Jury takes just six hours to find Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ shooter Michael Drejka GUILTY of manslaughter for killing an unarmed black man in a row over a disabled parking spot

• McGlockton was gunned down by Drejka dur­ing a July 2018 park­ing spot dispute
• After just three days of tes­ti­mo­ny, lawyers gave clos­ing argu­ment on Friday
• A jury found Drejka guilty of manslaugh­ter and he will be sen­tenced October 10
• He faces a min­i­mum of nine-and-a-half-years in jail up to a max­i­mum of 15 years
• McGlockton had come out of the store while Drejka was con­fronting his girlfriend
• The girl­friend had parked in a dis­abled spot and Drejka was unhap­py about it 
• Surveillance footage cap­tured the shoot­ing and showed him draw­ing his gun four sec­onds after he was pushed over by McGlockton

A Florida man on tri­al for manslaugh­ter for killing an unarmed black man in a 2018 ‘Stand Your Ground shoot­ing’ has been found guilty of manslaugh­ter. Markeis McGlockton was shot and killed by Michael Drejka dur­ing a dis­pute over a dis­abled per­son­’s park­ing spot at a Clearwater con­ve­nience store. Drejka, 49, admit­ted to shoot­ing McGlockton last year, but his defense team unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to argue it was self-defense, reignit­ing a fierce nation­al debate on the con­tro­ver­sial law. The gun­man will be sen­tenced on October 10 and faces a min­i­mum of nine-and-a-half-years in prison and a max­i­mum of 15 years, accord­ing to Florida state law.

Michael Drejka (pic­tured top) is shown in court on Friday, before the jury was sent out for delib­er­a­tions. He declined to tes­ti­fy. Drejka, 49, shot and killed Markeis McGlockton (below), 28, in July 2018 in an argu­ment over a park­ing spot

The 49-year-old had been argu­ing with McGlockton’s girl­friend over a park­ing spot in a dis­abled bay out­side a food store in Clearwater, Florida. He did not have any­one in his vehi­cle and is not dis­abled him­self but he said see­ing peo­ple abus­ing hand­i­cap spots upset him. 
Jury delib­er­a­tions last­ed rough­ly six hours, it was report­ed, with a short break at around 9:30pm when jurors request­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the instruc­tions for decid­ing guilt or inno­cence. When McGlockton emerged from the store, he pushed Drejka over. Drejka reached for his weapon and shot him in the chest, killing him. Members of McGlockton’s fam­i­ly wept as the ver­dict was read and hugged and shook hands with the pros­e­cu­tors after the court was adjourned.

‘This con­vic­tion does­n’t bring our son back, but it does give us some sense of jus­tice because far too often the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem fails us by allow­ing peo­ple who take the lives of unarmed Black peo­ple to walk free as though their lives meant noth­ing,’ McGlockton’s moth­er, Monica Robinson, said in a state­ment. ‘We are hope­ful that this con­vic­tion will be a brick in the road to chang­ing the cul­ture of racism here in Florida.’ McGlockton’s father, Michael McGlockton, said on the court steps fol­low­ing the ver­dict: ‘It’s been well over a year… but my fam­i­ly can rest now. We can start putting the pieces back togeth­er.’ Michelle Rayner, attor­ney for Markeis McGlockton’s par­ents, said: ‘I want to express thank­ful­ness and grate­ful­ness to the law firm and the office of the state attorney.

‘It was very clear it was­n’t just anoth­er case. It was very clear… that you sought to make the jury remem­ber to make the world remem­ber that Markeis mat­tered. ‘We’re thank­ful the jury got it right. We’re thank­ful that the jury saw that we saw — that a park­ing lot vig­i­lante with an ax to grind, mur­dered Markeis Mcglockton. ‘There are oth­er fam­i­lies that do not have jus­tice for their loved ones and so while we will cel­e­brate that we will also con­tin­ue stand­ing in the gap for those fam­i­lies. ‘So once again we are incred­i­bly thank­ful to the pros­e­cu­tion, we’re grate­ful to the jurors of this case that they saw what they saw and I’m so proud and hon­ored to stand here with Markeis’ fam­i­ly.’ Michael McGlockton, Markeis’ father added: ‘It’s been well over a year… but my fam­i­ly can rest now. We can start putting the pieces back together.’ 

Drejka’s attor­neys argued that he thought he was at dan­ger and for that rea­son, he should be found inno­cent. Prosecutors, how­ev­er, said sur­veil­lance footage of the inci­dent proved that he was not in dan­ger and that he shot too soon, with­out prop­er­ly assess­ing the risk. ‘This is real­ly a cut and dry case. There’s no mis­in­ter­pret­ing that Markeis McGlockton was going back­ward,’ he said, in ref­er­ence to the fact that McGlockton was walk­ing away from Drejka when he was shot. ‘Did Michael Drejka rea­son­ably believe he was about to die? Did he believe he was about to be beat­en to a pulp? No,’ Scott Rosenwasser told the jury. ‘You can­not shoot an unarmed retreat­ing man, regard­less of if he’s pushed you,’ he went on. 

