Many of you will remem­ber this shock­ing abuse of pow­er and the wan­ton impuni­ty with which this cop shot and seri­ous­ly wound­ed an African-American man for absolute­ly no reason.

Well, a judge has now over­turned the con­vic­tion of the cop who opened fire

In 2016, we saw footage of care­tak­er Charles Kinsey and Arnaldo Rios-Soto being approached by a group of police, result­ing in Kinsey being shot after lay­ing on the ground with his hands in the air. The offi­cer who shot Kinsey, Jonathan Aledda, just had one of his charges over­turned by the South Florida appeals court, report­ed CNN.

Aledda’s con­vic­tion for mis­dem­neaor cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence was over­turned by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, report­ed CNN. His charge were con­sid­ered invalid because pros­e­cu­tors did not allow a SWAT com­man­der who trained Aledda to tes­ti­fy in the June 2019 trial.

From CNN:

In a state­ment emailed to CNN, Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the deci­sion is “dis­ap­point­ing to all who believed that this shoot­ing inci­dent was unnec­es­sary and incor­rect.” The office may ask the appeals court for a re-hear­ing, the state­ment continued.

Eric Schwartzreich and Anthony Bruno, attor­neys for Aledda, told CNN, “We look for­ward to the State drop­ping the charges or in the alter­na­tive to Mr. Aledda being found not guilty.”
“He took the shots because he believed that a hostage was in dan­ger,” Schwartzreich and Bruno said in a statement.

Aledda was one out of 13 offi­cers who respond­ed to the July 2016 inci­dent. Rios-Soto, who has devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, was in the mid­dle of an inter­sec­tion play­ing with a toy while Kinsey tried to bring him back inside. CNN report­ed the toy was a sil­ver truck but offi­cers respond­ed after a bystander report­ed it may have been a gun.

When offi­cers arrived, Kinsey laid on the ground with his hands raised to sig­nal he was non­threat­en­ing and announc­ing he was a care­tak­er. Aledda shot at Rios-Soto three times and hit Kinsey in the hip. In 2017, Aledda was charged with attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, one mis­de­meanor of cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence for shoot­ing Kinsey and one for endan­ger­ing Rios-Soto, per CNN’s report.

Aledda was acquit­ted of his oth­er cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence charges and manslaugh­ter charges in 2019, report­ed CNN.

The chief of police in Castroville, Texas, has been placed on leave after a law enforce­ment offi­cer said he heard the depart­ment head use the N‑word at least three times dur­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion. The offi­cer who made the accu­sa­tion said a body cam­era record­ed the incident.

The Castroville City Council, after hold­ing an exec­u­tive ses­sion, placed Chief Brian Jackson on leave dur­ing a meet­ing Tuesday night that was streamed to Facebook. According to KSAT, Jackson report­ed­ly used the offen­sive lan­guage after a body was found on February 5 near Houston Street and Hwy. 90. Multiple police agen­cies respond­ed to the scene includ­ing the Medina County Sheriff’s Office and Castroville Police Department

According to the report, Jackson was record­ed say­ing the N‑word three times when refer­ring to where the vic­tim was from. 

Castroville Mayor Darrin Schroeder released a statement:

“The City of Castroville does not tol­er­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind. Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem can­not be shaped by biased polic­ing and unfair judi­cial prece­dents, includ­ing atti­tudes and actions that are root­ed in racism and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion. The emo­tion­al, men­tal, phys­i­cal, and finan­cial impact on our com­mu­ni­ties is a tan­gi­ble expe­ri­ence for too many and must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. The threat of racial vio­lence is real, so we must take seri­ous­ly all words and actions that can be pre­cur­sors to that. Schroeder added, “Everyone deserves due process. We have been noti­fied of alle­ga­tions against Police Chief Jackson and are inves­ti­gat­ing them accord­ing to our poli­cies and with all dili­gence. We believe in all human rights, so we will not dis­ci­pline sim­ply on rumors or hearsay, but we will act deci­sive­ly if we deter­mine guilt of dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Castroville is locat­ed 20 miles west of down­town San Antonio. The city has a pop­u­la­tion of less than 4,000. 

So as you read this sto­ry, you will see exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing in the United States, using the log­ic of crim­i­nal Donald Trump, who did not see crim­i­nals he did not like or want to par­don regard­less of their crimes, except, of course, if they were Black.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has decid­ed to fur­ther politi­cize the vio­lence that crim­i­nal cops per­pet­u­ate on cit­i­zens dai­ly. Violence that result in seri­ous injuries and 1055 dead cit­i­zens in 2021 at the hands of police officers.
Just take a wild guess at the race of the peo­ple abused by the igno­rant, brutish thugs that Gregg Abbott wants to grant clemen­cy to? (Publisher)

Greg Abbott lashed out Wednesday at the local pros­e­cu­tor in his state’s cap­i­tal, float­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of clemen­cy to 19 Austin police offi­cers indict­ed for tac­tics used dur­ing 2020 demon­stra­tions against racial injustice.
Abbott, a Republican, allud­ed to the local police union’s asser­tion that charg­ing the offi­cers was a “polit­i­cal sham” in his first pub­lic state­ment on the indict­ments, includ­ing against two offi­cers involved in injury cas­es that the city has offered to pay mil­lions of dol­lars to set­tle. “In Austin, law enforce­ment offi­cers defend­ed the state Capitol from crim­i­nal assault, pro­tect­ed the Austin Police Department head­quar­ters from being over­run, cleared the inter­state from being shut down, and dis­rupt­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in areas across the city,” Abbott said. “Many offi­cers were phys­i­cal­ly attacked while pro­tect­ing Austin. Those offi­cers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted.”
The gov­er­nor’s state­ment did not men­tion demon­stra­tors who were hurt, includ­ing some critically.

Nelson Linder, pres­i­dent of the Austin NAACP, said the governor’s announce­ment seemed pre­ma­ture and sent the wrong mes­sage on police bru­tal­i­ty. “I think it shows an imbal­ance in the city when it comes to pub­lic safe­ty,” Linder said.
“As a Black per­son and Brown per­son and for every­one else as well, we ought to be very con­cerned about the politi­ciza­tion of police mis­con­duct,” Linder said.
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza’s cam­paign promised to take a tougher stance on police account­abil­i­ty, but he has denied that the charges are dri­ven by politics.
In a state­ment Wednesday, Garza’s office said: “no one is above the law” and that the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter con­tin­ues. Read the remain­der of the sto­ry here. https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​a​b​b​o​t​t​-​f​l​o​a​t​s​-​c​l​e​m​e​n​c​y​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​e​d​-​a​u​s​t​i​n​-​1​9​2​8​0​5​3​5​6​.​h​tml

Another Black History month is near its end, and the ques­tion from me is, what have we accom­plished as melanat­ed peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly here in America?
Police the domes­tic army of white nation­al­ists con­tin­ue to injure and kill Black peo­ple with [increas­ing] feroc­i­ty, and the sys­tem is unwill­ing to hold them accountable. 
More impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, is the sense of dor­man­cy that still engulfs the major­i­ty of Black America, a com­mu­ni­ty that seems to have not a care in the world out­side of fake wigs, fake hair and nails drink­ing, and las­civ­i­ous endeav­ors- a death spi­ral that is cen­tered on the desire to enter­tain and be entertained.
Whenever atroc­i­ties are com­mit­ted against our peo­ple, it is the minor­i­ty that takes to the streets while the major­i­ty sit and home and hope that the efforts of a few will bring change to the many; some don’t even hope at all.
Even with our best efforts, stay­ing informed, stay­ing alert, vot­ing, chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo, elect­ing peo­ple we can bet­ter lob­by, there are no guar­an­tees that there will be pos­i­tive outcomes.
The fact is that even among those who say they are the least hos­tile, the least anti-black, lurks wolves in sheep­’s clothing.
Hello Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Senema, anti-black Democrats who were elect­ed on a pro­gres­sive agen­da but turned their backs on the agen­da to uphold white minor­i­ty rule.

Many African-Americans still sub­scribe to the irra­tional the­o­ry that race rela­tions will change for the bet­ter… Data do not sup­port that belief, nor is it sup­port­ed by events across America 54 Years after degen­er­ate ele­ments assas­si­nat­ed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr him­self warned against what he char­ac­ter­ized before his death as ‘the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism’ as he elo­quent­ly spoke about ‘the fierce urgency of now. The idea of not suc­cumb­ing to the lies of those who say times have changed, things are bet­ter-the idea that giv­en time America will shed its igno­rant racist past and embrace moder­ni­ty. All lies, the fathers sucked the sour grapes of hatred and big­otry the teeth of the chil­dren are inex­orably set on edge.
The chil­dren of mur­der­ers, rapists, brutish col­o­niz­ers are not about to become good God-fear­ing cit­i­zens who believe in equal­i­ty for human­i­ty. It is insan­i­ty to expect the sons and daugh­ters of your oppres­sors to change and become your sud­den savior.
If it starts dirty, it ends dirty. On every issue ger­mane to the well­be­ing of peo­ple of col­or, ele­ments of the United States gov­ern­ment have been con­sis­tent­ly hos­tile. From the White House to the Supreme Court and mil­lions of homes all across the expanse of the fifty states, it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to dis­crim­i­nate against peo­ple of col­or. The brutish indif­fer­ent dis­play of police act­ing with impuni­ty is the most vis­i­ble exam­ple of those dis­crim­i­na­tor poli­cies man­i­fest­ing themselves.

Redlining is no longer being writ­ten in the law, but Blacks are still exclud­ed from cer­tain neigh­bor­hoods. Blacks who have beat­en the odds and pur­chased homes have their homes under­val­ued by racist apprais­ers. Even when the old redlin­ing laws of the post-recon­struc­tion era are sup­pos­ed­ly not used any­more, the mind­set of the sons and daugh­ters of those who draft­ed those laws are the same and, in many cas­es, worse than their forebearers.
Laws are being passed all across the coun­try to make it expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult to vote; how could this hap­pen, you ask?
The short answer is that the United States Supreme Court in 2013, for no valid rea­son oth­er than to make it easy to roll back vot­ing rights, evis­cer­at­ed the 1965 Voting Rights Act leav­ing it an emp­ty shell.
John Roberts, the Chief Justice and a for­mer Reagan Administration lawyer, is vehe­ment­ly hos­tile to the idea of one man one vote. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bush Appointee, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was destroyed under the guise that it is no longer need­ed because times have changed.
Sure, times have changed, but peo­ple’s hatred has not. The John Roberts Supreme court with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, the now-deceased Antonin Scalia, & Anthony Kennedy ensured that it destroyed set­tled law open­ing the gate for the present assault on vot­ing rights by those who would see Black peo­ple returned to the cot­ton plan­ta­tion and a place of abject servitude.

So what are we doing as a peo­ple to ensure that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren do not become serfs to the chil­dren and grand­chil­dren of those who hate and oppress us? Is it just about com­mem­o­rat­ing the strug­gles of the past, or is it about embrac­ing a new kind of mil­i­tan­cy that demands equal space to breathe on God’s green earth?
How do we devel­op that mil­i­tan­cy if we refuse to edu­cate our­selves about who we real­ly are and not who they say we are?
How do we demand change if we con­tin­ue to believe the lie taught us by our birthright-appro­pri­a­tors that we are a gen­tile peo­ple instead of God’s Hebrew peo­ple cre­at­ed in his image? When will we rise to rec­og­nize the curse of the four hun­dred years is over, and it is a time of Black progress?
Are we going to get up off our rear ends and take what’s right­ful­ly ours, or are we going to con­tin­ue to be behold­en to the teach­ings of the slave Bible?
The idea that things are get­ting bet­ter or will be bet­ter giv­en time has been turned on its head over and over again. The scorched earth assault on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry by the fas­cist right is an attempt to white­wash his­to­ry. They want to super­im­pose a kind and gen­tle face onto the mon­ster of four hun­dred years of white geno­cide against our people.
If you are opposed to the truth of his­to­ry being told to chil­dren, your or ours, it is because you are on the wrong side of history.

There is no they, just us-no, they are not going to give me this or that. You’re damn right about that their fathers and four fathers stole from us. They will con­tin­ue to steal from us unless we rec­og­nize who we are, not infe­ri­or but supe­ri­or, not slaves but enslaved, not sav­ages but the ones who brought sav­ages into the light. We taught them his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, astron­o­my. We taught them that the earth was not flat, but round.
We are a peo­ple who cooked our meat when oth­ers were eat­ing their raw blood drip­ping from it. We are the peo­ple who cre­at­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cils (the sys­tem of gov­ern­ment we now claim to have) and cre­at­ed uni­ver­si­ties; yeah, we cre­at­ed those.
None of that his­to­ry has been taught to African-Americans chil­dren, nor has it been taught to Caucasian children.
For those rea­sons, Ron Desantis in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, the imbe­cil­ic Cuban Ted Cruz, and oth­ers do not want that his­to­ry taught to young American children.
As I said ear­li­er, if you are afraid of the things you did in the past, it is because of what you did wrong. Now, of course, this does not apply to Ted Cruz or Clarence Thomas; they are still enslaved peo­ple who are quite com­fort­able on the plantation…

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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.

I talk about the cor­rup­tion and down­right dis­hon­esty of police offi­cers, their depart­ments, pros­e­cu­tors, and even judges in this forum, and on the rare occa­sion they get it right, I men­tion that too.
However, as you have seen in the case of Amir Locke, who was mur­dered as he emerged from sleep in Minneapolis, courts allow police to break into the homes of inno­cent cit­i­zens and mur­der them with­out consequence.
They did it to Breonna Taylor, who had noth­ing to do with their war­rant, and then arrest­ed and pinned attempt­ed mur­der of a police offi­cer charges on her boyfriend because he dared to defend his home as is his God-giv­en and con­sti­tu­tion­al right to do.
If a fly buzzes past them, that fly is swat­ted down, and charges are pinned against it, but when they wan­ton­ly mur­der inno­cent cit­i­zens, it takes mov­ing moun­tains to have charges prof­fered against them, even when they com­mit the most bla­tant and egre­gious acts of criminality.
Here again, in the case below is anoth­er instance of police going to a home, and when the occu­pant opens fire at them (not know­ing they are state actors) the inno­cent is charged with attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer, and the cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors are will­ing to pros­e­cute the case against an inno­cent person.
This is lit­er­al­ly one of the most cor­rupt sys­tems of jus­tice any­place on plan­et earth. 
When cit­i­zens have no right to defend even the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes, you know, we are liv­ing in a full-fledged police state. (MB)

The Pensacola Police Department says it has launched an inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion after par­ents say a child was hurt while in police cus­tody fol­low­ing last week’s police-involved shoot­ing. It hap­pened after Pensacola Police SWAT offi­cers exe­cut­ed a search war­rant last Thursday morn­ing at a home on N 7^th Ave. Channel 3 has report­ed exten­sive­ly how 24-year-old Corey Marioneaux Jr. has been charged for shoot­ing at one of the SWAT offi­cers after they rammed his door.

Marioneaux Jr.‘s two young chil­dren — ages 1 and 3 — were inside the home at the time. The fam­i­ly argues Marioneaux Jr. shot at the offi­cers because he feared they were intrud­ers. Channel 3 sat down with the kids’ moth­er, Moiya Dixon, on Wednesday. “I was wok­en up by a phone call,” said Dixon, who co-par­ents with Marioneaux Jr. At 5 a.m. last Thursday, the chil­dren — Caion and Cylen — were asleep with their dad at the N 7^th Ave. home. Dixon says she was asleep at her own home. Receiving the alarm­ing phone call, fam­i­ly told her what they knew. Among the info relayed was that her 1‑year-old was injured. “I get out my car like, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?’ ” Dixon said. “And I get my baby and I see his face — and it’s almost unrec­og­niz­able com­pared to how he looked when I left him last.” A pic­ture shows the 1‑year-old’s nose and lip swollen, a scrape on his lip, scratch­es on his nose and sev­er­al bumps on his fore­head. Dixon’s first thought — “Who did this?” On Monday, the Pensacola Police Department sent Channel 3 a state­ment on the child’s injuries. The depart­ment claims both kids were in the back­seat of a car with an inves­ti­ga­tor. The inves­ti­ga­tor got out of the car. Upon return­ing, Pensacola Police says the inves­ti­ga­tor did­n’t notice the child lean­ing on the door. When the inves­ti­ga­tor opened it, police say the child fell out of the car.

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Olivia Iverson
Meanwhile, the father still faces a charge for attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer and lost his job over it. None of them know why police want infor­ma­tion from them for an inves­ti­ga­tion they say Corey Marioneaux isn’t a sus­pect for.

“The child was checked by EMS for injuries. Both chil­dren were lat­er released to fam­i­ly mem­bers,” Pensacola Police goes on to say in its state­ment. Escambia County tells Channel 3 that EMS was called out at 6:40 a.m. for a hem­or­rhage and lac­er­a­tion on a tod­dler. They arrived six min­utes lat­er. The coun­ty could­n’t spec­i­fy what EMS saw and said. But it claims the call was can­celed 20 min­utes lat­er. The tod­dler was not tak­en to the hos­pi­tal by EMS — so Dixon took him her­self. Dozens of pages of paper­work from the hos­pi­tal doc­u­ment the child’s injuries after CAT scans and x‑rays. Dixon claims the Florida Department of Children and Families is inves­ti­gat­ing. DCF has not yet con­firmed this with Channel 3.

Channel 3 asked Dixon on Wednesday what she would say to the Pensacola Police Department. “How could you?” she respond­ed. Channel 3 brought Dixon’s ques­tions to Pensacola Police on Wednesday after the inter­view. The depart­ment said they could­n’t answer them because it has launched an inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion. Additionally, Pensacola Police called off Channel 3’s sched­uled inter­view with Chief Eric Randall that was set for Friday. Chief Randall met with Dixon in-per­son right after Channel 3’s inter­view and “had a con­ver­sa­tion with her,” accord­ing to police. Dixon says he apol­o­gized and promised to inves­ti­gate what hap­pened. “It’s been very dis­turb­ing and over­whelm­ing not know­ing the truth of what hap­pened to my 1‑year-old,” Dixon said. “My 3‑year-old is trau­ma­tized,” she added. “He keeps hav­ing to tell the sto­ry of what his 3‑year-old brain can com­pre­hend of what hap­pened to his baby broth­er. That is hor­ri­fy­ing.” Channel 3 asked Wednesday to speak with Marioneaux Jr. on cam­era, but he declined. He faces a charge of attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer — which he lost his job over. “On top of all of his charges, he has to also think, ‘Now some­body hurt my baby,’ ” Dixon said.

Marioneaux Jr. does­n’t have a crim­i­nal record. Pensacola Police says he is not a sus­pect in the January shoot­ing inves­ti­ga­tion that led police to his home last Thursday morn­ing. Dixon says she has no idea why police would want infor­ma­tion in his home. The fam­i­ly now sim­ply wants answers — what led police to the house and how did their baby boy end up injured in police cus­tody? Channel 3 asked Dixon Wednesday whether they plan to take any legal action. Dixon says they are cur­rent­ly busy try­ing to fig­ure out sim­ple things, like where to sleep. She added they don’t live at the N 7^th Ave. home any­more because they don’t feel safe.

The images tell us a lot about our­selves; are we bet­ter than the oth­er animals?

As I think about the dai­ly killing of peo­ple of col­or by out-of-con­trol cops who are doped up on racism, big­otry, racial ani­mus, and God knows what else, a thought came to me that I would like to share with you.

Here we see three preda­tors sur­round and are about to kill a Wildebeest; more strik­ing­ly, a whole herd of Wildebeest stands pas­sive­ly and looks on as if their sheer advan­tage in size and num­bers mean nothing.
And so we ask the ques­tion, what is it that the Wildebeest believe about them­selves that keeps them from cap­i­tal­iz­ing on their advan­tages in size and numbers?

In the sec­ond image above, we see anoth­er group of preda­tors, albeit from a dif­fer­ent species, snuff­ing out anoth­er inno­cent life as the preda­to­ry cats killed the Wildebeest in the first image.
In the third image, we see a small crowd gath­ered; this crowd is syn­ony­mous with the Wildebeest herd that stood by while one of their own is being killed. These obser­va­tions are [not] a call to arms, but rather a call for reflection. 

Day by day, we see these images and videos of police com­mit­ting crimes against the pub­lic; unnec­es­sary assaults, griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, and death on the peo­ple, while oth­ers stand aside and look.
In this state of tyran­ny in which we as peo­ple of col­or exist, gov­ern­ment agents com­mit crimes that ordi­nary cit­i­zens are exe­cut­ed and impris­oned for, and they do it with impunity.
Some experts attribute this quote to Thomas Jefferson; oth­ers claim not so, I believe we have reached that tip­ping point.
“When gov­ern­ment fears the peo­ple, there is lib­er­ty. When the peo­ple fear the gov­ern­ment, there is tyran­ny.“We, the peo­ple, now live in mor­bid fear of the Government, much the same way that the Wildebeest, though hav­ing the num­bers and supe­ri­or size, are pet­ri­fied of the much small­er preda­to­ry cats that prey on them.

The above image best sums up the car­nage of police vio­lence in America. We have the inno­cent Wildebeest being preyed on by the Lionesses, the Wildebeest, not know­ing their strength or wired to be vic­tims, runs away while the peo­ple who can effec­tu­ate real and mean­ing­ful change to the car­nage watch in delight.
It is what they designed all along. American Policing is [not] bro­ken; it works exact­ly as they designed it.

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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.

Before you process the lat­est iter­a­tion of police con­tin­ued bru­tal attacks on Black Americans, let us remem­ber that the FBI warned from as far back as 2006 that white suprema­cists and neo-nazis were infil­trat­ing police depart­ments; it is also kin­da remark­able that the FBI made those warn­ings even though America’s police depart­ments have been cesspools of white suprema­cy and anti-Black ani­mos­i­ty since the police were first cre­at­ed to keep Blacks in their place.
Ask your­selves what has been done by Federal, State & Local author­i­ties to rein in the blood­thirsty thugs that now roam the streets look­ing to see who they mur­der next?
Zero!!!

The white cam­pus police offi­cer in a recent viral video where he appears to be strug­gling with a Black Purdue University stu­dent has been placed on leave as his depart­ment claims he has been receiv­ing death threats since the encounter at the West Lafayette, Indiana, institution.

A minute-long video that was post­ed on social media shows a strug­gle between Adonis Tuggle, 24, and the uniden­ti­fied offi­cer in the snow on the school’s cam­pus on Friday, Feb. 4. Cries of dis­tress can be heard from Tuggle and a woman believed to be Tuggle’s girl­friend, who appar­ent­ly is record­ing the encounter with her cell­phone. The woman screams, “You’re hurt­ing him. You’re hurt­ing him. Can you take your elbow off his f — — neck? Tuggle is also heard in footage say­ing over and over again to the cop, “You’re chok­ing me. You’re chok­ing me.” “Please help. This offi­cer won’t get off his neck,” the girl­friend shouts toward the end of the clip. “He’s tak­ing it too far. While the officer’s name has not been released by the Purdue University Police Department, the Lafayette Journal & Courier news­pa­per iden­ti­fies him as Jon Selke. Tuggle told The Associated Press that the alter­ca­tion start­ed with an argu­ment between him and his girl­friend that esca­lat­ed to the cam­pus cop punch­ing him in the face and using his elbow to hold him down on the ground by the neck. It end­ed with him being locked up for resist­ing arrest. The junior psy­chol­o­gy major stayed in the jail for an hour and was able to bail him­self out.

He told the AP that some­one had called the police on them as they were argu­ing in pub­lic. Tuggle said they were already cool­ing off when Selke arrived. Tuggle said, “I was already a cou­ple of feet away from my girl­friend,” when the encounter with the offi­cer start­ed. The girl­friend also tried to reas­sure the cop that they were OK, but instead of accept­ing their protes­ta­tions that there was no need for an inter­ven­tion, Selke cursed at them, Tuggle claims. “I told him he had no rea­son to be dis­re­spect­ful,” Tuggle said. “He was yelling at her and she was yelling at him. I told my girl­friend to calm down and I heard him scream, ‘OK, bud­dy, you’re going down,’ and he threw me against the car.” After this, the offi­cer wres­tled Tuggle to the ground and told him to “stop resist­ing.” “He had his hand press­ing my face in the snow. He was smoth­er­ing me, almost as if you were try­ing to drown some­body under­wa­ter,” Tuggle said. “Basically, what hap­pened to George Floyd almost hap­pened to me, except I had an elbow, not a knee, and for­tu­nate­ly, I’m still breath­ing instead of being in a cas­ket.” As the girl­friend start­ed to record the vio­lent inter­ac­tion, she tapped the offi­cer. Tuggle alleges that the cop threat­ened to use his taser on her if she did it again. Tuggle also said that when oth­er police offi­cers arrived, one of them held his leg down while anoth­er held his arm down.

The first state­ment from the uni­ver­si­ty spoke direct­ly to Chief John Cox’s deci­sion to put the offi­cer on leave in light of the atten­tion and what he said were death threats sur­round­ing the inci­dent. “Cox ini­ti­at­ed the leave of absence after the offi­cer and depart­ment received death threats. PUPD is inves­ti­gat­ing the threats,” it read. Cox also released his own remarks sep­a­rate­ly. First, he stat­ed that the encounter was pre­cip­i­tat­ed when a caller to police said “it appeared a woman was being held against her will near Horticulture Drive,” as described by the state­ment. “Any time a PUPD offi­cer uses force in con­nec­tion with an arrest, the depart­ment con­ducts an inter­nal review. PUPD com­menced that review, led by Deputy Chief Lesley Wiete imme­di­ate­ly upon receiv­ing the officer’s report on Friday night,” the state­ment read.
That inves­ti­ga­tion will, under PUPD General Orders, include input from all wit­ness­es to the arrest and take into account all avail­able evi­dence, includ­ing video from offi­cers’ body-worn cam­eras and state­ments from the stu­dents involved. No phys­i­cal injuries were suf­fered in the inci­dent.” Tuggle has secured an attor­ney, Andrew M. Stroth, to rep­re­sent his inter­est in the case. Stroth stat­ed, “We are demand­ing a full and trans­par­ent inves­ti­ga­tion into the exces­sive and unjus­ti­fied attack on Adonis by the Purdue University police officer.”

“We are demand­ing the imme­di­ate release of all the video evi­dence,” he stat­ed. “There is body cam­era police video that police have, that has not been shared with the fam­i­ly or shared pub­licly.” He cul­mi­nat­ed his demands by say­ing, “It’s anoth­er young Black man attacked by a police offi­cer. This took place, trag­i­cal­ly, on a col­lege cam­pus. Thank God he’s OK because the offi­cer had his elbow in Adonis’ neck. Adonis couldn’t breathe.” The Purdue Black Student Union orga­nized a town hall meet­ing to plan what their next points of action are. The hope was to come up with a solu­tion to pre­vent instances like this from hap­pen­ing to oth­er stu­dents, accord­ing to local sta­tion WTHR. One stu­dent said During the meet­ing, “Why do Black peo­ple con­stant­ly have to jus­ti­fy their lives?” Another stu­dent chimed in, “How many more videos of police putting their knees and elbow on a Black person’s neck and throat do we need to see before we real­ize that’s not how arrests are made?”
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels released a state­ment on the inci­dent on Thursday, Feb. 10.
“There are no sub­jects Purdue takes more seri­ous­ly than cam­pus safe­ty, stu­dent well-being, and prop­er police con­duct. On Friday evening, Feb. 4, police received a bystander report of a sus­pect­ed assault on a woman, prompt­ing an officer’s urgent response,” the release start­ed. Daniels shared that the insti­tu­tion “imme­di­ate­ly” start­ed inves­ti­gat­ing the alleged exces­sive use of force by the offi­cer by review­ing his actions and assess­ing the footage, inter­view­ing the wit­ness, and look­ing at “all video evi­dence, includ­ing body-worn and in-car cam­era footage.”

“Should there be a find­ing of mis­con­duct by the offi­cer, appro­pri­ate action will be tak­en prompt­ly,” Daniels promised. “In the spir­it of trans­paren­cy, once the Purdue Police and Indiana State Police reviews are com­plete, all find­ings and evi­dence … will be made avail­able.” The pres­i­dent asks the pub­lic to remain patient dur­ing the investigation.(ABS)