

Officers searched the vehi­cle and found two con­tain­ers of a leafy green sub­stance, residue in an ash tray, a cannabis cig­ar and scales, the report says. Field test­ing con­firmed the sub­stance to be mar­i­jua­na weigh­ing 33.75 grams, the report says.

Glover claimed that he had a state-issued med­ical mar­i­jua­na patient card, the report says, but offi­cers found nei­ther the card nor any mar­i­jua­na in sealed dis­pen­sary pack­ag­ing, Jefferson wrote. Officers arrest­ed Glover on charges of pos­ses­sion of more than 20 grams of mar­i­jua­na, use or pos­ses­sion of para­pher­na­lia, resist­ing an offi­cer with vio­lence and bat­tery on an officer.

Glover had a first appear­ance Monday before Judge Bruce Jacobsen and was released on $500 bond.

The two videos post­ed on Glover’s Facebook page both begin after Glover is out of the car and on the street with at least two LPD offi­cers kneel­ing or stand­ing above him. About 10 sec­onds into one video, an offi­cer appears to punch the sus­pect in the upper back with a closed fist. An uniden­ti­fied girl is heard scream­ing and call­ing, “Hey, stop punch­ing my dad!”

The offi­cers roll Glover onto his back, where he holds his palms up toward the offi­cer clos­est to him. The offi­cer, strad­dling Glover’s tor­so, then punch­es him sev­er­al times in the upper chest or head. The image becomes jerky as the per­son with the cam­era moves while the view is par­tial­ly blocked by offi­cers, the car and oth­er witnesses.

Witnesses call out toward the offi­cers, and an offi­cer tells them to back away.

After the punch­es to the chest, Glover is seen kick­ing his feet up while lying on his back. Three offi­cers work to sub­due the sus­pect, and anoth­er offi­cer turns toward the cam­era and calls out, “He put him in a headlock.”

The alleged head­lock is not seen on the video.

A sec­ond video begins with a woman in a col­or­ful dress stand­ing near the scene, fac­ing an offi­cer who tells her to leave.

“I’ve giv­en you mul­ti­ple warn­ings,” the offi­cer says.

The woman and oth­ers speak in agi­tat­ed voic­es as the offi­cer peri­od­i­cal­ly tells the woman to back off. The video shows Glover on the ground and hand­cuffed in the background.

A girl, seem­ing­ly the same one who spoke on the first video, can be heard talk­ing on a phone to her grand­moth­er. She says that the police have put her moth­er in hand­cuffs. Soon after that, the video shows offi­cers stand­ing the woman in the col­or­ful dress against a police car and hand­cuff­ing her hands behind her back.

LPD spokesper­son Robin Tillett shared an arrest affi­davit for Nettie Bell, 37, list­ed as hav­ing the same address as Glover. In the report, Cornn said that Bell “direct­ly obstruct­ed our inves­ti­ga­tion and effort.”

The report says that as McLain tried to secure a sus­pect, Bell tried to pull the uniden­ti­fied per­son away from the offi­cer. Cornn arrest­ed Bell and charged her with resist­ing arrest with­out violence.

Along with the two videos, Glover post­ed pho­tos on his Facebook page that appeared to show scratch­es and abra­sions on his hands, ankles, back and but­tocks. Glover could not be reached for comment.

The Lakeland Police Department recent­ly began issu­ing body-worn cam­eras to some offi­cers, but Tillett said they are first going to the Uniform Patrol Division. She said the offi­cers involved in Glover’s arrest had not yet been assigned cameras.

Tillett issued this state­ment from LPD:

“Our agency is aware of the video cir­cu­lat­ing on social media. All inci­dents involv­ing pro­tec­tive actions tak­en by offi­cers are reviewed by their chain of com­mand and our Office of Professional Standards. It is not our pol­i­cy to com­ment on any actions cur­rent­ly under review.”

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Fatal Police Shooting Of Startup Founder Puts Austin’s Diversity Problem In The Spotlight

Maybe this has noth­ing to do with diver­si­ty. Maybe , just maybe there is a large domes­tic mili­tia called the police with strict orders to kill, oper­at­ing as if the streets are a war­zone. Just maybe.
I recall hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion some­time ear­li­er this year with a young Indian man who hap­pens to be a pros­e­cu­tor in New Jersey on the ques­tion of police excess­es. Listening to him, one would have walked away believ­ing there is no racism in America.
On the oth­er hand, the sys­tem has man­aged to con­vince the American peo­ple that unwar­rant­ed police vio­lence is unavoidable.
To an offi­cer trained in anoth­er coun­try, we know BS when we see it. We know that dis­cre­tion is the bet­ter part of val­or. We also know that the role of the police is not to kill sum­mar­i­ly but to be judi­cious asses­sors of events and make good deci­sions before using lethal force.
In a sit­u­a­tion like this one, the man they killed was wear­ing a robe, a clear sign that he is asso­ci­at­ed with the neigh­bor­hood and more specif­i­cal­ly a home nearby.
Additionally, there are over four hun­dred mil­lion guns in the hands of Americans, so this man most like­ly had a right to have the firearm he had in his hand.
Most impor­tant­ly, when a police offi­cer gives the order to drop a weapon it should not be a pre­cur­sor to jus­ti­fy mur­der; it should be a legit­i­mate com­mand to de-esca­late a sit­u­a­tion. American cops are using this order while they fire a bar­rage of bul­lets at American cit­i­zens and the courts are allow­ing them to get away with out­right mur­der in cold blood.
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Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe (right) and his broth­er Johann Moonesinghe (left) pic­tured with their cousin (cen­ter). Image Credits: Johann Moonesinghe. For years, Austin has made head­lines as an evolv­ing tech hub where star­tups, large com­pa­nies and investors alike have flocked to set up a pres­ence. But as 2022 clos­es, the Texas cap­i­tal is in the news for a very dif­fer­ent, trag­ic rea­son — being home to the sud­den death of a start­up founder at the hands of a police offi­cer. On November 15, inKind co-founder Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe was fatal­ly shot out­side of his south Austin home in what his fam­i­ly and col­leagues describe as a sense­less acci­dent that could have been avoided.

The 33-year-old had returned from a two-week trip to dis­cov­er that things looked out of place in his home, accord­ing to his broth­er, Johann. The afflu­ent neigh­bor­hood had recent­ly become a tar­get for crim­i­nals — to the point that one home­own­er had felt so unsafe after being robbed that she moved out. The new own­ers proac­tive­ly hired 24-hour-secu­ri­ty to stand guard in front of their house. A few weeks pri­or, Moonesinghe had pur­chased an assault rifle to pro­tect him­self should a bur­glar attempt to enter his home. In what would turn out to be a sad­ly prophet­ic warn­ing, his neigh­bor and inKind COO El Khattary had cau­tioned, “A brown man with a big gun does­n’t get the ben­e­fit of the doubt.”

It turns out he had rea­son to be concerned.

Moonesinghe had report­ed­ly talked ear­li­er with his neigh­bor across the street, express­ing con­cern that some­one might be in his home, and retrieved his rifle as he looked around his prop­er­ty. With his front door open, Moonesinghe yelled for who­ev­er might be in his home to get out. He also shot his rifle into the home. The neighbor’s secu­ri­ty guard called 911.

According to Moonesinghe’s broth­er, Ring cam­era footage showed police arriv­ing at his brother’s prop­er­ty with no sirens or lights, with one of the offi­cers fatal­ly shoot­ing Raj.

“The police didn’t announce them­selves or give him time to put the gun down,” Johann told TechCrunch. (A video of the inci­dent can be seen here. Warning: It may be inap­pro­pri­ate for some viewers.) 

The offi­cers said they per­formed life-sav­ing mea­sures on Raj, before he was ulti­mate­ly pro­nounced dead at a local hospital.

It was two days lat­er, though, before Raj’s fam­i­ly knew what hap­pened to him. The police at first held a press con­fer­ence, say­ing that “a white man” had been shot but did not dis­close details.

“We were super con­fused,” Johann said. “We knew the cops were there, and we couldn’t get a hold of Raj. At first we thought it was him, and then we thought it wasn’t. They said they killed a white man who had been shoot­ing up the neigh­bor­hood. We didn’t know what to think.”

The inci­dent took place at 12:30 am on Tuesday, November 15. But the Moonesinghe fam­i­ly claim they were not noti­fied by police of Raj’s death until the evening of Thursday, November 17.

“Raj was awe­some, absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal. He just went out of his way to help oth­er peo­ple,” Johann told TechCrunch. “This is the worst thing that has ever hap­pened to me and my fam­i­ly. The hard­est part for me is that it was avoidable.”

“We’re lucky that we have a very strong fam­i­ly, incred­i­ble friends and super sup­port­ive peo­ple around us,” he con­tin­ued. “It’s not only hard to lose some­body you love, but it’s dou­bly, triply hard because of the way the police han­dled it.”

TechCrunch reached out to the Austin Police Department (APD) and was referred to a December 1 press release stat­ing the depart­ment con­tin­ued to inves­ti­gate the shooting.

At the top of the release, Raj was described as a deceased Middle Eastern male. In the body of the release, the APD said the 911 caller had described a man with a gun “as a white male, wear­ing a grey robe and dark pants.”

In that release, the police depart­ment iden­ti­fied Officer Daniel Sanchez as the indi­vid­ual who fatal­ly shot Raj. Sanchez is report­ed­ly on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the depart­men­t’s inves­ti­ga­tions. In its state­ment, APD said that it would con­duct two con­cur­rent inves­ti­ga­tions into the inci­dent — a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the APD Special Investigations Unit in con­junc­tion with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, and an admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the APD Internal Affairs Unit, with over­sight from the Office of Police Oversight.

After mov­ing to Austin about five years ago, inKind this year leased 22,000 square feet of office space that was Facebook’s first office in Austin. Business is going well, accord­ing to Johann. The start­up, which launched in 2016 by fund­ing restau­rants by pur­chas­ing large amounts of food and bev­er­age cred­its upfront, has raised $27 mil­lion in growth equi­ty and $130 mil­lion in debt over the past year and has about 74 employ­ees. It’s oper­at­ing at a $48 mil­lion run rate, Johann said.

“What makes me real­ly sad is that star­tups are very, very hard, and Raj worked so hard for years and years. And now that the com­pa­ny is real­ly on a rock­et ship, he’s not here to enjoy that,” he added.

Johann told TechCrunch he also feels “guilty” because of the deci­sion sev­er­al years ago to move the start­up he helped co-found with his broth­er, Andrew Harris, Matt Saeta and Miles Matthias to Austin from Washington, D.C. An ear­ly investor in Uber and Twilio, Johann said he was hop­ing to relo­cate to a state with­out tax­es. Seattle and Miami were also considered.

“Obviously the shoot­ing was not my fault,” Johann told TechCrunch. “But I don’t believe this would have hap­pened in anoth­er place. I’m gay and brown, grew up in LA, and lived a long time in D.C. The only time I have ever expe­ri­enced racism was when I moved to Austin.” While the broth­ers’ fam­i­ly is from Sri Lanka, the pair were born in Los Angeles.

Khattary told TechCrunch he views the city’s lack of diver­si­ty as “a weird thing” con­sid­er­ing its so-called pro­gres­sive rep­u­ta­tion, and called police treat­ment of peo­ple of col­or “dis­heart­en­ing.” For exam­ple, dur­ing the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, 19 offi­cers were accused of seri­ous­ly injur­ing pro­tes­tors. Earlier this year, the offi­cers were indict­ed for using exces­sive force.

“Clearly, there’s some­thing in Austin and Black Lives Matter in 2020 high­light­ed a lot of it,” he told TechCrunch. “This is a nation­wide prob­lem but Austin def­i­nite­ly has more than its fair share. In this case, the offi­cer per­ceived him [Raj] as a major threat and didn’t give him a chance.”

The con­trast between the city’s pro­gres­sive­ness and a pop­u­la­tion that is most­ly “very hos­pitable” and inci­dents such as this one can be hard for out­siders to grasp, Johann said.

“I don’t think there’s overt racism. It’s more uncon­scious bias­es, with peo­ple mak­ing judge­ments around oth­ers in a split sec­ond,” he added. “And that’s real­ly prob­lem­at­ic. I do believe that if Raj were white, he prob­a­bly would­n’t have been killed.”

Austin’s lack of diver­si­ty is not a new prob­lem. As TechCrunch report­ed in March, the per­cent­age of Black res­i­dents, for exam­ple, steadi­ly decreased over time to an esti­mat­ed 7% in 2020. Many of Austin’s neigh­bor­hoods resem­ble those seen in Silicon Valley, with large­ly white and Asian res­i­dents and far few­er Hispanic and Black people.

Johann doesn’t want his broth­er to have died in vain. While he says he cur­rent­ly doesn’t “feel safe” in Austin and that it’s hard for him to con­sid­er ask­ing oth­er peo­ple to move here, he also knows that they can’t just move inKind. 

Instead, he’s hop­ing to help change Austin “to make it a place that’s safe for everyone.”

“I hope that the Austin police even start the dia­logue, give us some answers and explain to us what they’re going to do dif­fer­ent­ly so this doesn’t hap­pen again,” Johann said.

He also wants to poten­tial­ly raise cap­i­tal that would go toward specif­i­cal­ly invest­ing in com­pa­nies that through data, improved secu­ri­ty cam­eras and oth­er tech could pos­si­bly help pre­vent what hap­pened to Raj from hap­pen­ing to others.

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Man Violently Beaten By Police And Falsely Accused Of Assaulting Officers Files $10M Federal Lawsuit

An unarmed Detroit bounc­er has filed a $10 mil­lion fed­er­al law­suit after offi­cers assault­ed him while per­form­ing a rou­tine liquor license check at a club where he worked.
Michael Kennebrew wants the offi­cers who entered his place of work held account­able after vicious­ly attack­ing and wrong­ful­ly arrest­ing him. He has since filed an exces­sive force law­suit against Detroit and its offi­cers. He believes sur­veil­lance footage of the vio­lent arrest will help his case and bring about justice.
“I think any­body who watch­es it should be trou­bled to a cer­tain extent or a cer­tain degree,” Kennebrew said of his arrest on April 28

The 42-year-old father of three is a ship­ping super­vi­sor and a bounc­er for Minnie’s Bar and Grill. On the day of the arrest around 7 p.m., Kennebrew was mak­ing his rounds at the bar as nor­mal. He said he noticed three Detroit police offi­cers approach the bar but did not think much of their pres­ence at the time. “I saw them when they went in, and I was going to check to make sure every­thing was going well and noti­fy the own­er,” Kennebrew said. WJBK reports the offi­cers were work­ing with the department’s vice squad unit. The unit was at the bar to ensure its liquor license was in com­pli­ance. Kennebrew says the com­pli­ance check usu­al­ly hap­pens twice a year. Unlike pre­vi­ous vis­its where the rou­tine check would be unevent­ful, this vis­it had a dif­fer­ent out­come. Video sur­veil­lance from the bar cap­tures Kennebrew walk­ing past the female offi­cer in the vice squad, and things esca­late quick­ly after she grabbed his arm.

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“I walked past her, and she asked me was I armed, and I said no,” Kennebrew recalled. Surveillance shows what hap­pened next. The female offi­cer pulls Kennebrew’s right arm, and he pulled his arm away. Another male offi­cer came from beside the female offi­cer and quick­ly approached Kennebrew, push­ing him back a few feet before the two fell to the ground. “He just start­ed punch­ing me, he didn’t say any­thing, no com­mands or any­thing like that,” Kennebrew said. Both Kennebrew and the male police offi­cer were on the ground, with the offi­cer on top of Kennebrew, the footage shows. The uniden­ti­fied offi­cer is seen punch­ing Kennebrew at least four times in the back of his head and neck; it is unclear the exact num­ber of times Kennebrew was punched. As the assault con­tin­ued, at least two more police offi­cers approached a downed Kennebrew and the attack­ing offi­cer. Two oth­er bar patrons also approached Kennebrew and the offi­cer from the oppo­site direction“I was going to attempt to get up and when I glanced up, one offi­cer had a Taser in my face, and a wit­ness told me anoth­er offi­cer had his pis­tol out,” Kennebrew said.

It is unclear exact­ly how long the attack occurred, but moments lat­er Kennebrew was arrest­ed and charged with assault­ing the police offi­cer. He says he sat behind bars for three days. “I didn’t even touch the oth­er offi­cers so when did the assault come in,” Kennebrew said of the assault charge. Kennebrew’s attor­ney, Todd Russell Perkins, helped get him out of jail. “It’s just an abuse of pow­er, these indi­vid­u­als have run amuck with­in the sys­tem and it’s all for noth­ing, this guy did absolute­ly noth­ing,” Perkins said of Kennebrew’s predica­ment. WJBK con­firmed pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed the assault charge, claim­ing it lacked suf­fi­cient evi­dence. In a news inter­view on May 9, DPD’s direc­tor of pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and con­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing Chris Graveline said he did not believe the offi­cers involved sent all the avail­able video footage to the Wayne County pros­e­cu­tor for the assault charge. “We’re look­ing at that as well, and that’s also one of the rea­sons why the [DPD Vice Squad] super­vi­sor has been moved,” said Graveline. Additional ques­tions Graveline says the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion may answer include what caused the offi­cers to react the way they did. “What could have caused this imme­di­ate esca­la­tion? On the face of the video, we see no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, but we’ll be ask­ing those ques­tions,” Graveline said. A spokesper­son for the Detroit Police Department con­firmed to Atlanta Black Star the case is still under inves­ti­ga­tion. The spokesper­son also said the depart­ment did not have any more infor­ma­tion to release at this time and direct­ed ABS to a state­ment released by Detroit Police Chief James White on May 9. White said, “I am deeply trou­bled and con­cerned after watch­ing the sur­veil­lance video. I have direct­ed our Force Investigations Unit to imme­di­ate­ly launch an investigation.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued with, “The actions of the offi­cer don’t appear to be con­sis­tent with our poli­cies or pro­ce­dures. Therefore, the offi­cer has been removed from the unit pend­ing the out­come. DPD is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and will update both the com­mu­ni­ty and our media part­ners fol­low­ing a thor­ough and com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion.” Perkins says since the vio­lent arrest, DPD has been far from trans­par­ent. “We filed a suit because noth­ing is being done; they haven’t even giv­en us one police report.” He added that they have a Freedom of Information Act request pend­ing. Kennebrew hopes his exces­sive force law­suit brings account­abil­i­ty for what hap­pened to him. He wants to see pol­i­cy change and wants a citizen’s review board to review cas­es of police mis­con­duct. “I think there def­i­nite­ly needs to be pol­i­cy change. If I had to rec­om­mend some­thing, I would rec­om­mend a citizen’s review board. The cit­i­zens should decide if they want them to serve the city of Detroit or not,” Kennebrew said. The City of Detroit cur­rent­ly has a Board of Police Commissioners. The 11-mem­ber civil­ian board was cre­at­ed in 1974 and gives super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty over the police department. 

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Detective Set To Spend The Rest Of His Life In Prison After Decades Of Framing People, Sexually Assaulting Witnesses

A clas­sic case of Prosecutors’ refusal, and unwill­ing­ness to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal cops.

A for­mer Philadelphia homi­cide detec­tive con­vict­ed of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing wit­ness­es and infor­mants through­out his 20-year career pos­si­bly will spend the rest of his life behind bars as a penal­ty for his crimes. 
The court claimed the offi­cer “groomed” his male vic­tims to engage in sex­u­al acts while extract­ing infor­ma­tion from them as inves­ti­gat­ed var­i­ous cases. 

Former Philadelphia Detective Philip Nordo was sen­tenced to 24.5 to 49 years in prison after he was found guilty of rape, sex­u­al assault, stalk­ing, offi­cial oppres­sion, and theft by decep­tion. (Photo: YouTube screenshot/​FOX 29 Philadelphia)

On Dec. 15, a Philadelphia judge sen­tenced Philip Nordo, 56, to 24.5 to 49 years in prison after he was found guilty of rape, sex­u­al assault, stalk­ing, offi­cial oppres­sion, theft by decep­tion, and relat­ed charges ear­li­er this year, NBC 10 report­ed.
A jury found in addi­tion to hav­ing inap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al rela­tions with and lying on the vic­tims. He also stole $20,000 in crime reward mon­ey that was being offered in a case about the 2015 mur­der of an off-duty offi­cer named Moses Walker.
Evidence revealed he spent the stolen loot on one of his victims.
A 2019 grand jury report alleged the for­mer detec­tive “groomed” the vic­tims while work­ing on cas­es and cre­at­ed a cli­mate that made those men “more sus­cep­ti­ble to his sex­u­al­ly assaultive and/​or coer­cive behav­ior,” which last­ed over a decade.
The ex-officer’s defense attor­ney Michael van der Veen said Nordo’s accusers could not be trust­ed because they are “crim­i­nals, liars, and thieves” whose accounts were incon­sis­tent and lacked cor­rob­o­rat­ing evidence.
One of those peo­ple was Milique Wagner.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Wagner, then 21, was arrest­ed and inter­ro­gat­ed by Nordo regard­ing the fatal shoot­ing of 29-year-old Braheem King on Feb. 10, 2010. The then-detec­tive was deter­mined to asso­ciate Wagner with Reafeal Fields and Kelvin Bryant, who were co-defen­dants in the case of King’s killing.

Nordo used a man named Amine Payne to give a state­ment that linked Wagner to the oth­er men. The North Philly native was vul­ner­a­ble. In addi­tion to expe­ri­enc­ing the loss of his moth­er when he was 9 and wit­ness­ing his best friend get shot in front of him when he was 19, he start­ed to self-med­icate with drugs (mar­i­jua­na, opi­oids, and cough syrup) to deal with his men­tal trau­ma. The legal stacks were against him. It also made him an easy mark for his sex­u­al escapades. After the ini­tial ques­tion­ing about the King case, Nordo intro­duced anoth­er top­ic, accord­ing to Wagner. He probed the “sus­pect” about his desire to shoot porn. “He says … he has a porn ring from out in New Jersey,” Wagner recalled, describ­ing the detec­tive as slick and sneaky as he tes­ti­fied that Nordo asked him, “Would [I] ever con­sid­er doing guy-on-guy porn?” Later Payne would tes­ti­fy that he nev­er met Wagner; his state­ment was fab­ri­cat­ed and he admit­ted he was the one who mur­dered King.

He said dur­ing the mur­der tri­al, he had tried to con­fess ear­li­er but was shut down. “When you said these gen­tle­men did it, I told you that I did it,” he said. “You don’t want to lis­ten. I told y’all about the shoot­ings, the mur­ders that I com­mit­ted, and you want to sit here and blame these peo­ple. For what, I don’t know.” Fields said he knew Nordo coerced var­i­ous infor­mants to iden­ti­fy him as a killer in King’s death. “I was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of a crime that I didn’t com­mit, all because of a dirty detec­tive named Philip Nordo and the cor­rupt and bro­ken sys­tem,” he said, after being in prison for more than 10 years. Another one of the wit­ness­es against Nordo that van der Veen tried to dis­cred­it tes­ti­fied that the offi­cer raped him in a Chinatown hotel room. “Sadly, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop Nordo in his tracks as ear­ly as 2005, before he became a homi­cide detec­tive and com­mit­ted these crimes,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, whose office pros­e­cut­ed Nordo, said. “At that time, the DAO was pro­vid­ed with very strong evi­dence of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by Nordo toward a young man he was inter­ro­gat­ing and dis­re­gard­ed it at a time when the Philly DAO was not known for hold­ing law enforce­ment account­able, to put it mild­ly.” Nordo was fired in 2017.

According to Krasner, the con­vic­tion com­pro­mised “dozens” of crim­i­nal cas­es and has result­ed in mul­ti­ple exon­er­a­tions since the sum­mer. “This is some­one who we now know was pro­found­ly cor­rupt and was will­ing to turn things any which way to get what he want­ed,” Krasner said. “So, we have to essen­tial­ly dis­re­gard any­thing that he did. We have to regard it as being sus­pect. And then, we have to look at what evi­dence remains. Sometimes, that evi­dence is com­pelling.” The Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) has been review­ing about 100 of Nordo’s cas­es and, accord­ing to CIU super­vi­sor Michael Garmisa, iden­ti­fied approx­i­mate­ly a dozen that should be vacat­ed. One case that Garmisa dis­cov­ered was not going to be easy to vacate was Marvin Hill, who alleged­ly had almost iden­ti­cal impro­pri­eties as the Wagner case. After the DA’s office pre­sent­ed an analy­sis of video evi­dence, which they believed exon­er­at­ed Hill, Judge Barbara McDermott still decid­ed to uphold her orig­i­nal guilty verdict.
The pros­e­cu­tion had oth­er charges they had hoped to try him for. However, after one of Nordo’s accusers went miss­ing, the office had to drop more than half of the counts ini­tial­ly filed.

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Amidst The Sanitizing Of The Coral Gardens Uprising In Favor Of Rastafarians, Here Is An Undeniable Fact..

A great friend of mine for­ward­ed this bit of per­ti­nent his­to­ry. I thought it would be a great idea to post it so that every­one can have a truer his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive of what tran­spired at Coral Gardens Montego Bay in 1963.
Much of the dia­logue that suc­ceed­ed the events at Coral Gardens has been san­i­tized and white­washed to cre­ate the per­cep­tion of an out-of-con­trol colo­nial police sys­tem out to get the poor law-abid­ing Rastafarians instead of the facts, which are clear and concise.
The true sto­ry was of Rastafarians opposed to the social order, who want­ed to take prop­er­ty that was not theirs and decid­ed to com­mit arson and murder.
Those are the facts.
What the san­i­tized nar­ra­tive cre­at­ed by the anti-police liars at the UWI left out are the fac­tu­al con­se­quences the Rastafarian anar­chists’ actions left, includ­ing the sto­ry of the valiant Police Constable Errol Campbell, who recent­ly transitioned.

Former Constable Errol Campbell, who recent­ly tran­si­tioned, was funer­al­ized at the Falmouth SDA church on Sunday, December 18th, 2022.
He enlist­ed in the JCF in 1959 at 19 years old. While sta­tioned at the Barnett Street Police Station, he was on his day off when an Inspector Fisher instruct­ed him to join oth­er mem­bers and respond to a dis­pute at a gas sta­tion in Coral Gardens where the Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty had set fire to a gas sta­tion on Holy Thursday, 1963. 

Constable Campbell was 23 years old at the time.
Upon arrival at Coral Gardens, the Police were ambushed. Constable Campbell fell and was chopped in the head, caus­ing his brain to become vis­i­ble. He also received injuries to his back, from which he nev­er recovered.
He was rushed to Cornwall Regional Hospital sit­u­at­ed on the Hip Strip and placed on ice, pre­sumed dead like the oth­ers. A doc­tor who lat­er both­ered to take a clos­er look at him real­ized he was still alive.
He respond­ed, ” This one has a lit­tle life left; take him out” he was then air­lift­ed to Kingston.
He has been bedrid­den from then until the time of his death on the 23rd of November 2022 at the age of 82 years old.
In his life­time, he was vis­it­ed sev­er­al times by the Trelawny Police Division (espe­cial­ly dur­ing Police Week) and by JCF Retired mem­bers Association Islandwide.
Tributes were done by the Commissioner of Police, The Trelawny Police Division, the Jamaica Police Federation, The Retired Members Association of the JCF, and his fam­i­ly, to name a few.
His fam­i­ly and the Trelawny Division also planned the funer­al ser­vice and exe­cut­ed with Police pres­ence from the Division.

No. 931 Cons Errol Winston Campbell RIP.

Instead of con­demn­ing this trav­es­ty for what it tru­ly was, the Government of Jamaica (Party neu­tral), in asso­ci­a­tion with their elit­ist anti-police friends, have apol­o­gized to the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals who ter­ror­ized prop­er­ty own­ers, set their prop­er­ty afire, mur­dered police offi­cers, and com­mit­ted oth­er crimes against the state.
Is there any won­der that our coun­try has become the poster child for mur­der­ous crim­i­nal behav­ior upon which the nation’s lead­ers are now forced to be traips­ing over­seas in search of help to deal with the onslaught of vio­lent crim­i­nal­i­ty they cre­at­ed and nurtured?
The Coral Gardens débâ­cle is not the only time that the Jamaican Government sided with anti-gov­ern­ment sedi­tion­ists against the secu­ri­ty forces after they brave­ly defend­ed Jamaican democracy.
Regardless of the many and var­ied accounts of what may have been per­co­lat­ing between Rastafarians and the Jamaican state that led up to the Good Friday inci­dent, one thing is clear, the unlaw­ful acts com­mit­ted by Rastafarians, against the state and per­son­al prop­er­ty are undeniable.
It occurred again in 2010 in Tivoli Gardens, and the police and mil­i­tary restored the coun­try to san­i­ty. As is cus­tom­ary, instead of hon­or­ing their brav­ery, the Jamaican gov­ern­ment apol­o­gized to the crim­i­nals, gave them tax­pay­er’s mon­ey, and com­mis­sioned an inquiry aimed sole­ly at cas­ti­gat­ing and dimin­ish­ing the secu­ri­ty forces.
They did not even have the decen­cy and hon­or of choos­ing a Jamaican to do the dirty work, they chose a foreigner.
That is the lev­el of lead­er­ship that Jamaica enjoys.

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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.