Prosecutors said he thought of him­self as a ‘vig­i­lante enforcer’ who had a ‘pet peeve’ about able-bod­ied peo­ple park­ing in dis­abled spots. ‘He’s got a pet peeve… he takes it upon him­self to be the enforcer. He’s a park­ing lot vig­i­lante,’ he said. He also crit­i­cized the way Drejka used police ter­mi­nol­o­gy while being inter­viewed by detec­tives when he had no law enforce­ment back­ground. ‘How many civil­ians walk around say­ing ‘neu­tral­ize’ and ‘neg­a­tive’. Those are law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary terms. Nobody talks like that. But he does. ‘He goes to enforce a spot at a con­ve­nience store, not like it’s his own prop­er­ty, and then he’s like, ‘I can’t believe she would talk back to me like that.’ ‘That’s his men­tal­i­ty,’ he said. Drejka’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed expert wit­ness­es to try to hold up his Stand Your Ground Defense. 

In his clos­ing argu­ment, one of his lawyers told jurors to ‘use your com­mon sense’ and said it was entire­ly rea­son­able for him to pre­sume that McGlockton was going to hurt him. ‘He was­n’t going out there to hug him. Come on! Use your com­mon sense,’ attor­ney John Trevena said. ‘Your fun­da­men­tal right is to stay alive,’ he said, adding that Drejka ‘did not have the phys­i­cal capac­i­ty to defend him­self against such an aggres­sor.’ Trevena also chipped away at pros­e­cu­tors’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of him as trig­ger hap­py and said he had legal­ly owned a gun with­out fir­ing it for 25 years. ‘You’d think if some­body was itch­ing to use a firearm, if that was their agen­da, you would­n’t have found some­one in 25 years’ time?’ he added. ‘No one is dis­put­ing that he shot this man. It’s all on video,’ he said. He added that he felt pros­e­cu­tors had ‘manip­u­lat­ed’ the jurors. 

The defense focused on the term dead­ly force and how it applies to cit­i­zens and not just law enforce­ment under the law. They asked the jury to con­sid­er not whether McGlockton was actu­al­ly pos­ing a threat, but whether they think it was rea­son­able for Drejka to assume that he was and draw his weapon. The pros­e­cu­tion tore it apart and said they jury ought not to rule on what Drejka per­ceived as a threat, but what a rea­son­able per­son would per­ceive as a threat. The defense tried to use a real gun as a prop at one stage to try to make their case but the judge did not allow it. The defense pre­sent­ed just three wit­ness­es. Drejka chose not tes­ti­fy, telling the judge through a state­ment: ‘I pre­fer not to tes­ti­fy.’ The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed more than 17 wit­ness­es. They also played a video of his inter­view where he told the cops: ‘I shoot to save my own a**. And that’s that.’ 

Elsewhere in the inter­view he said he thought McGlockton was going to kick him. ‘It hap­pened so fast and that was that. …I thought kicks were com­ing or at least he’d be on top of me. ‘As I come out I start draw­ing my weapon. As I start lev­el­ing off my weapon, he makes his next step towards me and 21-foot rule. ‘It hap­pened so fast and that was that. …I thought kicks were com­ing or at least he’d be on top of me. ‘I’m think­ing he’s com­ing to do the rest of it… what­ev­er beat­ing was com­ing after that. If he’s gonna hit me that hard to begin with from blind­side from the get-go, what else should I expect? ‘He bare­ly made the sec­ond step before I pulled the trigger.

At one point in the hour long inter­view, Drejka got on the ground and mim­ic­ked how he’d shot McGlockton. He said that even though McGlockton was unarmed, he did not know that and that he thought his life was in dan­ger. Drejka said he feared he was going to ‘fin­ish what he start­ed’ when he pushed him over and that he was try­ing to pre­empt it. The shoot­ing was cap­tured on sur­veil­lance videos out­side the store. The footage shows McGlockton edg­ing away from Drejka when he was shot. 

When the detec­tive told Drejka that instead of approach­ing him, he was back­ing away, Drejka said he ‘dis­agreed’. The detec­tives found it unusu­al that Drejka knew so much about the 21ft rule — a term invoked by law enforce­ment which refer the dis­tance a sus­pect can trav­el towards an offi­cer by the time they have iden­ti­fied a threat and pulled their weapon. There was also tes­ti­mo­ny from a police train­er who was famil­iar with the 21ft rule. He said the Drejka was wrong to invoke it and said it did not apply in his case. Among oth­er wit­ness­es was Noël Palma, the med­ical exam­in­er who per­formed an autop­sy on the vic­tim’s body. The bul­let trav­eled through his left lung and pierced his heart and right lung, caus­ing him to die ‘pret­ty quick­ly.’ Other state wit­ness­es includ­ed a doc­tor who deter­mined McGlockton had ecsta­sy in his sys­tem at the time of his death. On Wednesday, the dead man’s girl­friend, who wit­nessed his death with her chil­dren in the back of her car, said she remem­bered think­ing that she want­ed Drejka to leave her and ‘her babies alone’. There was also tes­ti­mo­ny from a dif­fer­ent black motorist who Drejka threat­ened to shoot for park­ing in the same dis­abled spot four months before McGlockton’s death.

‘Parking lot vig­i­lante’ Michael Drejka had a ‘pet peeve’ for peo­ple improp­er­ly using dis­abled spots and viewed him­self as ‘the enforcer’ 

Throughout the tri­al, there was lit­tle men­tion of Drejka’s back­ground or why he was so irate when McGlockton’s girl­friend parked in the dis­abled spot. 

He is not dis­abled and there was no one else in his car. 

But through­out the inves­ti­ga­tion, it emerged he had pre­vi­ous­ly told peo­ple he became upset when he saw able-bod­ied peo­ple abus­ing the park­ing spots. 

WHAT IS THE ‘21ft RULE’ MICHAEL DREJKA TRIED TO USE TO JUSTIFY KILLING 

The 21ft rule, oth­er­wise known as the Trueller rule, is invoked my law enforce­ment and taught in train­ing exer­cis­es.  It refers to the dis­tance — 21ft — a sus­pect may trav­el towards an offi­cer dur­ing the time it can take an offi­cer to iden­ti­fy a dead­ly threat and draw their weapon to stop them.  It orig­i­nat­ed from a Salt Lake City detec­tive, Sergeant Dennis Tueller, and applied at the to knife attacks. The detec­tive test­ed how long it took in drills for peo­ple to cov­er 21ft, and found that it could be cov­ered in just 1.5 sec­onds.  While it is well known among law enforce­ment ranks, it is not com­mon knowl­edge among civil­ians.  Prosecutors said it was unusu­al for Drejka to fix­ate on it giv­en he has no back­ground in law enforcement. 

His moth­er-in-law is hand­i­capped and he had a high school sweet­heart who was also dis­abled and is now dead, he told some. Prosecutors said he was a ‘vig­i­lante enforcer’ with a ‘pet peeve’ for peo­ple who parked in the spots improp­er­ly. ‘He’s got a pet peeve… he takes it upon him­self to be the enforcer. ‘He’s a park­ing lot vig­i­lante,’ he said. Drejka and his wife, who has not been named pub­licly and has spo­ken only on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty after receiv­ing death threats in rela­tion to the case, have been mar­ried since 2010. She gave an inter­view after the shoot­ing last year to say that she was stand­ing by him, but she oth­er­wise has not spo­ken. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a tree trim­mer but stopped when he injured him­self. Originally from Delaware, he moved to Florida and got mar­ried in 2010.

Since then, he has worked as an Uber dri­ver but he gave up that job when his car became ‘inop­er­a­ble’, accord­ing to pre­vi­ous state­ments from his attor­ney. Drejka was described as a fre­quent cus­tomer of the food store where the shoot­ing took place and the own­er, who was among the state’s wit­ness­es, char­ac­ter­ized him as a ‘nosy’ per­son. He is nev­er thought to been giv­en police or law enforce­ment train­ing but was quick to make ref­er­ence to the 21ft rule when being ques­tioned by police in the hours after the attack. The 21ft rule refers to the dis­tance a sus­pect may be able to trav­el towards an offi­cer in the time that they have iden­ti­fied a threat and have drawn their weapon. Drejka said he invoked it when McGlockton was stand­ing in front of him and said he thought he was going to be harmed if he did not shoot.

But experts picked apart his sto­ry, say­ing the rule did not apply, because McGlockton was nei­ther mov­ing towards him nor was he 21ft away from him. They also ques­tioned whether he posed any real threat since there was no weapon drawn. Drejka drew his weapon and fired it four sec­onds after McGlockton pushed him to the ground. 

Schand was then-21-years old when he was sen­tenced to life with­out parole after being con­vict­ed of shoot­ing and killing Victoria Seymour, a moth­er of three, dur­ing a rob­bery of a drug deal­er out­side a club in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1986.

Schand, who was then pegged as a “trou­ble­mak­er”, was appar­ent­ly tar­get­ed by local detec­tives who alleged­ly “showed a pho­to of Schand wear­ing sun­glass­es to one of the drug deal­ers and told him that Schand ‘had shot Ms. Seymour’,” accord­ing to his lawsuit.

Brothers David and Charles “Heavy” Stokes, who were the drug deal­ers and two of the wit­ness­es, iden­ti­fied Schand as the gun­man. Years lat­er, they and the oth­er wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied that he is the gun­man changed their state­ments and said that the detec­tives had coerced them into lying.

Schand’s case has reached to Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based non­prof­it that helps release those who have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, and helped find new evi­dence in his case.

He was offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ed in 2013 and his con­vic­tion was over­turned. The state, how­ev­er, did not apol­o­gize and admit any wrong­do­ing. They only ini­tial­ly agreed to pay him $450,000.

After two years, he filed a law­suit against the city of Springfield and the four police offi­cers whom he claimed vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights for fram­ing him for the crime he did not com­mit which land­ed him in jail. In his com­plaint, Schand accused the police of hid­ing evi­dence, coerc­ing the wit­ness­es to lie, and manip­u­lat­ing the pho­to line­ups of suspects.

Last Friday, the jury ruled in Schand’s favor and award­ed him $27 million.

“After all this time, this is the first time there was some acknowl­edg­ment that some­one [had] done some­thing in my wrong­ful con­vic­tion, some­one was respon­si­ble for it,” he told NPR. “And, you know, that was almost bet­ter than the mon­e­tary damages.”

Heather McDevitt, his attor­ney, was equal­ly grate­ful for the rul­ing, espe­cial­ly because of the jus­tice they received.

“What are 27 years of a person’s life worth?” said McDevitt. “That’s a very inter­est­ing philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion. There are expe­ri­ences that can nev­er be recre­at­ed. There’s the pain and suf­fer­ing and sub­jec­tion to vio­lence and iso­la­tion and loneliness.”

Schand, who is now 55-years old, is liv­ing with his wife and three sons. He cur­rent­ly owns three sand­wich and smooth­ie shops and said that he does not rely much on the mon­e­tary award giv­en to him.

“Nothing is going to change much. It’s only mon­ey, I don’t have it yet and I don’t know if I ever will,” he told local media, not­ing that the city is plan­ning the appeal the decision.

News out of Kingston Jamaica is that for­mer edu­ca­tion Minister Ruel Reid, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Maritime University Fritz Pinnock, and a JLP parish Councillor have been tak­en into cus­tody by local police ear­ly Wednesday morn­ing.
Reid and Pinnock have report­ed­ly been under police inves­ti­ga­tions for months. (According to the Jamaica Gleaner) The months-long probe involves the Major Organised Crime Agency (MOCA) and the Financial Investigation Division (FID). Reid resigned on March 20 amid the cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions and yes­ter­day, Pinnock was sent on spe­cial leave with imme­di­ate effect pend­ing the out­come of the probe. Law enforce­ment offi­cers swooped down on Reid’s St Andrew house at 5 o’clock this morn­ing, the same time they arrived at Pinnock’s Hellshire home in Portmore, St Catherine in unmarked vehi­cles. MOCA detec­tives are also at the St Ann home of Jamaica Labour Party Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence.

Already the par­ti­sans are all over social media crow­ing on the one hand and lament­ing on the oth­er. Those opposed to the JLP are exu­ber­ant, those sup­port­ive of the par­ty are incred­u­lous that mem­bers of their par­ty could be arrest­ed by the police.
At this time we will not com­ment on the speci­fici­ty of the case because we have not seen the indict­ment.
Sufficing to say, how­ev­er, whether these accused are inno­cent or guilty, this is a good day for the rule of law.
Jamaicans are not used to see­ing police offi­cers raid­ing homes and arrest­ing politi­cians, regard­less of how low on the food chain they fall.
Simply put, the high com­mand of the JCF has been so com­pro­mised through polit­i­cal-affil­i­a­tions, feal­ty, and cow­ardice, that the prospect of the JCF con­duct­ing seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions against peo­ple with pow­er has been zero.
Despite the tril­lions of dol­lars siphoned from the Jamaican peo­ple, the Island’s Teflon politi­cians have all avoid­ed inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion, with the excep­tion of two.
(1) J.A.G Smith of the JLP spent time in prison for fraud and (2) Kern Spencer of the PNP who was indict­ed but not con­vict­ed because a sit­ting Magistrate (Judith Pusey) used her posi­tion to stymie the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Spencer being held to account for the crimes alleged against him.

This writer makes no state­ment of guilt or inno­cence regard­ing the accused. In fact, the his­tor­i­cal incom­pe­tence and lack of case prepa­ra­tion for which the JCF is infa­mous, is enough to inspire cau­tion.
Nevertheless, (inno­cent or guilty), the arrest of these accused, sends the right mes­sage to those who believe that their posi­tions of pow­er insu­late them from the reach­es of the law when they decide to trans­gress our laws.
This should not be a glee­ful moment, nei­ther should it be a sad moment.
Supporters of both polit­i­cal par­ties should see this moment as a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of our fledg­ling demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.
It should say to each and every Jamaican,” the laws apply to every­one, regard­less of their sta­tion”.
For the gov­ern­ing JLP, it is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to say “we don’t want crim­i­nals in our par­ty” and for the PNP in oppo­si­tion, it is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take heed that crim­i­nal mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic resources will not be tol­er­at­ed.
Regardless of the out­come of this case, today is a good day for the rule of law, and for law-abid­ing Jamaicans, regard­less of their politics. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Oakland, CA — Jonathan Bandabaila, a 19-year old Black teen from Oakland, has been miss­ing since May, and his fam­i­ly is express­ing their dis­ap­point­ment with the Oakland Police Department. They alleged­ly man­aged to send out a search notice about a miss­ing dog with­in 2 days, but it took almost 4 months to issue a sim­i­lar search notice for their loved one.

Jonathan was report­ed­ly last seen on May 3^rd after he left his home to attend a soc­cer tour­na­ment. His car was found the next day parked in the west­bound direc­tion of the San Mateo Bridge.

Police also recov­ered some of his belong­ings inside the car, such as his soc­cer uni­form, gears, and clothes he planned to wear to an upcom­ing for­mal event.

His broth­er, Harrison Bandabaila, described Jonathan as an “amaz­ing per­son” and said they had no idea why he would just disappear.

“I don’t think he ran away. There were no signs of depres­sion or men­tal ill­ness. He was hap­py,” he told East Bay Times.

Meanwhile, Harrison claimed the police seemed not to show con­cern about his brother’s vanishing.

“One of my family’s com­plaints was that the Oakland Police Department put out a memo that there’s a dog miss­ing — two days after it went miss­ing — yet it took them 149 days to put out that Jonathan was miss­ing,” Harrison said in a recent inter­view on Sirius XM’s The Clay Cane Show. “Like, it’s very frustrating.”

He added that they couldn’t help but be dis­ap­point­ed with the fact that Jonathan’s dis­ap­pear­ance appar­ent­ly did not have enough news cov­er­age. He said his moth­er watch­es cable news every night, hop­ing to see a sto­ry about it, but to no avail.

“There are oth­er situation’s going on in our soci­ety, in our com­mu­ni­ty and they (the media) are report­ing about stuff that, you know — it’s some­thing to report on, there are impor­tant things. But there are oth­er things more impor­tant than that.”

Moreover, his fam­i­ly is offer­ing a $2,500 reward to any­one who has infor­ma­tion lead­ing to Jonathan’s whereabouts.

It is shock­ing, the sense of apa­thy and unwill­ing­ness of America’s Black pop­u­la­tion to take its future into its own hands in a uni­fied and decid­ed way.
Statistical data and analy­sis show we do bet­ter when we unite, yet the data is sum­mar­i­ly ignored and dis­card­ed. There is almost a sense of res­ig­na­tion to the idea of sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship in some quar­ters. In oth­ers, the absurd expec­ta­tion is that the white man will even­tu­al­ly change, act human, and right some of the wrongs he did. Equally absurd, is the notion that all we have to do is pray.
( I thought I read some­where that faith with­out works was dead).

The fic­tion­al Doctor Huxtable (Bill Cosby) told his son, Theo, (Malcolm Jamal Warner ) that his brain would not explode if he stud­ied and retained what he had read.
My expe­ri­ences when talk­ing about the issues, hav­ing had numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions with many and var­ied African-American friends and asso­ciates, are either blank stares or dis­in­ter­est­ed indif­fer­ence.
On rare occa­sions, some­one [woke] seems to care, or is appro­pri­ate­ly informed on the real­i­ties of the issues at hand, we gen­er­al­ly dis­agree on the approach­es nec­es­sary to reme­di­ate those issues.
The tragedy in my hum­ble esti­ma­tion, is not the lack of “militancy”,(though nec­es­sary), it is the lack of his­tor­i­cal curiosity.

The issues of which I speak are not of grav­i­ta­tion­al fields and black holes, they are rather sim­ple issues, like, school board meet­ings. Voting. Paying atten­tion to the issues. How issues affect peo­ple’s lives. How apa­thy and the lack of curios­i­ty about the issues, and the will to par­tic­i­pate in the process, empow­er oth­ers who do not care about our inter­ests, to cre­ate poli­cies anti­thet­i­cal to our well-being.
Sadly, we either delve in blind reli­gios­i­ty on the one hand, or immerse our­selves in mind-numb­ing excur­sions of las­civ­i­ous plea­sures and enter­tain­ment.
We ignore our own inter­ests as if they are some­one else’s prob­lems, oth­er peo­ple’s bat­tles to fight. We delight in neg­a­tiv­i­ty and infan­tile clich­es, that’s where we rev­el and find com­mon cause.

We seem to care pre­cious lit­tle about the intran­si­gent and can­cer­ous prob­lem of racism, police-abuse, the dis­parate jus­tice, and edu­ca­tion sys­tems which exist.
I am dis­tressed that to a large extent and sad to say, the lev­el of aware­ness on the part of my African-American broth­ers and sis­ters is woe­ful­ly lack­ing, as opposed to peo­ple from Africa or the Caribbean.
Shockingly, it is as if a plu­ral­i­ty of the peo­ple with whom I con­verse lives in total dark­ness and have pre­cious lit­tle curios­i­ty about events hap­pen­ing in their country.

Video games, Reality TV, Netflix movies gar­ner much of the atten­tion of our peo­ple on the one hand, and cult-like reli­gios­i­ty pret­ty much occu­pies the mind of oth­ers. Even though the aver­age African-American with whom I cross paths have smart­phones and unlim­it­ed data.
The data is hard­ly ever used for edu­ca­tion and or infor­ma­tion. Entertainment is the num­ber one thing the data is used for.
During President Obama’s Presidency, one good­ly gen­tle­man asked me, “is Obama still in there”?
I stood there with my mouth agape, caught between the desire to lash out at him, yet frozen in dis­be­lief, unable to get over the shock of his dis­in­ter­est.
How could he not know who the pres­i­dent of the United States was?
If you have no idea who the pres­i­dent is, how do you know who your sen­a­tors, congressmen/​women, state and local leg­is­la­tors are?
After all that Black peo­ple sur­vived in America, he could not both­er to be awake for the dura­tion of the first black presidency.

It is I believe, these twin demons of blind reli­gios­i­ty and lack of curios­i­ty which will keep Blacks in America mired in the mud and morass of per­ceived infe­ri­or­i­ty for gen­er­a­tions to come.
It is exact­ly as a result of these twin demons which caus­es our ene­mies to brush us aside as inconsequential,.….unworthy of respect and dig­ni­ty.
It is for those rea­sons which cause every eth­nic group which enters the United States, (no mat­ter how poor and dis­pos­sessed), to look at us as the peo­ple least wor­thy of respect.

Instead of tak­ing seri­ous­ly these crit­i­cisms and engag­ing in intro­spec­tion the default response is to cas­ti­gate and demo­nize the mes­sen­ger.
No one wants to hear that the things they have believed all their lives are pro­pa­gan­da and lies fed to them in an effort to keep them sub­ju­gat­ed and befit­ting the stereo­typ­i­cal per­cep­tions of ³⁄₅ of a human being.
”[Yes but],” gen­er­al­ly fol­lows any state­ment of fact which cuts against the grain of the reli­gious dog­ma we have been force-fed all our lives. “Yes, “I hear your facts, “But, “I am dis­card­ing your truth, because I don’t want to both­er learn­ing any­thing new, even if its the truth.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

MB

I watched and lis­tened to bits and pieces of the Amber Guyger mur­der tri­al days ago. Full dis­clo­sure, I missed most of the tri­al itself but watched the sen­tenc­ing phase.
I missed the tri­al because I have zero con­fi­dence in the American jus­tice sys­tem to hold a white cop account­able for mur­der­ing a Black per­son, much less a white female who hap­pens to be a cop.
Some friends of mine thought dif­fer­ent­ly, because it hap­pened to be a jury tri­al, and so they were hyped that for once the sys­tem would give African-Americans a sec­ond dose of the O.J Simpson adren­a­line, this many years later.

Me, I have no such delu­sions about any degree of equi­ty in the sys­tem I have watched up close for so many years.
I have seen a black woman sen­tenced to five years in prison for ille­gal­ly using a wrong address so she could get her child into a good school and a white woman who paid thou­sands to get her kid into an ivy league col­league get a cou­ple of weeks in a coun­try-club jail as pun­ish­ment.
We have seen a black woman Marissa Alexander receive twen­ty (20) years for fir­ing her gun into a ceil­ing to ward off her abu­sive hus­band, nine days after giv­ing birth to their child in Florida, a state with stand your ground laws.
We have seen Kelontre Barefield, 23, receive a (45) year sen­tence after plead­ing guilty to the shoot­ing death of a police dog.
We have also seen count­less­ly inno­cent and unarmed Black men gunned down in hails of police bul­lets and no one held account­able.
And who can for­get the National Kerfuffle that was cre­at­ed around for­mer NFL quar­ter­back Michael Vick’s alleged involve­ment in a dog­fight­ing ring?
Vick was even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to 27 months in fed­er­al prison, even though there was zero evi­dence that Vick him­self had per­son­al­ly hurt a sin­gle dog.

Cyntoia Brown served fif­teen (15) years in a Tennessee prison for an inci­dent that occurred when she was a mere 16-year-old girl.
Cyntoia was sen­tenced to life in prison in the shoot­ing death of 43-year-old Johnny Allen.
Allen was found dead of a sin­gle shot to the back of his head.
Brown who nev­er denied pulling the trig­ger, said she was sent by her then-24-year-old boyfriend and pimp to make mon­ey. According to Brown, Allen picked her up at a Nashville Sonic restau­rant, bought her food and then took her to his home. She said he want­ed to have sex with her, and intim­i­dat­ed her by point­ing out the guns he owned and his expe­ri­ence as a mil­i­tary sharp­shoot­er. Brown shot Allen as he lay in bed, say­ing she feared he was reach­ing for a gun. 
Regardless of where the truth lies, Cyntoia Brown received a life sen­tence for a crime she com­mit­ted at the ten­der age of six­teen, and had been a vic­tim of sex traf­fick­ing.
She was insti­tu­tion­al­ized for more than half of her life. Eight years lat­er, in 2012, a U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing found sen­tenc­ing juve­niles to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.
Needless to say, Jonny Allen just hap­pened to have been a white man. His sup­port­ers at the time said they did­n’t believe Allen propo­si­tioned Brown, only that he was try­ing to help her stay off the streets.
Ya.……

I got­ta say though, the fore­gone is real­ly not the cen­tral tenet of what I want­ed to say today.
Instead, I want­ed to talk a lit­tle about what I per­son­al­ly observed in State District Judge Tammy Kemp’s court­room.
I must admit that hav­ing spent many hours in court­rooms as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, and hav­ing spent eons of time watch­ing tri­als, both, as a writer, and some­one focused on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, I found Judge Kemp’s man­ner­isms pecu­liar, to say the least.
I’ll also admit that while watch­ing the sen­tenc­ing of Guyger I shed a few tears.
Those tears fell for the Jean Family, I know what it feels like to lose a son who was like a bright light, albeit under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.
My tears flowed even more freely because of the intran­si­gent stub­born­ness of the injus­tice which still per­vades the American Justice sys­tem.
I thought to myself, and told my wife, if this tri­al was up to judge Kemp, Amber Guyger would be home free.
In the end, Amber Guyger was [kin­da] held respon­si­ble for the bla­tant unpro­voked mur­der of Botham Shem Jean. Her sen­tence for killing mis­ter Jean, 10 years. A tiny slap on the wrist.

Of course, to many in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty unused to see­ing mur­der­ous cops held account­able, this is some kin­da start.
For oth­ers, the ver­dict is just anoth­er exam­ple that for Black peo­ple in America, no mat­ter how dis­tin­guished they are, their lives can be snuffed out, and there is hard­ly any con­se­quence to police, even when they are sit­ting in their homes watch­ing tele­vi­sion and enjoy­ing a bowl of ice cream.

Before we talk about the impro­pri­ety of a sit­ting judge hug­ging a con­vict­ed mur­der­er, there were oth­er things which just seemed odd to me and I expect oth­er observers, oth­er than myself may have had a prob­lem with what we observed.
For exam­ple, a uni­formed Black female police offi­cer in the court­room, brush­ing back Amber Guyger’s blond hair, seemed to sym­bol­ize to me that no mat­ter their posi­tion, some Black-Americans are still not con­ver­sant that they are no longer on the plan­ta­tion.
Regardless of the fact that Guyger may have been a col­league, it was high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate that a uni­formed offi­cer was in open court act­ing like (Mammy).
In that very court­room, evi­dence was led that the then alleged mur­der­er Amber Guyger had mocked Doctor King’s death and espoused vio­lent killings.
As far as for­give­ness is con­cerned, I am all for it, nev­er­the­less, the very Bible which demands for­give­ness of us was used to keep us enslaved.
It seems to me that the only time that for­give­ness becomes a dis­cus­sion top­ic, is when white peo­ple seri­ous­ly aggrieve Blacks and are to be held account­able.
I am not opposed to the young broth­er of Botham for­giv­ing Amber Guyger and telling her he loves and for­gives her. It is his right. I am doubt­ful how­ev­er that con­tex­tu­al­ly, the young Jean has a full appre­ci­a­tion of America’s entrenched injustice.

The idea that a sit­ting judge would embrace (a just con­vict­ed) mur­der­er seemed way beyond the pale for me.
It may cer­tain­ly be the Christian thing to do but why are Blacks the only offi­cials sup­posed to demon­strate mer­cy and Christian for­give­ness on the rare occa­sions they get to decide?
I care noth­ing about the fact that Judge (weirdo) Tammy Kemp hand­ed Guyger a Bible. I am yet to see one sin­gle instance of a white Judge demon­strat­ing that kind of com­pas­sion to a Black con­vict. Where is their human­i­ty when they have pow­er?
Never have I seen it. Judge Kemp’s deci­sion to allow the Jury to con­sid­er the “sud­den pas­sion” defense which experts assert does not apply to Amber Guyger, may very well have impact­ed the Jury’s deci­sion to let her off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

Jude Kemp’s deci­sion to also act as “Mammy,” destroys the myth which many Blacks seem to embrace, that Blacks can change the injus­tice sys­tem when they hold posi­tions of pow­er in it.
Understandably Judge Kemp had to abide by the jury’s deci­sion, but her actions made it clear she was more con­cerned with pleas­ing her back­ers, rather than act­ing accord­ing to prece­dent.
Even before the dis­grace­ful hug, I thought from her body lan­guage Kemp would rather allow Amber Guyger to walk free.
Former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill — crit­i­cized the judge’s action as “unac­cept­able.“
I’m with her!
I won­dered whether I was being fair to Judge Kemp even as I was both­ered by what I saw. Maybe I was being too sensitive.

And then wal­lah…
No, you were not wrong Mike, there is always some­thing under the sur­face. Something deep­er than the self-right­eous Black Christians who refuse to think out­side the brain­washed and blink­ered box can com­pre­hend.
These pub­lic offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and oth­er lead­ers, are all behold­en to the pow­er­ful police unions whose endorse­ment they seek, while tac­it­ly sur­ren­der­ing your rights and mine, for those endorse­ments.
If you believe that hav­ing black police offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors, judges or leg­is­la­tors guar­an­tees jus­tice, guess again.
In fact, the Dallas Police Chief is black, one of the pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys was black and of course, [Mammy] Kemp is also Black.
Clarence Thomas’s actions on the Supreme Court ought to have dis­pelled that myth long ago.

The indoc­tri­na­tion of Black peo­ple through Religion has been a mas­ter­ful stroke of genius on the part of the white oppres­sors.
Today, even when American Blacks sit in seats where they have the abil­i­ty to wield pow­er, they are so social­ized to be in servi­tude that they can­not help act­ing like servile fools.
Additionally, there are mil­lions more, who agree with their slav­ish def­er­ence, because they too are slaves to the brain­wash­ing.
It is a sad despi­ca­ble spec­ta­cle to behold. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Two things are hap­pen­ing as a result of the bla­tant racist poli­cies inher­ent in American police train­ing and prac­tices.
(1) Innocent peo­ple, and more specif­i­cal­ly, African-Americans and oth­er peo­ple of col­or are los­ing their lives.
(2) Cops will more and more be held account­able when they abuse, or take the lives of the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
The lack of respect for the dig­ni­ty of Black peo­ple in America has nur­tured and nour­ished a dan­ger­ous cul­ture of dis­dain and dis­re­gard which has cost count­less peo­ple of col­or their very lives.
This is noth­ing new, but with the advent of social media and cell phone cam­eras, much of what has been occur­ring under the cov­er of dark­ness has start­ed com­ing to light.
False arrests, lying on police reports, fal­si­fy­ing police reports, fram­ing inno­cent cit­i­zens, and a host of oth­er ille­gal and immoral acts have been brushed aside and secret­ly sup­port­ed by peo­ple in pow­er, [ie] (Judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and Legislators ).
They know that a lot of the peo­ple who get dragged into the court­rooms by these cops are inno­cent as hell yet they press ahead with pros­e­cut­ing and sen­tenc­ing the inno­cent rather than rep­ri­mand and hold police account­able.
In many cas­es, cops are caught lying under oath, [per­jury] is a felony, yet the cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors and judges take no action against them.
Subsequently, their depart­ments take no action against them.

It was that indif­fer­ence to black lives, and the knowl­edge that he would not be held account­able which caused a los­er, a com­mu­ni­ty punk, George Zimmerman to feel free to extin­guish the life of Trayvon Martin.
He was right. Even though he isn’t white, he believed him­self to be, and there­fore enti­tled to the extra priv­i­leges which come with paler skin.
As far as the jus­tice sys­tem is con­cerned, George Zimmerman was cor­rect in his assump­tions.
It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Michale Slager a police offi­cer, to gun down Walter Scott in South Carolina, and lied that he tried to take his taser.
If a con­sci­en­tious per­son had not secret­ly video­taped the entire inci­dent Walter Slager would still be a cop in South Carolina today.
That per­va­sive cul­ture of kill them and go home to your fam­i­ly, caused a cow­ard­ly punk wear­ing police uni­form to snuff out the life of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice for hold­ing a toy gun in a pub­lic park where chil­dren are sup­posed to play in safe­ty.
By virtue of his black skin young Tamir Rice was not afford­ed the inno­cence of being a twelve-year-old play­ing with his toy gun as most of us did.
He was gunned down by peo­ple his par­ents paid a salary to keep him safe.

It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Chicago cop, