Author Archives: Mike

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Where Is The Democratic Party And Groups, As Republicans & Supreme Court Deconstruct The Republic?

Republicans have used Trump’s lie that he lost the elec­tions of 2020 to accel­er­ate a cru­sade they have long waged, that is, to lim­it the rights of Black and brown peo­ple to vote.
Behind this fias­co is the hard truth that the Republicans have lost the pop­u­lar vote in the last four straight pres­i­den­tial cycles.
Saved only by the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic mech­a­nism called the Electoral col­lege, Republicans have also lost the pop­u­lar vote in the last sev­en of the last eight elections.
As I have point­ed out in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, the United States is gov­erned by a white minor­i­ty because of the débâ­cle known as the elec­toral col­lege and the two sen­a­tors per state.
The idea of can­cel­ing out the voic­es of black and brown Americans was already long enshrined in the two United States Senators’ rule…
So, North Dakota, with few­er than a mil­lion cit­i­zens, 770,026, and Alaska, with 724,357 cit­i­zens respec­tive­ly, has the same rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the United States Senate as California’s 40 mil­lion or New York’s 20 mil­lion citizens.
By this met­ric, the voic­es of 39 mil­lion cit­i­zens in California get drowned out, and in New York, the voic­es of 19 mil­lion peo­ple are silenced by a small, almost lily-white minor­i­ty in small rur­al states that con­tributes next to noth­ing to the greater good.
South Carolina US Senator Lindsay Graham said that his par­ty can­not extri­cate itself, can­not move for­ward with­out Donald Trump.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the first presidential debate on Sept. 29, 2020, in Cleveland.
Democrat President Joe Biden, seem­ing­ly delu­sion­al about what’s at play, as he Joe Manchin and oth­ers con­tin­ue on the fool’s errand called bi-par­ti­san­ship with Republicans.

The con­ven­tion­al think­ing is that Trump has gal­va­nized Republican sup­port into an impen­e­tra­ble block that the par­ty can ill-afford to agi­tate or offend.
Donald Trump’s con­tri­bu­tion to America has been self-serv­ing attempts to enrich him­self at the expense of tax­pay­ers, graft, theft, divi­sion, lies, trea­so­nous activ­i­ties in ser­vice to Vladimir Putin, and racism.
The sin­gle com­po­nent that gal­va­nizes white sup­port around the grifter Donald Trump is Trump’s obvi­ous sup­port and encour­age­ment of white supremacy.
After the Robert’s Supreme Court evis­cer­at­ed sec­tion 4 (b) of the 1965 Voting Rights law in Shelby County Alabama vs. Holder, many states embarked on a mas­sive leg­isla­tive attack on vot­ing rights, in Republican-run states, in par­tic­u­lar, hun­dreds of bills have been tabled that would dras­ti­cal­ly cur­tail or lim­it the right to vote.
In Michigan, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and many oth­er states, there are all-out assaults on the right to vote; in many states with Republican-con­trolled leg­is­la­tures and Republican Governors, those bills have already become law.
At the Federal lev­el, Democrats have a razor-thin mar­gin in the US House and the thinnest of majori­ties in the even­ly divid­ed US Senate. Consequently, Republican Senators are solid­ly opposed to pass­ing a new vot­ing rights bill passed by the US House that would pro­tect the votes of all Americans.

Where is the Democratic par­ty in all of this?
A Democracy can only sur­vive when both sides agree that this is the sys­tem they both want. Based on the dynam­ics of fad­ing white numer­i­cal strength, we know that issues of Immigration and Abortion have already tak­en cen­ter stage in Republican’s war to main­tain white hegemony.
America has been gov­erned by two polit­i­cal par­ties since the ear­ly 1850s; how­ev­er, the Democratic par­ty is the old­er of the two, and so for this writer, the ques­tion remains; “what is the senior polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion doing about the junior par­ty’s attempt to dis­man­tle the republic”?
Democrats are con­di­tioned to be vic­tims; all they do is com­plain about Republican’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic actions. Even when they hold pow­er, that is con­trol of the white house and both hous­es of con­gress, they com­plain, not act.
Afraid of what Republicans will do in response to what they do, Democrats are frozen in fear of tak­ing bold actions to end the fil­i­buster, pass­ing vot­ing rights, and the pres­i­den­t’s infra­struc­ture bill.
No leg­is­la­tion is as impor­tant as pro­tect­ing the right to vote. The Republic’s future depends on whether Joe Biden and the Democrats will grow the balls nec­es­sary to end the fil­i­buster and pass the bills the vot­ers sent them to Washington to pass and pro­tect the future of the republic.
At the very least, it would demon­strate to the trea­so­nous Republican par­ty that they are seri­ous about defend­ing the United States against trea­son and Fascism.

There is no secret to Republican’s inten­tions; we already know what they will do, they are pre­pared to over­throw this democ­ra­cy to retain white con­trol. Why would Democrats not get rid of the fil­i­buster to pass a fed­er­al vot­ing rights bill?
If and when Republicans get con­trol of the exec­u­tive and the con­gress, this repub­lic will cease to exist as it has for hun­dreds of years. Republicans can­not win the pop­u­lar vote any longer, and so they have decid­ed that they will walk away from the way this coun­try operated.
End the fil­i­buster now; if the Democrats do not end it now, they will be com­plic­it in what Trump, McConnel, & McCarthy are doing to decon­struct the world’s old­est democracy.
After all, the Democratic Party is made up of whites too, so could that be why they are doing noth­ing in the face of the assault against vot­ing rights all across the country?
In June of 2019, (Alex Pareene) writ­ing for the New Republic said the following.
“Even when Democrats deign to declare that they are opposed to Republican rule, it fre­quent­ly seems forced, as if they’re pan­der­ing to their sup­port­ers while secret­ly hop­ing their non­sup­port­ers won’t get offend­ed. At the heart of this predilec­tion for the flight over the fight is a tac­it ide­ol­o­gy that is wild­ly out of step with the polit­i­cal real­i­ty of Trump’s America, where vil­lains abound with almost com­ic ubiquity.
And it is an ide­ol­o­gy that, for the first time in liv­ing mem­o­ry, is being chal­lenged by an invig­o­rat­ed pop­ulist left, not only out of prin­ci­ple but also out of a sense that the old way is naïve and ulti­mate­ly self-defeat­ing. The future of the Democratic Party, and by exten­sion the coun­try, may well depend on whether the par­ty is final­ly will­ing to ditch its fret­ful pos­ture of peace­mak­ing and give war a chance.

I agree!!!

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

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The Overlooked Black History Of Memorial Day

An April 1865 pho­to of the graves of Union sol­diers buried at the race course-turned-Confederate-prison where his­to­ri­ans believe the ear­li­est Memorial Day cer­e­mo­ny took place. Civil war pho­tographs, 1861 – 1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.Nowa­days, Memorial Day hon­ors vet­er­ans of all wars, but its roots are in America’s dead­liest con­flict, the Civil War. Approximately 620,000 sol­diers died, about two-thirds from dis­ease.The work of hon­or­ing the dead began right away all over the coun­try, and sev­er­al American towns claim to be the birth­place of Memorial Day. Researchers have traced the ear­li­est annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion to women who laid flow­ers on sol­diers’ graves in the Civil War hos­pi­tal town of Columbus, Miss., in April 1866. But his­to­ri­ans like the Pulitzer Prize win­ner David Blight have tried to raise aware­ness of freed slaves who dec­o­rat­ed sol­diers’ graves a year ear­li­er, to make sure their sto­ry gets told too. According to Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a com­mem­o­ra­tion orga­nized by freed slaves and some white mis­sion­ar­ies took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a for­mer planters’ race­track where Confederates held cap­tured Union sol­diers dur­ing the last year of the war. At least 257 pris­on­ers died, many of dis­ease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black res­i­dents of Charleston decid­ed to give them a prop­er bur­ial. Read the full sto­ry here. https://​time​.com/​5​8​3​6​4​4​4​/​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​e​m​o​r​i​a​l​-​d​ay/

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1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

If you are Black and not a delu­sion­al Republican, and if you both­er to take the time to stop scrolling or spend­ing your time on buf­foon­ery, you may begin to under­stand why Republicans do not want your his­to­ry taught in schools.
Better yet, you may begin to under­stand why they left these things out of the History books and have sought to white­wash history.
You may even start to under­stand why old clos­et racists like Mitch McConnell and igno­rant scam­mers like Donald Trump would like to keep these his­tor­i­cal facts hid­den from you.
Never mind me, though, you may go back to Instagram, Facebook, or wher­ev­er it is you spend your time online, [not] inform­ing yourselves…

FACTS

On the morn­ing of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was rid­ing in the ele­va­tor in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what fol­lowed vary from per­son to per­son. Accounts of an inci­dent cir­cu­lat­ed among the city’s white com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the day and became more exag­ger­at­ed with each telling.
Tulsa police arrest­ed Rowland the fol­low­ing day and began an inves­ti­ga­tion. An inflam­ma­to­ry report in the May 31 edi­tion of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a con­fronta­tion between black and white-armed mobs around the cour­t­house where the sher­iff and his men had bar­ri­cad­ed the top floor to pro­tect Rowland. Shots were fired, and the out­num­bered African Americans began retreat­ing to the Greenwood District.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was loot­ed and burned by white riot­ers. Governor Robertson declared mar­tial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assist­ed fire­men in putting out fires, took African Americans out of the hands of vig­i­lantes, and impris­oned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 peo­ple were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.
Twenty-four hours after the vio­lence erupt­ed, it ceased. In the wake of the vio­lence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 peo­ple were treat­ed for injuries, and con­tem­po­rary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 peo­ple may have died. To under­stand the Tulsa Race Massacre, it is impor­tant to under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the times. Dick Rowland, Sarah Page, and an unknown gun­man were the sparks that ignit­ed a long-smol­der­ing fire. Jim Crow, jeal­ousy, white suprema­cy, and land lust all played roles lead­ing to the destruc­tion and loss of life on May 31 and June 1, 1921. In 2001, an offi­cial Race Riot Commission was orga­nized to review the details of the event. No one will ever know the absolute truth of what hap­pened dur­ing the hours of the Race Massacre. However, by exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal resources, mem­bers of the Race Riot Commission deter­mined many details to be unde­ni­able. “These are not myths, not rumors, not spec­u­la­tions, not ques­tioned. They are the his­tor­i­cal record.”

A truck near Litan Hotel car­ries sol­diers and African Americans dur­ing Tulsa, Okla., race riot in 1921.
Photo by Alvin C. Krupnick Co

Black Tulsans had every rea­son to believe that Dick Rowland would be lynched after his arrest. His charges were lat­er dis­missed and high­ly sus­pect from the start. They had cause to believe that his per­son­al safe­ty, like the defense of them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ty, depend­ed on them alone. As hos­tile groups gath­ered and their con­fronta­tion wors­ened, munic­i­pal and coun­ty author­i­ties failed to calm or con­tain the sit­u­a­tion. At the erup­tion of vio­lence, civ­il offi­cials select­ed many men, all white and some of the par­tic­i­pants in that vio­lence, and made those men their agents as deputies. In that capac­i­ty, deputies did not stem the vio­lence but added to it, often through overt acts that were ille­gal. Public offi­cials pro­vid­ed firearms and ammu­ni­tion to indi­vid­u­als, again all of them white. Units of the Oklahoma National Guard par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mass arrests of all or near­ly all of Greenwood’s res­i­dents. They removed them to oth­er parts of the city and detained them in hold­ing cen­ters. Entering the Greenwood dis­trict, peo­ple stole, dam­aged, or destroyed per­son­al prop­er­ty left behind in homes and busi­ness­es. People, some of them agents of the gov­ern­ment, also delib­er­ate­ly burned or oth­er­wise destroyed homes cred­i­bly esti­mat­ed to have num­bered 1,256, along with vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er struc­ture — includ­ing church­es, schools, busi­ness­es, even a hos­pi­tal, and library — in the Greenwood dis­trict. Despite duties to pre­serve order and to pro­tect prop­er­ty, no gov­ern­ment at any lev­el offered ade­quate resis­tance, if any at all, to what amount­ed to the destruc­tion of the Greenwood neigh­bor­hood. Although the exact total can nev­er be deter­mined, cred­i­ble evi­dence makes it prob­a­ble that many peo­ple, like­ly num­ber­ing between 100 – 300, were killed dur­ing the massacre.

Not one of these crim­i­nal acts was then or ever has been pros­e­cut­ed or pun­ished by the gov­ern­ment at any lev­el: munic­i­pal, coun­ty, state, or fed­er­al. Even after the restora­tion of order, it was offi­cial pol­i­cy to release a black detainee only upon the appli­ca­tion of a white per­son, and then only if that white per­son agreed to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for that detainee’s sub­se­quent behav­ior. As pri­vate cit­i­zens, many whites in Tulsa and neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties did extend invalu­able assis­tance to the massacre’s vic­tims, and the relief efforts of the American Red Cross, in par­tic­u­lar, pro­vid­ed a mod­el of human behav­ior at its best. Although city and coun­ty gov­ern­ments bore much of the cost for Red Cross relief, nei­ther con­tributed sub­stan­tial­ly to Greenwood’s rebuild­ing; in fact, munic­i­pal author­i­ties act­ed ini­tial­ly to impede rebuilding.Despite being numer­i­cal­ly at a dis­ad­van­tage, black Tulsans fought valiant­ly to pro­tect their homes, their busi­ness­es, and their com­mu­ni­ty. But in the end, the city’s African-American pop­u­la­tion was sim­ply out­num­bered by the white invaders. In the end, the restora­tion of Greenwood after its sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion was left to the vic­tims of that destruc­tion. While Tulsa offi­cials turned away some offers of out­side aid, a num­ber of indi­vid­ual white Tulsans pro­vid­ed assis­tance to the city’s now vir­tu­al­ly home­less black pop­u­la­tion. But it was the American Red Cross, which remained in Tulsa for months fol­low­ing the mas­sacre, that pro­vid­ed the most sus­tained relief effort. Maurice Willows, the com­pas­sion­ate direc­tor of the Red Cross relief, kept a his­to­ry of the event (avail­able in full under the “Documents” sec­tion of this online exhibit).

In recent years there has been an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about what to call the event that hap­pened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was giv­en that name at the time for insur­ance pur­pos­es. Designating it a riot pre­vent­ed insur­ance com­pa­nies from hav­ing to pay ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of Greenwood whose homes and busi­ness­es were destroyed. It also was com­mon at the time for any large-scale clash between dif­fer­ent racial or eth­nic groups to be cat­e­go­rized as a race riot.

What do YOU think?

Definition of RIOT: a tumul­tuous dis­tur­bance of the pub­lic peace by three or more per­sons assem­bled togeth­er and act­ing with com­mon intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a num­ber of usu­al­ly help­less or unre­sist­ing human beings under cir­cum­stances of atroc­i­ty or cruelty.

“Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into long­stand­ing oral his­to­ry accounts of mass graves at var­i­ous sites in Tulsa, alleged bur­ial sites for scores of most­ly black vic­tims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Mayor Bynum con­tin­ues to empha­size that this process, which may be long and tedious, is an inves­ti­ga­tion. There is no cer­tain­ty that one or more mass graves will be locat­ed. The inves­ti­ga­tion is geared toward answer­ing, as best we can, the lin­ger­ing his­tor­i­cal ques­tion, orig­i­nat­ing through oral his­to­ries, about the exis­tence of one or more mass graves linked to the mas­sacre. By this under­tak­ing, we hon­or our oral his­to­ry and its tellers. This his­to­ry, sep­a­rate and apart from its truth, has val­ue. Who told what to whom? Why? Was it accu­rate? These are all ques­tions worth explor­ing. The cur­rent Mass Graves Investigation seeks to address those ques­tions and more. It deserves the sup­port of the entire community. ”
(A pro­duc­tion of TulsaHistory​.org.)

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Why Does INDECOM Feel Obligated To Issue Press Releases?

One would have thought that with the depar­ture of Terrence Williams from INDECOM, the new Commissioner Hugh Faulkner would have come to the Agency clear-eyed and ful­ly con­ver­sant of the role the agency must play in main­tain­ing trust between the cit­i­zen­ry and the people.
At the same time, INDECOM is oblig­at­ed not to erode trust, or worse, cre­ate mis­trust of the secu­ri­ty forces, keep­ing in mind the com­pli­cat­ed job they have in a vio­lent, crime-rid­den society.
Unfortunately, like so many facets of Jamaican life, INDECOM has cho­sen to engage in hype over sub­stance, spot­light over results.
It is shock­ing that an agency that has no rea­son to be speak­ing to the media about what it is tasked with doing, falls over itself to put infor­ma­tion into the pub­lic space when it was­n’t even asked to, and ends up putting lies into the pub­lic space.
Not only have INDECOM con­tin­ued Terrence Williams’s cru­sade of lies dis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­uni­ty, but it has also clear­ly decid­ed on ani­mus rather than cohesion.
Like moths to a fire­ball, INDECOM is drawn to the spot­light and for no oth­er rea­son than to be divi­sive. What they seem to for­get is that when you seek the spot­light, you may have to con­tend with more heat than you bar­gain for.
Under Terrence Williams’ lead­er­ship, INDECOM cre­at­ed and stoked the embers of dis­cord between the pub­lic and the police for a decade until the Jamaican peo­ple’s eyes opened to the con­se­quences of what INDECOM and Terrence Williams were doing.
In the end, Terrence Williams bowed out like a chas­tened mon­grel, tail between its legs, much like Carolyn Gomes was dis­cred­it­ed and exposed for her lies as head of JFF, the for­eign-fund­ed anti-Jamaican, anti-police agency that has been a dri­ver of vio­lent crimes in our country.
There is no les­son learned by Faulkner or his under­lings. The glare of the spot­light is too great, so they have clear­ly decid­ed to walk right into the flames that will engulf them, rather than do the damn job they are paid to do and shut their mouths.
After the police quick and deci­sive action on May 10th, the police accost­ed a car trans­port­ing men who had just mur­dered a busi­ness­man in the Swallowfield com­mu­ni­ty after rob­bing him.
Two of the men were killed in a shootout, and anoth­er was arrest­ed. However, before the facts could be ful­ly ascer­tained, INDECOM issued press releases.

(INDECOM, in a release, indi­cat­ed its intent to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent and not­ed that there had been spec­u­la­tion, con­fu­sion, and inac­cu­ra­cy in the initial reports, which require clar­i­ty. “The details of the cir­cum­stances of the dis­charge of weapons were under exam­i­na­tion,” )said INDECOM.
INDECOM is under no oblig­a­tion to issue any press release; it is not a law-enforce­ment agency; it is an OVERSIGHT agency tasked with [inves­ti­gat­ing alleged misconduct].
Even if there are alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, the agen­cy’s mis­sion as autho­rized by the bil­ly goats that make up the par­lia­ment, is to inves­ti­gate, not to spec­u­late. Not to add legit­i­ma­cy to false asser­tions aimed and hurt­ing the police.
But that is exact­ly what the agency did, and the police pushed back against the misinformation.
However, no les­son was learned, INDECOM was again forced to take down lies it post­ed to its web­site alleg­ing that offi­cers who should have attend­ed and sub­mit­ted affi­davits to its offices did not do so.
Instead of mak­ing a phone call, they put lies on their site, aimed specif­i­cal­ly at harm­ing the offi­cers involved and the JCF as a whole.
What is wrong with pick­ing up the phone and ask­ing,” hey gen­tle­men, we were sup­posed to meet; what’s hap­pen­ing”?
That would be too respect­ful, too ami­ca­ble; there would be no val­ue derived from being civ­il when the objec­tive is to taint through lies and disinformation.
Unfortunately for the patho­log­i­cal liars who can’t even run their own pathet­ic lit­tle ship, they nev­er both­ered to check to see if the offi­cers were in their own offices before pub­lish­ing the lies.
The offi­cers had receipts indi­cat­ing that they [did] attend, it was INDECOM’s own incom­pe­tent so-called inves­ti­ga­tors who were not there to take the affidavits.
INDECOM was quick to report to the media that the three offi­cers would be charged crim­i­nal­ly for not attend­ing their offices in September of last year. Still, they nev­er issued an apol­o­gy to the offi­cers for it’s lying and incompetence.
Instead, accord­ing to the Observer, INDECOM issued a release stat­ing that the three cops will not be sub­ject to pros­e­cu­tion for the alleged breach and have since attend­ed its offices to be interviewed.
No men­tion that they fucked up in their glee to be the big boss, no apol­o­gy to the offi­cers or the JCF.
Nothing.
Over the ten years that INDECOM has been in exis­tence, there is no secret that I abhor that agency, not because it is not need­ed, but because of the way it was struc­tured and allowed to operate.
Consequently, the way it has been allowed to oper­ate crime has all but inun­dat­ed the small island of 2.8 million.
Repeated calls from this medi­um have gone unheed­ed despite the thou­sands who have died because of what INEDCOM is allowed to do.
There have been no fix­es to the agency, even with the increas­es in vio­lent crimes and thou­sands of Jamaicans’ deaths because the police are afraid of the per­se­cu­tion and witch-hunt when they go after the killers.
Now we know that there isn’t even a media pol­i­cy writ­ten into the INDECOM act that would restrain these dis­sem­i­na­tors of lies from run­ning to the media instead of doing their damn jobs.
At the same time funds con­tin­ue to flow in from Canada, England, and the United States to fund this Trojan Horse.

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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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George Floyd’s Killing Was Not A Watershed Moment In America, It Was Just Another Moment.…

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Last year was a year in which the world was engulfed in deal­ing with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Millions lost their lives, and still, peo­ple con­tin­ue to die and be infect­ed with the dan­ger­ous virus. However, the year 2020 was also a year in which Donald Trump was thank­ful­ly boot­ed from the pres­i­den­cy, and who can for­get that the entire world was also engulfed in anoth­er upheaval, speak­ing of the on-cam­era mur­der of George Floyd by Minnesota cops.
Some pun­dits declared the march­es and out­cry against police vio­lence (a) ‘a water­shed moment’,(b) a sem­i­nal moment; oth­ers posit­ed © “there was no going back to the way things were.”
Me? I was­n’t so sure. The idea that there would be a sig­nif­i­cant change in American polic­ing because (a) anoth­er black man was mur­dered by them or (b) that some white peo­ple had come out to demon­strate against the police because they were bored from being locked away because of the virus is to show that one does not under­stand the racism in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

One of the unset­tling aspects of the American response to polic­ing has been the hypocrisy with which it seeks to pun­ish alle­ga­tions of law enforce­ment excess­es in small­er, less pow­er­ful nations yet sup­port the same abus­es from its own law enforce­ment officers.
In recent times, I have writ­ten a few arti­cles in which I have spo­ken about how the United States used leg­is­la­tion like the Leahy Law and mon­ey, or more appro­pri­ate­ly, hold­ing back aid to pun­ish ele­ments of a for­eign agency based on alle­ga­tions of abuse.
I raise the issue of American hypocrisy against the inher­ent and sys­tem­at­ic cor­rup­tion that runs the gamut across the American Justice sys­tem, (a) not just the police but (b) in the com­plic­i­ty of many pros­e­cu­tors in cov­er­ing up police crimes when they should be pros­e­cut­ing them © the racial bias­es in some judges in how they view cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the sen­tences they hand down depend­ing on the col­or and zip codes of defen­dants, and (d) how leg­is­la­tors allow police to get away with crimes like turn­ing off body-worn cam­eras, tam­per­ing with and destroy­ing evi­dence, with­hold­ing record­ings from body-worn cam­eras, and worse.
It is hard to imag­ine a sys­tem more cor­rupt than that in the United States in its totality.
No case is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the endem­ic cor­rup­tion than this 2019 New Orleans case… Louisiana State Police mur­dered Ronald Greene, fal­si­fied evi­dence, lied to his fam­i­ly about how he died, and hid cru­cial evi­dence from investigators.
To date, none of the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals in uni­form has been held account­able for the series of crimes they com­mit­ted. Instead, they are still employed as police offi­cers, embold­ened to com­mit more felonies against the black com­mu­ni­ty by a sys­tem that ben­e­fits from black oppression.

In 2019 Ronald Greene, a black man, was engaged in a high-speed chase with Louisiana State Police. He was even­tu­al­ly caught, hand­cuffed, choked, beat­en, tased repeat­ed­ly, and had his legs hogtied. Ronald Green cried out in pain as he was forced to lie face down on his chest, hands tied behind his back and legs tied as well. Medical experts have long argued that some­one in that posi­tion finds it dif­fi­cult to breathe.
But the Louisiana police on the scene under Lt. John Clary’s direc­tive ensured that Ronald Greene remained in [exact­ly] that dan­ger­ous position.
In addi­tion to the dan­ger­ous posi­tion that mis­ter green was in, he was repeat­ed­ly sprayed in the face with pep­per spray.
Even though Lt. John Clary and detec­tives were wear­ing body-worn cam­eras, Clary lied that there was no cam­era record­ing of the events of that day.
There is no doubt why Clary and his bunch of crim­i­nals were intent on the evi­dence stay­ing hid­den; they dragged the hogtied Greene by his ankles, his face on the ground.
According to the Associated Press; Clary, the high­est-rank­ing offi­cer among the at least six all-white state troop­ers at the scene of Greene’s May 10, 2019, arrest, told inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er that day that [he had no body-cam­era footage of the inci­dent] — a state­ment proven to be untrue when his 30-minute body cam­era video of the arrest emerged last month.
Clary, who arrived at the scene just sec­onds after troop­ers stunned, choked, and punched Greene to get him into hand­cuffs, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Greene “was still, yelling and scream­ing … and he was still resist­ing, even though he was hand­cuffed. He was still try­ing to get away and was not cooperating.”
All of the evi­dence of the mur­der and lies were swept under the rug by Louisiana State author­i­ties until the Associated Press began inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent, found video evi­dence of their crimes, and made the evi­dence public.
According to the AP report­ing, Clary’s own video, pub­lished last week by the AP and lat­er released by the state, shows Greene “lying on the ground, face down, hand­cuffed behind his back, leg shack­les on his ankles, utter­ing the phras­es, ‘I’m sor­ry, or ‘I’m scared’ or ‘Yes sir’ or ‘Okay.” Clary’s video shows troop­ers order­ing the heavy­set, 49-year-old Greene to remain face­down on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine min­utes — a tac­tic use-of-force experts crit­i­cized as dan­ger­ous and like­ly to have restrict­ed his breath­ing. Greene can be seen on Clary’s footage strug­gling to prop him­self up on his side. “Don’t you turn over! Lay on your bel­ly! Lay on your bel­ly!” Trooper Kory York yells before briefly drag­ging Greene by the chain that con­nects his ankle shackles.

As we try to expose the cor­rup­tion on this medi­um and seek to bring to the fore the dire straits blacks find them­selves in with police abuse, we show that the cor­rup­tion runs from the top down and is not con­fined to the police.
The Huffingtonpost report­ed that Louisiana State police also did not open an admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion into the troop­ers’ use of force until 474 days after Greene’s death. And Louisiana offi­cials from Gov. John Bel Edwards on down repeat­ed­ly refused to pub­licly release any body cam­era video of Greene’s arrest for more than two years, until last week after AP began pub­lish­ing videos it obtained.
What Louisiana state did to Ronald Greene with the acqui­es­cence of Govern Edwards and oth­ers was no dif­fer­ent than slave catch­ing in the 21st century.
An aver­age per­son who lies to inves­ti­ga­tors goes to prison; a per­son who fal­si­fies or destroys evi­dence goes to prison. A per­son who com­mits mur­der goes to prison; if they are black, their chance of leav­ing prison is next to zero if they are not executed.
In the United States, police mur­der black cit­i­zens, destroy evi­dence, and lie to oth­er cops who inves­ti­gate them.
Prosecutors help them to hide evi­dence. Governors assist in the coverups, and leg­is­la­tures pass addi­tion­al laws to pro­tect the murderers.
What is the point of the cit­i­zens being asked to pay for body cam­eras when the police are allowed to turn them off when they com­mit crimes?
Police rou­tine­ly turn off their body-worn cam­eras, com­mit crimes then turn them back on after they have staged scenes to sup­port the lies they want to tell…
Police depart­ments get to decide if the record­ings are released to the pub­lic, and the great­est bull­shit of all is that although the cam­eras are paid fr with our tax dol­lars and the agents of the states are employed and paid with tax dol­lars, leg­is­la­tors have decid­ed that the record­ings on body cams are [not] pub­lic records.
No, the killing of George Floyd was not a sem­i­nal moment in the police killing of black peo­ple; nei­ther was it a water­shed moment; it was sim­ply anoth­er moment in which the state mur­dered a black man, and a bunch of peo­ple want­ed to vent from hav­ing being told that they had to stay home.

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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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CNN Kept Rick Santorum’s Bigotry Despite His Outright Racism Until It Was Untenable…

As a small busi­ness own­er, hir­ing some­one to work with me would mean that the hiree will add to my busi­ness. At least, that is con­ven­tion­al wisdom.
I nev­er quite under­stood what CNN saw in for­mer Pennsylvania Republican US Senator Rick Santorum.
Santorum served in the US House of Representatives & the US Senate. He is a lawyer, author, com­men­ta­tor, and con­sul­tant, but Rick Santorum is also a bigot.
Rick Santorum ran for pres­i­dent twice and lost in the pri­maries, but his record as a politi­cian has been check­ered at best. Santorum has a holi­er than thou per­sona, even though he was involved in the K‑street project then denied that he was asso­ci­at­ed with it.
Rick Santorum’s views on issues are more in line with the back­ward think­ing of Patrick Buchanan than they are of rea­son­able edu­cat­ed Republicans like Adam Kinsinger.
Santorum’s hypocrisy knows no bounds; he admit­ted to smok­ing weed in col­lege. Still, when it became con­ve­nient to denounce mar­i­jua­na as is cus­tom­ary for right-wing politi­cians, Santorum denounced the weed and said he was against the legal­iza­tion of cannabis and believes that the fed­er­al law against it should be enforced in Colorado.
Despite know­ing that Rick Santorum is a light­ning rod, CNN hired him as a con­trib­u­tor in ear­ly 2017, right in time for the Trump sur­ro­gate to poi­son the air­ways with big­otry and lies on behalf of the lying-thiev­ing Donald Trump.

Addressing the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive youth orga­ni­za­tion Young America’s Foundation at their “Standing Up for Faith and Freedom” sum­mit, Santorum told young peo­ple that while most cul­tures around the world devel­oped over time, America just sprang into the world ful­ly formed.
“We came here and cre­at­ed a blank slate; we birthed a nation from nothing.”
“We birthed a nation from noth­ing. I mean, there was noth­ing here,” he con­tin­ued. “I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but can­did­ly, there isn’t much Native American cul­ture in American culture.”
Despite calls for CNN to fire Rick Santorum, it took a whole month for the net­work to announce on Saturday, May 22nd, that they cut ties with him.
Earlier this month, in a tweet queer activist, Rebecca Nagel ridiculed CNN for not fir­ing Santorum, quote.
Hey, @CNN, how many Native Americans polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors do you have? Since you give a plat­form to ppl like Rick Santorum — whose entire career is based on scor­ing polit­i­cal points by tak­ing cheap shots at LGBTQ folks, ppl of col­or, and now Native Americans.
CNN made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to hire Rick Santorum; it will argue that it is a mid­dle-of-the-road news orga­ni­za­tion, and as such, Santorum as a voice on the right was a unique fit.
No, Rick Santorum has, and will always be a racist big­ot who spews racist invec­tives to the extent he is allowed to get away with it. CNN hired and kept him to attract the bot­tom feed­ers that believe as he does in white suprema­cy. They did it for money.
That’s all.

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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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Why It Is Important To See How Your Congressperson Is Voting In Washington…

Previously, some reg­u­lar folks did­n’t both­er pay­ing atten­tion to bor­ing stuff like how con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives vote on issues. Instead, many vot­ers wait­ed for elec­tion time to be edu­cat­ed before mak­ing their vot­ing decisions.
Today, how­ev­er, the stakes are much high­er, it seems; how rep­re­sen­ta­tives and US sen­a­tors vote on issues is crit­i­cal because the issues seem far big­ger and more con­se­quen­tial because, in many ways, they are.
Over the last sev­er­al decades leg­isla­tive bat­tles were waged in the mid­dle between the cen­ter-right and cen­ter-left. Finally, they would find a sweet spot in the cen­ter, and the bill would become law.
Not so today, the ide­o­log­i­cal divide is so wide that there is hard­ly any com­mon ground on which to find solutions.
The Republican par­ty has lurched so far to the right that Democrats do not have a gov­ern­ing part­ner to work with. Democrats are forced to nego­ti­ate with the dif­fer­ent wings in their own party.
There remain a few Republicans in Blue states forced to play the bi-par­ti­san game, but noth­ing gets accom­plished by their will­ing­ness to work with Democrats.
Most of the posi­tions that the Republican par­ty now take are hand­ed to par­ty lead­er­ship by shad­owy out­side right-wing groups.
Those posi­tions are anti­thet­i­cal to repub­li­can and good gov­er­nance, so Democrats can­not sup­port those posi­tions nat­u­ral­ly. The Republican par­ty lost all cred­i­bil­i­ty because it does­n’t even acknowl­edge truth any longer; this makes work­ing with them on leg­is­la­tion impossible.

During Obama’s tenure, they adopt­ed a pos­ture, which they have rolled out once again, nego­ti­ate on bills, offer amend­ments, draw out debate on bills, and even when they get what they asked for, vote against the final bill.
The idea is to waste time, hop­ing that the Democrats will get noth­ing done, giv­ing them a mes­sage to run on.
Votes now are about whether to cre­ate a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate an insur­rec­tion that invad­ed the seat of gov­ern­ment, com­mit­ted a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of felonies, includ­ing murder.
Who would have thought that this would be a polit­i­cal thing?
Democrats and Republicans band­ed togeth­er after 9⁄11 and gave George Bush incred­i­ble pow­ers to go after those who destroyed the twin tow­ers in Manhattan.
After the dredged-up Benghazi inci­dent, Trey Goudy and the oth­er Republicans in the con­gress held dozens of hear­ings which turned up absolute­ly noth­ing nefar­i­ous or under­hand­ed by Hillary Clinton or the Obama Administration.
However, find­ing some­thing unto­ward was not the rea­son for the series of hear­ings and the dis­in­for­ma­tion Goudy, Jim Jordon, Devin Nunes, and the oth­er right-wing ide­o­logues waged.

The idea was to have hear­ings that would lead into the Presidential elec­tions of 2016, which is exact­ly what they did.
It is no won­der that the pro­posed bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to get to the bot­tom of who, how, why, of the January 6th insur­rec­tion does not have the sup­port of Mitch McConnel or Kevin McCarthy, the top two con­gres­sion­al Republicans, they knew what they did. They expect that a com­mis­sion to explore the events of January 6th, 2021, would do the same thing.
Votes are now about set­tled laws, Roe v Wade under assault because the supreme court sud­den­ly decides to hear an abor­tion case from Mississippi. The right-wing Supreme court has stead­fast­ly decid­ed to throw out (stare deci­sis) by upend­ing set­tled laws; even when the court is not asked to vis­it a cer­tain sec­tion of some laws, it does so any­way and make changes to the hor­ror of the minority…
Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney-Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, & uncle Clarence Tom-azz are the right-wing judges that are deter­mined to reshape America, return­ing the nation to the decades before the civ­il rights fights of the 60s.
Votes are about the vot­ing rights, set­tled laws that the Roberts court upend­ed for no rea­son oth­er than the ide­o­log­i­cal cru­sade that the court is on. For exam­ple, in 2013, while Barack Obama was in the White House, the Roberts-led court struck down sec­tion 4(b) of the 1965 vot­ing rights Act in Shelby County Alabama vs. Holder.
In sim­ple terms, the court’s log­ic was that the law was no longer need­ed because the racist con­di­tions which exist­ed then no longer exist.
In her dis­sent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg ridiculed the court’s argu­ments stat­ing that the rul­ing was the equiv­a­lent of walk­ing with an umbrel­la in the rain, then throw­ing away the umbrel­la because you weren’t get­ting wet.
Since then, all across the nation and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Republican-run states, Republicans have embarked on pass­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion laws not seen since after reconstruction.

John Roberts, the chief jus­tice, is a for­mer Reagan admin­is­tra­tion lawyer with hatred for vot­ing and civ­il rights. So much for Roberts’ disin­gen­u­ous com­ments that there are no Democratic or Republican judges, judges call balls and strikes[sic]
Some strike zones are much wider than oth­ers; it depends on who is call­ing balls and strikes jus­tice, Roberts.
Voting is about whether the Republic remains one.…… or does it devolve into a dic­ta­tor­ship ruled over by a socio­path­ic narcissist.
Voting is about whether native Americans are allowed their rights. It is about whether the nation takes on cli­mate change and pre­pares for it while tak­ing steps to mit­i­gate and roll back its dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to our planet.
Voting is about African-Americans right to exist as full human beings in a coun­try in which there are ele­ments hell­bent on stomp­ing on the rights of peo­ple dif­fer­ent than they are.
Voting is about clean drink­ing water, edu­ca­tion for our chil­dren, health­care, ensur­ing that chil­dren do not go to bed hun­gry, clean air, and a future in which those who worked hard can be secure in their lat­er years.
Voting is about the anti-Asian hate crimes bill that was passed into law recent­ly. It is for those rea­sons that we need to know who are the peo­ple oppos­ing these fun­da­men­tal pieces of leg­is­la­tion that are nec­es­sary to fix some of the chal­lenges in an ever-chang­ing environment.

HERE ARE THE REUBLICAN HOUSE & SENATE MEMBERS WHO VOTED AGAINST THE BILL

  • Robert Aderholt of Alabama
  • Rick Allen of Georgia
  • Jodey Arrington of Texas
  • Brian Babin of Texas
  • Jim Banks of Indiana
  • Andy Biggs of Arizona
  • Dan Bishop of North Carolina
  • Laurne Boebert of Colorado
  • Mo Brooks of Alabama
  • Ted Budd of North Carolina
  • Tim Burchett of Tennessee
  • Kat Cammack of Florida
  • Jerry Carl of Alabama
  • Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina
  • Michael Cloud of Texas
  • Andrew Clyde of Georgia
  • Tom Cole of Oklahoma
  • Warren Davidson of Ohio
  • Byron Donalds of Florida
  • Jeff Duncan of South Carolina
  • Virginia Foxx of North Carolina
  • Matt Gaetz of Florida
  • Louie Gohmert of Texas
  • Bob Good of Virginia
  • Lance Gooden of Texas
  • Paul Gosar of Arizona
  • Mark Green of Tennessee
  • Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
  • Michael Guest of Mississippi
  • Andy Harris of Maryland
  • Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee
  • Kevin Hern of Oklahoma
  • Yvette Herrell of New Mexico
  • Jody Hice of Georgia
  • Clay Higgins of Louisiana
  • Ronny Jackson of Texas
  • Mike Johnson of Louisiana
  • Jim Jordan of Ohio
  • Trent Kelly of Mississippi
  • Doug LaMalfa of California
  • Barry Loudermilk of Georgia
  • Nancy Mace of South Carolina
  • Tracey Mann of Kansas
  • Thomas Massie of Kentucky
  • Tom McClintock of California
  • Mary Miller of Illinois
  • Alex Mooney of West Virginia
  • Barry Moore of Alabama
  • Ralph Norman of South Carolina
  • Steven Palazzo of Mississippi
  • Gary Palmer of Alabama
  • Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
  • August Pfluger of Texas
  • Tom Rice of South Carolina
  • John Rose of Tennessee
  • Matt Rosendale of Montana
  • David Rouzer of North Carolina
  • Chip Roy of Texas
  • John Rutherford of Florida
  • Greg Steube of Florida
  • Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin
  • Randy Weber of Texas

In the sen­ate Missouri’s Josh Hawley the insur­rec­tion­ist vot­ed against its pas­sage as well.

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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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It Is Time That Investigations Of Police Violence Be Supervised By The Feds, Local DA’s Cannot Be Counted On

Andrew Womble, the District Attorney In the North Carolina County in which Andrew Brown was mur­dered by Sheriff’s deputies, on Tuesday, May 18th, announced that there would be no charges against the offi­cers who shot a flee­ing Brown as he tried to escape get­ting arrested.
Andrew Brown was shot at least three times with all three bul­lets enter­ing his body from the back, one through his shoul­der blades and two through the back of the head.
The offi­cial police ver­sion is that they went to the premis­es to search for illic­it drugs on one war­rant (there we go again, anoth­er life lost/​ruined based on the war on drugs), the oth­er was to arrest Brown on an out­stand­ing warrant.
In nei­ther instance was Andrew Brown tried on either war­rant, found guilty, and sen­tenced to death.
Yet the police embarked upon a process of enforce­ment which said we have the right as state agents to exe­cute you if you do not bow to our demands.
The District attor­ney and 2022 aspir­ing supe­ri­or court judge can­di­date Andrew Womble, in deliv­er­ing his deci­sion, was most caus­tic in his remarks, unboth­ered about the sanc­ti­ty of Andrew Brown’s life, much more to give def­er­ence to the dead.
One would imag­ine that as the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, he would be a lit­tle more cir­cum­spect in his lan­guage in com­mu­ni­cat­ing, at least to Andrew Brown’s fam­i­ly, that [he]had no inter­est in bring­ing mis­ter Brown’s killers to justice.
The Brown fam­i­ly called the shoot­ing an execution.……and it was exact­ly that, an execution.
But, the most dis­tress­ing event for me per­son­al­ly goes beyond their refusal to release the body­cam videos, the judge’s deci­sion to refuse to release the video to the pub­lic, or the doc­tored 20-sec­ond clip they showed to the Brown family…
It is the cal­lous dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect that Andrew Womble showed to the Brown fam­i­ly when they are griev­ing the death of their loved one at the hands of state agents.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​c​-​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​o​r​-​a​l​l​-​b​u​t​-​s​a​i​d​-​a​n​d​r​e​w​-​b​r​o​w​n​-​w​a​s​-​d​i​s​p​o​s​a​b​le/

Why District Attorney Andrew Womble is not prosecuting the Andrew Brown Jr. case - CNN

The shock­ing real­i­ty is that for decades black peo­ple have been com­plain­ing about police act­ing like invad­ing armies with­in their com­mu­ni­ties, killing them with­out consequence.
I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly on this phe­nom­e­non, argu­ing that the police are empow­ered because District Attorneys like Andrew Womble are com­plic­it in their mur­der­ous activ­i­ties, which empow­ers them to act with absolute impuni­ty. Additionally, the nation’s high­est court gives them an extra lay­er of immunity.
But think for a moment about the incal­cu­la­ble harm done when peo­ple like District Attorney Andrew Womble are ele­vat­ed to supe­ri­or court judge as he is aspir­ing to be next year?
Imagine what he will do as a tri­al judge?
Just imag­ine what kind of supe­ri­or court judge he will be when pre­sid­ing over a bench tri­al in which a cop is a defen­dant? Under Womble, that cop has zero chance of fac­ing justice.
Imagine a sce­nario in which a black defen­dant, inno­cent or not, has to face the ran­cid racism of Andrew Womble; what are his or her chances of get­ting a fair trial?
This is a grave mat­ter that should gar­ner every sane per­son­’s atten­tion. Imagine the harm that Womble as a sin­gle Racist piece of garbage District Attorney has wrought in one munic­i­pal­i­ty to the black com­mu­ni­ty, then build it out to the fifty states.
The answer is the pris­ons filled with black bod­ies, and worse, the many inno­cents who have been exe­cut­ed on the per­se­cu­tion of a jus­tice sys­tem led by the likes of Andrew Womble.

Deputies' fatal shooting of Black man in North Carolina justified: Prosecutor - Chicago Sun-Times
Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble shows still images from police body cam­era footage after announc­ing he will not charge deputies in the April 21 fatal shoot­ing of Andrew Brown Jr. dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Tuesday, May 18, 2021, at the Pasquotank County Public Safety build­ing in Elizabeth City, N.C. Womble said he would not release body­cam video of the con­fronta­tion between Brown, a Black man, and the law enforce­ment offi­cers. AP

ANDREW WOMBLE’S JUSTIFICATION:

District Attorney Womble said the fol­low­ing in explain­ing his deci­sion not to file crim­i­nal charges against the cow­boy killers who exter­mi­nat­ed Andrew Brown with bul­lets to the back of the head;“ the three offi­cers rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was jus­ti­fied.”
[Sure]! Cops are allowed to judge, jury, & exe­cu­tion­ers, with a heavy empha­sis on the exe­cu­tion­er. The sad real­i­ty is that giv­en the American stan­dard on when lethal force may jus­ti­fi­ably be used to stop a per­son flee­ing from being appre­hend­ed, police have low­ered the bar of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to irra­tional lev­els heav­i­ly influ­enced by the lack of val­ue they them­selves place on human life…
Given the pow­er cops have, no one should be under any illu­sions that those who have min­i­mal edu­ca­tion­al train­ing will be judi­cious stew­ards of the trust placed in them; a few may, most won’t.
“Mr. Brown’s death, while trag­ic, was jus­ti­fied because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to rea­son­ably believe it was nec­es­sary to use dead­ly force to pro­tect them­selves and oth­ers.”
If you did not know who made these state­ments and was asked to make a guess, the quick­est answer would be that these state­ments in red were made by a defense attor­ney, not a pros­e­cu­tor who is sup­posed to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal con­duct.“Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, car­ry on the per­for­mance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into custody.“They could not sim­ply let him go, as has been sug­gest­ed. He engaged in dan­ger­ous, felony-lev­el mis­con­duct as he decid­ed to flee.”

In oth­er words, deputies had war­rants signed by a judge to arrest Andrew Brown, and on that basis, if mis­ter Brown did not sur­ren­der, the police had every right to end it.
Kill him.….Kill him they did.…this was a death squad that had one inten­tion, they were going to mur­der him, flee­ing or not.
I have zero con­fi­dence that a Federal inves­ti­ga­tion will bring the mur­der­ers to jus­tice, but hope springs eternal.
Nevertheless, a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion needs to be done to unearth all of the facts. Facts that Andrew Womble and his cohorts seem all too quick to sweep under the car­pet. It appears that some­one had it out for Andrew Brown. Regardless of mis­ter brown’s crim­i­nal past, the police have no right to exe­cute any­one. The raid was car­ried out like a hit.
The way this whole event unfold­ed and the secre­cy and cov­er-up that has ensued stinks of some­thing sinister.
Did some­one want him dead? Was his killing planned before the cops encoun­tered mis­ter Brown?

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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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Just Imagine It Was You…

IMAGINE THIS WAS YOU, WOULD YOU NOT FIGHT WITH EVERY FIBER IN YOU?

A Palestinian woman argues with an Israeli bor­der police­man dur­ing a protest against Jewish set­tle­ments in the West Bank vil­lage of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah September 4, 2015. REUTERS/​Mohamad Torokman TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY — RTX1R3FO

Imagine that you are liv­ing your mun­dane life in the year 1948, going about your busi­ness. You, a gro­cer, maybe a sub­sis­tence farmer? You farm dates in the arid con­di­tions, you grow olives too, you may even grow veg­eta­bles, as your ances­tors had done for thou­sands of years before you.
Then one day some new peo­ple came they con­fis­cat­ed your land, they chased you out of your home and took it.
These peo­ple had no right to your land, and they cer­tain­ly had no right to your home, but that did not stop them from tak­ing it and chas­ing you away into exile.
Imagine that the peo­ple who did that to you were not the same skin col­or as you are, they did not speak your lan­guage, but they claim they have a right to your land and home because their God promised them your property.
Worse yet, their reli­gion is not only dif­fer­ent than yours; they [adopt­ed] their reli­gion and, as a con­se­quence, laid claim to your prop­er­ty under the guise that God had promised them your land.
Remember, these invaders were nev­er from your part of the world, but they claimed that they have a divine right to your inher­i­tance based on the reli­gion they adopt­ed and took as their own.
How would you feel? What would you do?

The mass dis­place­ment of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. There are now more than 7 mil­lion reg­is­tered Palestinian refugees strug­gling with ongo­ing pover­ty and depri­va­tion. An esti­mat­ed 500 vil­lages and towns were destroyed.

Now imag­ine that 73-years lat­er, if you are still alive, nei­ther you nor your off­springs are allowed to return to your home­land. According to the invaders, you [you have no right of return].
Your home­land, your coun­try, is now swal­lowed up; it has a dif­fer­ent name now.
Where you once farmed, there are hous­es, fac­to­ries, and even farms, but you can­not enter; sep­a­rat­ing you from your birthright is barbed wire, walls, and armed guards,
You are frus­trat­ed, so you throw stones, you light tires, and you protest. The younger gen­er­a­tion is now more mil­i­tant, so they build and buy crude bombs, but their bombs are no match for the pre­ci­sion-guid­ed 21st-cen­tu­ry mis­siles that rain down on the tiny bit of hell on which you have been forced to exist,
When you protest, there is more destruc­tion and death, more bul­lets for your slingshots.

The occu­piers pledged to dri­ve you into the sea, and they may well have because you are not even allowed to fish in the waters that crash ashore the tiny strip of land on which you are imprisoned.
The occu­pi­er tells you if and when you may fish to feed your fam­i­ly; he even tells you just how far out to see you are allowed.
That is your existence,
That is your life.

Young Palestinians serve what was once their homes after Israel’s bomb­ing campaign.

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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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NC Prosecutor All But Said Andrew Brown Was Disposable

If you ever set foot in a police acad­e­my to under­go police train­ing, you know that they ham­mer it home to you that peo­ple do not want to give up their freedom.
Police offi­cers are tasked with tak­ing the bad guys in (or so cops frame it); today, we all know that some­times that sce­nario is reversed, and the bad guys are the ones doing the tak­ing in.
Then there are the argu­ments that if you do not want to go to jail, stop com­mit­ting crimes.
As a police offi­cer, I loved those com­ments because they were sup­port­ive of me. However, as a for­mer cop, my feel­ings towards those com­ments are a bit more nuanced today.
Seeing polic­ing unfold in the United States for three decades has giv­en me a more nuanced per­spec­tive about the sup­port police receive from cer­tain seg­ments of the soci­ety, as well as my own feel­ings toward them…
There is a rea­son that pen­cils are made with erasers; it is a cer­tain­ty that we will make mis­takes as we try to nav­i­gate our way through life. Some are priv­i­leged to be born wealthy, oth­ers are born white, and then some have the dou­ble priv­i­lege of being wealthy and white.
Wealth and white skin are insu­la­tors against police aggres­sion in the United States; for those rea­sons, the sup­port police receive as they con­tin­ue to mur­der peo­ple of col­or will not change sim­ply because they mur­der more peo­ple of col­or and peo­ple demonstrate.
If that was a solu­tion, police would have stopped mur­der­ing black peo­ple decades ago.
The repub­lic was cre­at­ed on the con­cept that the black man had no rights that the white man is oblig­at­ed to respect.
Today, Police still oper­ate with that same con­tempt for the rights of blacks. They do not see them­selves as serv­ing the over forty mil­lion Black ‑Americans who spend a whop­ping 1.3 tril­lion dol­lars each year to help pro­vide them with jobs and cushy pen­sion plans. Instead, they see them­selves as over­seers, tasked with keep­ing the black pop­u­la­tion in its place.

DA Womble to run for Superior Court judge in 2022 | Local News | dailyadvance.com
Here is Andrew Womble with his law-enforce­ment bud­dies, he will be run­ning to be a supe­ri­or court judge in 22. Are you able to see the con­nec­tion yet?

If you are won­der­ing where the police got that mind­set from, look at your state leg­is­la­tures and the laws they pass to fur­ther empow­er and insu­late police from account­abil­i­ty when­ev­er nation­al atten­tion is focused on the police’s actions.
Conventional wis­dom would sug­gest that state leg­is­la­tures, as a mat­ter of con­science, would attempt to cor­rect some of the laws and poli­cies that give cov­er to police to com­mit crimes and not be held accountable.
That is not so; state after state, Republican leg­is­la­tures have passed laws that give police more cov­er to abuse and kill with­out consequence.
Republican gov­er­nors are sign­ing those bills into law, even as there are still peo­ple in the streets demon­strat­ing against police crimes.
The supreme court is equal­ly as guilty; the (qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty) doc­trine it cre­at­ed so insu­lates police from account­abil­i­ty, it should be renamed [qual­i­fied impunity].
Worse yet, are the pros­e­cu­tors who are sup­posed to go after the worse actors in soci­ety, regard­less of who those actors are.
It is shock­ing to see how far [pros­e­cu­tors] go to pro­tect rather than pros­e­cute cor­rupt, mur­der­ous cops.
The cor­rup­tion runs deep­er than many under­stand. Police and pros­e­cu­tors, more often than not, work hand in hand to effec­tu­ate the cor­rup­tion. For exam­ple, hid­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that would exon­er­ate a defen­dant to cov­er up for police, even when they act out­side the law to mur­der inno­cent unarmed citizens.
In some cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors refuse to pros­e­cute white offend­ers who arent even police offi­cers, they even go a step fur­ther to make the case to oth­ers not to pros­e­cute white mur­der­ers who open­ly and unlaw­ful­ly kill black cit­i­zens, as was the case in the Amhaud Arbery mur­der case.

Andrew Brown

No one should be sur­prised that local pros­e­cu­tors would pro­tect the cops who mur­dered Andrew Brown. In many cas­es, those pros­e­cu­tors may not pull the trig­ger, but they are equal­ly as guilty as the mur­der­ous cops who do.
North Carolina District Attorney Andrew Womble said that three offi­cers involved in killing Brown “rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was jus­ti­fied. Womble will be run­ning to be elect­ed supe­ri­or court judge in 2022, so if you believe that there is jus­tice in the courts when these types of peo­ple are sit­ting in judg­ment, guess again?
According to HuffPost, Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble said Tuesday that three offi­cers involved in the killing of Brown “rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was justified.
So there you have it, armed police offi­cers who could have fol­lowed a flee­ing Brown decid­ed that they could­n’t both­er. Hence, they exe­cut­ed him, know­ing that as far as District Attorney and aspir­ing supe­ri­or court judge Andrew Womble is con­cerned, they would have his blessings.
Womble went fur­ther to show his dis­dain for the life of Andrew Brown, quote; “Mr. Brown’s death, while trag­ic, was jus­ti­fied, because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to rea­son­ably believe it was nec­es­sary to use dead­ly force to pro­tect them­selves and others.”
Here is a pros­e­cu­tor act­ing as God in giv­ing abso­lu­tion to three mur­der­ers because he believed that the sin­ner, mis­ter Andrew Brown was beyond redemp­tion and there­fore disposable.
In so doing Andrew Womble by default, not only grant­ed the killer-cops abso­lu­tion, he gave future killer cops the green light to com­mit the same kind of murder.
Womble knew that even if the accused was dri­ving away the cops could have moved out of the way(assuming they were even in the way) because between the judge, the pros­e­cu­tor, and the police they kept the video evi­dence under wraps only show­ing a 20-sec­ond clip that they edit­ed to the fam­i­ly of mis­ter Brown.
If you believed that there was any doubt that the District attor­ney, Andrew Womble agreed that the police were right to act as judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, here is Andrew Womblee’s next statement.
Quote; “Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, car­ry on the per­for­mance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into cus­tody,” Womble said. “They could not sim­ply let him go, as has been sug­gest­ed. He engaged in dan­ger­ous, felony-lev­el mis­con­duct as he decid­ed to flee.”Closed quote.
(Carry on the per­for­mance of their duties) code,’ for exe­cut­ing Andrew Brown.’
There you have it, fuck Andrew Brown kill his ass, and be done with it, in sim­ple language.
That is what a pros­e­cu­tor paid by the black com­mu­ni­ty to pro­tect the black com­mu­ni­ty, had to say about police killing a mem­ber of the black community.
Andrew Brown was total­ly and com­plete­ly dis­pos­able as far as Andrew Womble is con­cerned. And so he exe­cut­ed that right in his decree that none of the offi­cers will be charged with a crime( by his office) in the killing of Andrew Brown.

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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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Israel Continue Genocide While The World Is Silent, Afraid Of Being Branded Anti-semitic…

The evan­gel­i­cal move­ment in America (so-called white Christians) sup­ports Israel’s state 🇮🇱 sup­pos­ed­ly on reli­gious grounds, even though Jews do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah from whom the Christian faith is derived.
Here is a more plau­si­ble expla­na­tion, Israel came into exis­tence much the same way America did.
Forced upon the indige­nous peo­ple, sub­ju­ga­tion and dom­i­na­tion of every­one that does not have white skin.
Israel’s Jewish pop­u­la­tion are white Germans who escaped Hitler because of the Jewish faith they adopt­ed around the 4th cen­tu­ry. Therefore, they have no basis for their claim to the land of Palestine.
Zero!!!!!! On a point of note, Israel and Palestine are on the same land; to the peo­ple occu­py­ing it is Israel, to the real peo­ple of the land, it is Palestine.
Have you ever won­dered why the white Europeans who call them­selves Jews in Palestine refer to them­selves as Israelis instead of Israelites? Israelites would, of course, be more in line with reli­gios­i­ty? But what they are prac­tic­ing in Israel is Zionism, which is anoth­er name for racism, it is a form of fas­cism, so they don’t dare refer to them­selves as Israelites.
White evan­gel­i­cals in the United States sup­port that sys­tem, much like they sup­port­ed the apartheid sys­tem in Southern Africa.
Anyplace out­side the European con­ti­nent that whites dom­i­nate oth­er races is a‑okay with white evan­gel­i­cals in the United States, a‑la Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and as I said pre­vi­ous­ly, on the African continent.

https://​www​.jew​ishvir​tu​al​li​brary​.org/​g​e​r​m​a​n​y​-​v​i​r​t​u​a​l​-​j​e​w​i​s​h​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​t​our

Unfortunately, the lie that they per­pet­u­at­ed has tak­en hold in Black Christians too; many hold the fun­da­men­tal belief that Yeshua (Jesus Christ) will return to earth and that the place he will come to is the land of Israel.
Forgive me, but my under­stand­ing of the Bible’s teach­ings on God’s sup­posed ref­er­ence to his peo­ple Israel is not about a piece of land but his Hebrew peo­ple, his orig­i­nal cre­ation. My bad, maybe I got it wrong .……any­way.
But if you lis­ten to apos­tates like John Hagee, you may emp­ty your bank account and send the mon­ey to Israel, and God will be quite hap­py with you.
Black Pastors, too, have fall­en for the lie; many have tak­en their con­gre­ga­tions to the sup­posed Holy Land, only to run up into the apartheid sys­tem that is very much what Israel practices.

In the minds of the Israelis, the land we now call Israel/​Palestine is con­sid­ered the holy land, despite the unde­ni­able fact that the nation of Israel was cre­at­ed in Palestine in 1948 by the United States and Great Britain. The white cit­i­zens of Israel are Germans who fled Adolph Hitler’s reign of ter­ror. Now in case, you are won­der­ing why I wrote Palestine/​Israel? Remember that I said the two coun­tries are one and the same?
So log­i­cal­ly for them, God will return and scoop up [his cho­sen peo­ple], they, who took lands 73-years ago from the peo­ple who lived on them. Chased them out of their homes and con­fis­cat­ed their prop­er­ty. Since then, they have con­tin­ued to steal more of those lands against inter­na­tion­al laws. Uses dev­as­tat­ing pow­ers of war­fare to oblit­er­ate the peo­ple when they com­plain. Force the con­quered Palestinians to mere­ly exist under their bootheels. Slaughters men, women, and chil­dren with airstrikes in air­planes sup­plied to them by west­ern pow­ers, even though mil­i­taries are not sup­posed to bomb civil­ian targets.
Yes, God will be com­ing back to claim those pow­er­ful jews because they are his cho­sen people.

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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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Gaza Violence: Pictures Show Scale Of Destruction Amid Threat Of Israeli Invasion

No one is hap­pi­er in Israel for these hos­til­i­ties than the indict­ed felon Benjamin Netanyahu who runs the apartheid state of Israel. If there is any ques­tion among rea­son­able peo­ple that this indict­ed crim­i­nal has a hand in cre­at­ing these hos­til­i­ties maybe you have lost your sense of reason.
The entire lead­er­ship of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel has been one of total dom­i­na­tion & sub­ju­ga­tion of the Palestinian people.
Now that he is an indict­ed felon, is there any won­der that he would want a full-scale war against the large­ly defense­less Palestinians in order to main­tain his hold on power?

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Andy Wells
Andy Wells·Freelance Writer
Thu, May 13, 2021, 9:24 AM

Israel amass­es troops along Gaza as con­flict esca­lates. Israel has massed troops at the Gaza bor­der as ten­sions and vio­lent clash­es with Palestine con­tin­ue to esca­late. Unrest in recent days has seen rock­ets fired from Gaza while Israeli forces have bom­bard­ed the ter­ri­to­ry with airstrikes, in the most seri­ous fight­ing since the 50-day war in 2014. Hamas and oth­er mil­i­tant groups in Gaza, claim­ing to be defend­ing Jerusalem, have fired hun­dreds of rock­ets at Tel Aviv and oth­er cities. Israel’s response has tar­get­ed police and secu­ri­ty instal­la­tions, although the Palestinian author­i­ties said there have been civil­ian casu­al­ties. Pictures released in the past 48 hours high­light the lev­el of destruc­tion wrought by the esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties in the region.

Palestinians gath­er around the ruins of build­ings that were destroyed in Israeli airstrikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, in the north­ern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

Israel has pre­pared com­bat troops along the Gaza bor­der and was in var­i­ous stages of prepar­ing ground oper­a­tions”, a mil­i­tary spokesman said, a move that would recall sim­i­lar incur­sions dur­ing Israel-Gaza wars in 2014 and 2008 – 2009.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime min­is­ter, has vowed to con­tin­ue act­ing to strike at the mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties of Hamas – which is regard­ed as a ter­ror­ist group by the UK, US, and Israel – and oth­er Gaza groups.
As many as 10 senior Hamas mil­i­tary fig­ures were killed on Wednesday as Israel pressed ahead with a fierce mil­i­tary offen­sive. The death toll in Gaza rose to 69 Palestinians, includ­ing 16 chil­dren and six women, accord­ing to the health min­istry. A total of sev­en peo­ple have been killed in Israel, includ­ing four on Wednesday. Health author­i­ties in Gaza said they were inves­ti­gat­ing the deaths of sev­er­al peo­ple overnight who they said may have inhaled poi­so­nous gas. Samples were being exam­ined and they had yet to draw any final con­clu­sions, they said. With con­cern grow­ing that the vio­lence that flared on Monday could spi­ral out of con­trol, the US is send­ing an envoy, Hady Amr, to the region.

A combination picture shows a tower building before and after it was destroyed by Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Gaza City. (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
A com­bi­na­tion pic­ture shows a tow­er build­ing before and after it was destroyed by Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, in Gaza City. (Reuters)

A man stands atop rub­ble as he sur­veys the dam­age after a rock­et launched overnight from the Gaza Strip hit a res­i­den­tial build­ing in Petah Tikva, Israel. (Reuters)

US pres­i­dent Joe Biden said he hoped fight­ing “will be clos­ing down soon­er than lat­er”, while UK min­is­ter for Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly said on Thursday morn­ing that Israel has a “legit­i­mate right to defend itself but must do so pro­por­tion­ate­ly”. Cleverly said Hamas has been fir­ing rock­ets “indis­crim­i­nate­ly” into civil­ian areas, which he called “com­plete­ly unac­cept­able”. Boris Johnson has also called for restraint on both sides as he urged lead­ers to “step back from the brink”, adding that the UK is alarmed at the mount­ing toll of civil­ian casualties.

Streaks of light are seen as Israel’s Iron Dome anti-mis­sile sys­tem inter­cept rock­ets launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel. (Reuters)
A pic­ture tak­en with a drone shows the ruins of build­ings which were destroyed in Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, in the north­ern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)
Palestinians search their belong­ings as res­cue efforts con­tin­ue to evac­u­ate Palestinians from the rub­ble of the build­ings destroyed by ongo­ing Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Israeli sol­diers pay homage to their late fel­low solid­er Omer Tabib, 21, dur­ing his funer­al in Elyakim in north­ern Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)

Streaks of light are seen as Israel’s Iron Dome anti-mis­sile sys­tem inter­cept rock­ets launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel. (Reuters)

A picture taken with a drone shows the ruins of buildings which were destroyed in Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in the northern Gaza Strip. (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)

A pic­ture tak­en with a drone shows the ruins of build­ings which were destroyed in Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, in the north­ern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

GAZA CITY, GAZA - MAY13: Palestinians search their belongings as rescue efforts continue to evacuate Palestinians from the rubble of the buildings destroyed by ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, at Al Bureij refugee cam in Gaza City, Gaza on May 13, 2021. Palestinians in Gaza Strip observe Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, under Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Palestinians search their belong­ings as res­cue efforts con­tin­ue to evac­u­ate Palestinians from the rub­ble of the build­ings destroyed by ongo­ing Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Israeli soldiers pay homage to their late fellow solider Omer Tabib, 21, during his funeral in Elyakim in northern Israel, on May 13, 2021. - Tabib was killed when Palestinian militants in Gaza fired an anti-tank missile near the border, the army said, amid tit-for-tat rocket fire and air strikes. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Israeli sol­diers pay homage to their late fel­low solid­er Omer Tabib, 21, dur­ing his funer­al in Elyakim in north­ern Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)

Israeli pres­i­dent Reuven Rivlin called for an end to “this mad­ness”. He said: “We are endan­gered by rock­ets that are being launched at our cit­i­zens and streets, and we are busy­ing our­selves with a sense­less civ­il war among our­selves. Israel’s domes­tic unrest has been wel­comed by Hamas – with one spokes­men urg­ing Arab cit­i­zens to “rise up” against “our ene­my and yours”.

A Palestinian boy walks past the remains of a tower building which was destroyed in Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City. (Reuters/Suhaib Salem)
A Palestinian boy walks past the remains of a tow­er build­ing which was destroyed in Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City. (Reuters)

A picture taken with a drone shows the ruins of buildings which were destroyed in Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in the northern Gaza Strip. (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)

A pic­ture tak­en with a drone shows the ruins of build­ings which were destroyed in Israeli air strikes amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, in the north­ern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

TOPSHOT - Smoke billows from an Israeli air strike on the Hanadi compound in Gaza City, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 11, 2021. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

Smoke bil­lows from an Israeli air strike on the Hanadi com­pound in Gaza City. (AFP via Getty Images)

Ayman Odeh, a senior Israeli Arab law­mak­er, accused Netanyahu’s con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment of inflam­ing eth­nic ten­sions. The lat­est upsurge in vio­lence has been trig­gered by ten­sions in Jerusalem dur­ing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with clash­es at a holy site sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Preparations for Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim hol­i­day mark­ing the end of a month of day-long fast­ing, have been som­bre in Gaza, as res­i­dents brace them­selves for fur­ther dev­as­ta­tion and unrest.(Adapted from yahoo​.com)

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JCF Slowly Begin To Wake Up After A Decade Of Terrence Williams Disinformation Campaign.

Yesterday I wrote about Horace Chang’s response to a dias­po­ra group’s state­ment that it would not hand over any mon­ey it rais­es to the gov­ern­ment, that it intends to go toward crime-fighting.
The min­is­ter’s response was heart­break­ing for me. When his state­ments are unpacked, the gist of it is that he is unap­pre­cia­tive of any help to stem the tide of killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes in our coun­try. His com­ments are rem­i­nis­cent of things we would expect to hear decades ago.
It seemed to be about brag­ging rights for funds allo­cat­ed to the JCF by his gov­ern­ment, rather than get­ting all the help he can to end the scourge of vio­lence once and for all.
Make no mis­take about it; the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has been head and shoul­ders over any People’s National Party Administration ever.….. So when this admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts are com­pared to any PNP admin­is­tra­tion, they are light years above any­thing the PNP has done.
However, a low bar hard­ly gives the gov­ern­ment any­thing to brag about. If rea­son­able peo­ple were in charge of crime in our coun­try, Jamaica would be well on its way to becom­ing a devel­oped coun­try based on the rates of invest­ments and returns of peo­ple in the diaspora.
The col­lu­sion and incom­pe­tence of both polit­i­cal par­ties have stuck Jamaica in a time warp of crim­i­nal­i­ty, per­pet­u­al pover­ty, and decay.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​h​a​n​g​s​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​e​-​t​o​-​d​i​a​s​p​o​r​a​-​g​r​o​u​p​s​-​s​t​a​t​e​m​e​n​t​s​-​i​g​n​o​r​a​n​t​-​a​n​d​-​u​n​h​e​l​p​f​ul/
The sad real­i­ty is that the PNP’s record on crime-fight­ing has been so abysmal, the bar so low, that any­thing the Holness Administration does on crime is vast­ly supe­ri­or to the PNPs tenure on crime.
And so when Horace Chang brags about his gov­ern­ment spend­ing $54 bil­lion on the police over the past four years, at 13. 5 bil­lion annu­al­ly, he miss­es the impor­tant con­cept that what the JCF needs is not just mon­ey but oth­er crit­i­cal sup­port mechanisms.
That sup­port can come in the form of crit­i­cal train­ing that some may have, ideas on how to tap into gang activ­i­ties from for­mer mem­bers who have a wealth of infor­ma­tion to sim­ple human resources help, and a range of oth­er ways that peo­ple can be of help.
Only a fool makes it dif­fi­cult to receive the help that would solve some of his own prob­lems; Horace Chang’s state­ments, even though some may think they are rea­son­able, lacks the most basic under­stand­ing of how things get done in the 21st century.
Most of all, the min­is­ter’s state­ment that he does­n’t know any­one who made any [sen­si­ble] offer that the admin­is­tra­tion reject­ed is curi­ous at best. Many peo­ple who served in the JCF have offered up their time and mon­ey to help; the Minister clear­ly has no idea how to coör­di­nate or exploit that help, and so he makes excuses.
Then again, when it is up to peo­ple like Chang to deter­mine what is sen­si­ble, are we sur­prised that he made those comments?

INDECOM

Those of you who have been loy­al read­ers and sup­port­ers of this medi­um must know that I have been a vocif­er­ous oppo­nent of INDECOM, the watch­dog agency formed in 2010 by the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion with the sup­port of the PNP.
You also know that I have mil­i­tat­ed against the neo­phyte agency from the start, not because I am opposed to police over­sight; far from it, the police should not police them­selves. On the con­trary, good over­sight is good for both the cit­i­zens and the police.
However, police over­sight must be del­i­cate­ly looked at with a keen eye on what we ask them to do and at what per­il they car­ry out those tasks.
With that in mind, police over­sight demands a cer­tain degree of under­stand­ing of not just the dif­fi­cul­ties, but the nuanced nature of the risks offi­cers face as they car­ry out their duties.
Because of those real­i­ties, I have been against not the for­ma­tion of INDECOM but the frame­work of the act, which I read thoroughly.
From the begin­ning, I argued that as the Act was writ­ten, it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, that it infringes on the rights of offi­cers, and that it would be a mas­sive dri­ver of vio­lent crime and law­less­ness in our country.
I have been proven right on all fronts.
Since then, they have had to tai­lor parts of the law, and cer­tain actions tak­en by the courts as it per­tains to con­vic­tions of offi­cers have been reversed. Additionally, when the ven­om of the agen­cy’s first com­mis­sion­er, Terrence Williams, was thrown into the mix, a per­fect storm of anti-law enforce­ment brew­ing was set in motion that could only result in crime being where it is today.
Police offi­cers left the force in droves, and those that remained shoul­dered arms even as I per­son­al­ly plead­ed with the Andrew Holness Government to jet­ti­son Terrence Williams and his poi­son so that the secu­ri­ty forces can once again begin the ardu­ous task of tak­ing back the streets from the mur­der­ous gangs roam­ing about unchecked.
So there we are, min­is­ter Chang; you are lying when you say that you have not ignored any sen­si­ble sug­ges­tions. Unless, of course, you believed that (a) Terrence Williams was doing a good job, or (b) keep­ing him there since 2010 to the time he was forced to step aside ten (10) years lat­er was indica­tive of your tak­ing advice.
The harm done under Williams for the decade he was allowed to pla­cate crim­i­nals while tear­ing down the police depart­ment must be laid square­ly at the feet of the gov­ern­ment that appoint­ed and enabled him.
It is impor­tant to note that the JCF is once again con­fronting the killers. In fact, they are con­fronting them imme­di­ate­ly after they car­ry out their das­tard­ly killings.
The force has a very long way to go in how it car­ries out those tac­ti­cal encoun­ters; the lack of train­ing and coör­di­na­tion is glar­ing­ly evi­dent. Even so, we salute the offi­cers when they act to put a dent in this crime scourge.
Hopefully, offi­cers will get bet­ter train­ing, so they will look less like untrained gang­sters just fir­ing wild­ly and more like trained offi­cers deal­ing con­fi­dent­ly and expe­di­tious­ly with a vio­lent situation.
I salute the JCF, even as I beg the gov­ern­ment to shed the arro­gance and accept help.….…. We need intel­li­gence to go with the tech­nol­o­gy so that the killers can be appre­hend­ed before they kill.
And yes, we need dif­fer­ent training.
I can only won­der how more effec­tive we would have been if we had the tech­no­log­i­cal help avail­able today in the ear­ly ’90s when I was a serv­ing member.

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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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Chang’s Response To Diaspora Groups Statements Ignorant And Unhelpful…

I ran across an arti­cle in one Jamaican dai­ly. The min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, Horace Chang, respond­ed to state­ments a dias­po­ra group con­cerned about crime made in response to the Government.
The group, obvi­ous­ly con­cerned about the nation’s crime sit­u­a­tion, has embarked upon a plan to set up a fund with the aim of rais­ing US$10-million to help the police secure much-need­ed equipment.
The group is report­ed­ly head­ed by a for­mer lance-cor­po­ral of the JDF Mark Parkinson. Mister Parkinson, not hav­ing faith in the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, report­ed­ly said, “No funds col­lect­ed under the pro­pos­al will be turned over to the Government or its agen­cies. “Our help will be project-based and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the JCF.” [Jamaica Constabulary Force].

The state­ment obvi­ous­ly drew the ire of Horace Chang, most like­ly offend­ed that an ordi­nary sol­dier and his peers could have the temer­i­ty to want to col­lect such a nice tidy sum of mon­ey and not hand it over for them to pilfer.
Said Chang;.»»»»»

” Any con­tri­bu­tion of that sort that comes into the coun­try does not go into the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. It nev­er goes there.”
“They are free to raise the mon­ey, but they would have to give it to the Jamaican Embassy in Washington and through that to the police com­mis­sion­er’s office. I told them that in my recent town hall meet­ing with them.“Everything must come through the appro­pri­ate chan­nels, which is the embassy and then to the com­mis­sion­er’s office.“If ‘John Brown’ gives police sta­tion ‘A’ $500,000 and he is a nice guy, fine, but if ‘Mr. Jones’ comes, who is a big-time wheel­er-deal­er around the road and says he is giv­ing $500,000, and we refuse it, it will look like we are par­ti­san. All funds must come through the com­mis­sion­er’s office, and there­fore the police sta­tions don’t owe anybody.“
“The Government has put $54 bil­lion in the police over the past four years because we are avoid­ing that kind of pet­ti­fog­ging thing with the police. We are going to equip them as we have done.

“The Government’s posi­tion is that pro­pos­als to assist the police force from the Diaspora must come through the appro­pri­ate chan­nel, which is the embassy, and then it is direct­ed to the appro­pri­ate chan­nel which is the com­mis­sion­er’s office,” Chang said. “Manpower help can­not be done ad hoc. If a man wants to come and give a moti­va­tion­al lec­ture, we don’t have a prob­lem. In fact, one mem­ber of the Diaspora came down with some tech­ni­cal knowl­edge which we thought was very use­ful, and he was direct­ed to go to the com­mis­sion­er, and they are work­ing out some­thing. “I don’t know any­body who has made any sen­si­ble offer that we have reject­ed… and we wel­come any help from the Diaspora, as we did in the case I spoke about earlier.«««««

I got­ta be hon­est; I do not know how to respond to this gib­ber­ish, suf­fic­ing to say that the rank igno­rance of the Minister’s rant is rem­i­nis­cent of the men­tal­i­ty among the idiots who make up the two polit­i­cal parties.
Is there any won­der that the nation is over­run with vio­lent crime under the lead­er­ship of these igno­rant clowns?
At the same time that the min­is­ter was try­ing to cre­ate bar­ri­ers against help for the JCF, the same medi­um report­ed that there were sev­en peo­ple killed in a 48-hour period.
Suppose a group of Jamaicans is inter­est­ed in help­ing, whether, through finan­cial sup­port or tech­ni­cal or oth­er help, that ought to be a pri­or­i­ty for the Minister to meet with those indi­vid­u­als or groups and find ways to chan­nel their help where pos­si­ble to the JCF. Why would the group or indi­vid­ual be forced to go to Washington DC to coör­di­nate with the Jamaican Ambassador? On the con­trary, most Jamaicans would be hap­py to hop on a flight to Kingston to help coör­di­nate with the JCF, to offer what­ev­er help they want to impart.
In typ­i­cal Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar, the min­is­ter ‘wrenk and brite’, Jamaicans send home so much mon­e­tary help that the mon­ey we send back amounts to the Island’s num­ber two for­eign exchange earn­er. Additionally, many Jamaicans return as tourists; their mon­ey helps to sup­port the hotel industry.
Horace Chang should watch his stu­pid mouth, Jamaicans liv­ing over­seas deserves much more respect from these igno­rant clowns, and could some­one tell me why the fuck Chang has a prob­lem with pet­ti­fog­ging?
The dias­po­ra has every right to want to iron out every detail; it is some­thing Horace Chang should learn about.
The min­is­ter’s response val­i­dates my own per­son­al view that they do not want a capa­ble, well-equipped policed Department, as such a depart­ment will be a threat to their corruption.
We will have to wrest Jamaica away from these peo­ple; they have a sys­tem that works to facil­i­tate their cor­rup­tion, they do not want to upset that applecart.

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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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It’s Past Time For New Political Party

All pol­i­tics is local; that is a giv­en. So it is under­stand­able that Democrat, Independent or Republican, can­di­dates must cater to the needs of their con­stituents or face expul­sion by the voters.
So we cringe at can­di­dates who are elect­ed as Democrats but seem to be any­thing but when we look at their vot­ing records.
Mark Kelly, Christen Sinema, and Joe Manchin are three that read­i­ly come to mind. All three are Democratic US Senators; Kelly and Sinema were elect­ed in Arizona, a state that nar­row­ly went to Joe Biden in 2020 but has been a Republican strong­hold for decades. Both Senators now hold seats that Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake recent­ly held.
On the oth­er hand, Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, did I say West Virginia Democrat? That sound­ed real­ly off, an oxy­moron even.… any­way, Manchin still man­ages to win statewide in West Virginia, one of the red­dest states still in the ide­o­log­i­cal clutch­es of the Republican right.
In a state like West Virginia that vot­ed by over 40% points for Donald Trump, a Democrat in statewide office is a rar­i­ty, but Manchin, a son of the state, is well known.
He has been on the grind polit­i­cal­ly for decades and is known per­son­al­ly by almost all West Virginians. So they con­tin­ue to vote for the for­mer gov­er­nor, turned US Senator.
In the greater scheme of things, Joe Manchin is a self-serv­ing polit­i­cal hus­tler who thinks of Joe Manchin.
Not telling the whole truth (IS) lying. Pretending to cher­ish or crave bipar­ti­san­ship with­out cre­dence to Republicans’ efforts to destroy vot­ing rights is a duplic­i­tous and trans­par­ent lie by Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin is not a man of hon­or; he is a rapa­cious and schem­ing Wolf in sheep clothing.
Manchin must be called out for what he is; an ene­my to the rights or peo­ple of col­or to vote.
Nevertheless, despite Manchin’s treach­ery, at least to the left of the Democratic Party, the par­ty can­not ignore the real­i­ty that if there were no Joe Manchin from West Virginia, there would be no Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer.
And so the par­ty is forced to play ball with Manchin, a con­ser­v­a­tive Republican pre­tend­ing to be a Democrat. There is no Democrat major­i­ty with­out Joe Manchin, the Democrays in the Senate knows it ‚but no one knows it more than Manchin. And so Manchin is going to exact his pound if flesh with­out wor­ry about the spilled blood. In the mean­time Dems can only grin and wave.

Joe Manchin is a man who plays the polit­i­cal game in a way that oth­ers can’t because his very polit­i­cal sur­vival hinges on it.

REPUBLICANS DUMP LIZ CHENEY FROM LEADERSHIP ROLE
The Republican cau­cus on Wednesday dumped Wyoming right-wing con­gress­woman Liz Cheney from her num­ber three spot in lead­er­ship as con­fer­ence chairperson.
Cheney com­mit­ted the car­di­nal sin of hav­ing spo­ken the truth that Donald Trump inspired and egged on the January 6th insur­rec­tion that invad­ed the US capi­tol build­ing. She also rub­bished the Trump claim that the elec­tion was stolen from him and that the elec­tions of 2020 were rigged.
Liz Cheney also vot­ed to impeach Donald Trump for his actions the sec­ond time around and has since spo­ken out, includ­ing in an op-ed where she called out her par­ty for its con­tin­ued alle­giance to Trump.
Her oust­ing came as no sur­prise as the Republican Party under Kevin McCarthy, and Mitch McConnell’s lead­er­ship has become the par­ty of Trump.
South Carolina US Senator Lindsay Graham lays it bare, argu­ing that the bulk of Republican vot­ers are with Trump, and so the par­ty [can­not] move on with­out him.
But the quag­mire in which the par­ty found itself was not its only option; the par­ty had the option of build­ing out its base of sup­port by becom­ing more inclu­sive and wel­com­ing of all Americans.
President George W Bush attract­ed a size­able chunk of the Hispanic vote and some African-Americans in his sec­ond term.
Donald Trump had oth­er ideas, push the par­ty to become a fas­cist par­ty of white peo­ple and turn out that block. The thing that bog­gles the mind is that Republicans find Trump’s strat­e­gy appeal­ing despite evi­dence that the Russians aid­ed his ascen­den­cy to the pres­i­den­cy in 2016. Since then, they lost the House, the Senate, Governorships, and oth­er local leg­isla­tive seats. The part also saw Arizona and Georgi flip to blue under Trump, and Democrats take over four US Senate seats in Arizona & Georgia. Additionally, Trump now has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being the only pres­i­dent to be impeached twice.….…… Did I men­tion that he was a one-term president?

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​i​m​e​-​f​o​r​-​t​h​e​-​l​i​n​c​o​l​n​-​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​-​t​o​-​b​e​c​o​m​e​-​a​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​p​a​r​ty/

Ever since the Republican par­ty chose the Trump option over expand­ing its appeal to the American elec­torate„ I have held the belief that the time has come for the for­ma­tion of a third polit­i­cal par­ty, one that may be cen­ter-right, just not anoth­er place for white racists to congregate.
I even argued that the Lincoln Project should be that group which splits the Republican par­ty into two groups ren­der­ing it irrel­e­vant, how­ev­er the LinconlnProject has had some prob­lems of it’s own that may have ren­dered it not so appealing.
There are now new rum­blings that a group of for­mer Republicans may be think­ing of form­ing an explorato­ry com­mit­tee that would look at he fea­si­bil­i­ty of form­ing a thrid polit­i­cal party.
Reuters report­ed that the ear­ly stage dis­cus­sions include for­mer elect­ed Republicans, for­mer offi­cials in the Republican admin­is­tra­tions of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambas­sadors and Republican strate­gists, the peo­ple involved say. More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to dis­cuss the break­away group, which would run on a plat­form of “prin­ci­pled con­ser­vatism,” includ­ing adher­ence to the Constitution and the rule of law — ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.
My per­son­al belief is that this is an idea whose time has come, sure­ly a Democracy requires two polit­i­cal par­ties that believes the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al order.
The Republican par­ty no longer believes in that order, the par­ty is now a grave dan­ger to the American con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law.
I can­not wait for a new polit­i­cal par­ty that will restore some sem­blance of respect for Democracy and the rule of law..

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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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Media Response To Dog ‑Paw Amounts To Glorification Of Criminals…

I am all for redemp­tion; God has been gra­cious to me beyond anything that I deserve, so I am the last to want to deny anyone grace. So even though I believe that the Court of Appeals still functions as a defacto law firm for violent murderers, my belief in the truer ideals of the rule of law are stronger than my disgust for the courts actions.
I am opposed to the release of Christopher Dog Paw Linton from prison on the frivilous grounds on which he was released; and even though I believe the court operates from a utopian place, I believe in the sanctity of the rule of law; on that note, I will live with the decision.
I still believe that the Jamaican courts are essentially friends to criminals; that the judges who populate them hide behind the theory of " an independt judiciary" to subvert the course of justice and exact their brand of liberalism on the jamaican people. They function ouside of the control of the people as unelected technocrats and are therefore not asnwerable to the people for the consequences of their actions.
They disregard the much vaunted doctrine of (stare decisis), let the decision stand, as if they have no duty to respect and consider it.
I hope Christopher Linton will see this grave error on the part of the court as a second chance; a chance for redemption and redress and not an opportunity to be exploited by him, one that signals to him that he can do as he pleases. Only time will tell.
The media's fascination with Linton ought to be of grave concern to all Jamaicans who respect he rule of law.
There are many teachers, nurses, police officers, social workers, and others,who are vastly more deserving of recognition,yet the media is focused on a man everyone knows is a violent criminal, granting him interview after interview as if he is a celebrity to be admired..
This is a violent killer who have been a scourge on the society and but for the corruption and incompetence of the criminal justice system, would be doing life without parole behind bars..

WATCH: Vybz Kartel – Day Rave [Music Video] HD | yardhype.com
Christopher (dog paw) Linton.

I continue to sound the alarm at the glorification of criminals by what passes for media in our country. Imagine one interviewer constistently reffering to Linton as a role-model, over and over again in one interview.
The glorification of criminals and criminal conduct has been a staple in Jamaica since our independence and maybe even before that.
Music, art and even in the halls of academia, the glorification of murder and murderers continue to inspire younger generations of violent predators to chose crime over service and respect.
Unfortunately, as it pertains to murder-music, the reality remains that it is left up to those who create violent lyrics to determine whether it has a negative impact on our young people.
I can speak to the fact that my own upbringing and being taught Godly principles, love, respect for others, the laws, and memorizing Bible teachings played and continue to play an integral part in how I treat others and how I conduct myself in society.
The music that existed when I was growing up was all about love and caring...... those lyrics have been the soundtracks to my life.
The murder, misognist music now will be be the soundtrack to the lives of today's kids. I am deeply appreciative for the ledership our country had at the time I was growing up and for the values instilled in me by my parents. I honor their choices of not bowing to popular opinions, for not being swayed by the changing direcions of the blowing wind.

Today in the house of par­lia­ment idiots exists who con­tin­ue to make the case that vio­lent lyrics do not shape the opin­ions and world­view of our young­sters, even as mur­ders and vio­lent assaults con­tin­ue to increase each year.

VIOLENT CRIME

As the JCF under­goes its much-need­ed trans­for­ma­tion, I would like to give the gov­ern­ment cred­it for some of the improve­ments that have been made in the Constabulary.
On the ques­tion of uni­forms, it is past time for the police depart­ment to be trans­formed from the ridicu­lous red seams and shirt into func­tion­al blue den­im. I see some offi­cers wear­ing the den­im with the JCF insignia embla­zoned along with a match­ing cap; final­ly, it can’t be too dif­fi­cult to move our police offi­cers into this sim­ple attire.
On Monday in the Trafalgar road area, the police shootout is anoth­er exam­ple of the need for more and more train­ing and coör­di­na­tion of our offi­cers who are forced to deal with an ever more embold­ened crim­i­nal class.

Even as I applaud the out­come of this encounter, the event as it played out again brings into sharp focus the need for a more focused type of train­ing for our police officers.
The events that played out from at least two of the offi­cers are vast­ly infe­ri­or to how we were oper­at­ing in these same cir­cum­stances three decades ago; it was shame­ful, to say the least.
On the oth­er hand, I encour­age Prime Minister Andrew Holness to sit down and view this video. It ought to edu­cate him a lit­tle on what police offi­cers are forced to deal with dai­ly. It may also inform and alter his igno­rant utter­ances on police behav­ior as they do their sworn duties. The real police offi­cers of our coun­try do not go out seek­ing to harm or kill any­one; they are forced into sit­u­a­tions like the one in the video; when those occa­sions arise, every­one expects them to run toward the dan­ger and neu­tral­ize the threat.
The least our offi­cers deserve is your unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port and not some mealy-mouthed bullshit.

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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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Derek Chauvin And Three Former Minneapolis Cops Charged With Violating George Floyd’s Civil Rights

By Clarissa-Jan Lim

Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng alleged­ly vio­lat­ed Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing a dead­ly arrest in 2020.

Left to right: Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao

Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng alleged­ly vio­lat­ed Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing a dead­ly arrest in 2020.

Four for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cers were indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury Friday on charges that they vio­lat­ed George Floyd’s civ­il rights dur­ing an arrest last year in which Floyd was vio­lent­ly restrained and killed. Derek Chauvin, who crushed Floyd’s neck with his knee, is charged with vio­lat­ing Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to be free from unrea­son­able seizure and unrea­son­able force by a police offi­cer. Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with vio­lat­ing Floyd’s right to be free from unrea­son­able seizure after fail­ing to inter­vene on Chauvin’s use of unrea­son­able force. The three men and Thomas Lane, anoth­er for­mer offi­cer, are also charged with fail­ing to pro­vide Floyd with med­ical care.

Chauvin also faces sep­a­rate fed­er­al charges for a 2017 inci­dent in which he alleged­ly held a 14-year-old by the neck, beat them with a flash­light, and pressed his knee on their neck and upper back as they were hand­cuffed and not resisting.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defense attor­ney, declined to com­ment on the fed­er­al charges.

A police offi­cer for near­ly two decades, Chauvin was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Floydin a high-pro­file state tri­al last month and is cur­rent­ly await­ing sen­tenc­ing in prison.

Lane, Thao, and Kueng are fac­ing a joint state tri­al in August.

Floyd was killed dur­ing an encounter with the four offi­cers on May 25 last year, after a gro­cery store employ­ee alleged that he used a fake $20 bill. Bystander video cap­tured Chauvin push­ing his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine min­utes as Floyd repeat­ed­ly begged for air and said he could not breathe.

The graph­ic video sparked a nation­al out­cry against police bru­tal­i­ty and racial injus­tice that rever­ber­at­ed around the world, and the four offi­cers were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department.

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Rhode Island Man Handcuffed By Police Dies

Providence, Rhode Island, police released body cam­era video after a man who was hand­cuffed by offi­cers died.

The footage is from one of sev­er­al offi­cers who respond­ed to a call around 12:30 a.m. ET Friday about a man, iden­ti­fied as Joseph Ventre, 34, scream­ing in the mid­dle of the street.

When the video begins, Ventre is heard yelling. Two oth­er offi­cers are already on the scene.

The three police offi­cers walk around a chain-link fence to a grassy field, where Ventre is seen rolling around on the ground.

Several min­utes pass before offi­cers approach Ventre and try to calm him down. Paramedics and sev­er­al oth­er offi­cers have just arrived at this point in the video.

“Buddy, relax your body,” one offi­cer says. “Relax your body, you’re OK.”

Ventre yells out indis­cernible words and at one point tells the offi­cer his name is David.

One of the offi­cers sug­gests they hand­cuff Ventre in the front. Instead, they try to direct him toward the para­medics but Ventre is still rolling on the ground.

Eventually, sev­er­al offi­cers attempt to hand­cuff him. After a short strug­gle, Ventre is placed in cuffs and lift­ed onto a stretcher.

The Providence Police Department said that Ventre was pro­nounced dead at the hos­pi­tal just before 2 a.m.

According to a police press release, Ventre was “pos­si­bly under the influ­ence of nar­cotics.” He was placed in hand­cuffs “to pre­vent injuries and for the safe­ty of res­cue per­son­nel,” the depart­ment said, not­ing his “errat­ic behavior.”

“The sub­ject con­tin­ued to refuse to com­ply with police com­mands and after a minor strug­gle, the sub­ject was placed on a stretch­er and into the Providence Fire Department res­cue where PFD per­son­nel began to per­form CPR,” police said.

The iden­ti­ties of the offi­cers involved have not been released. The case remains under investigation.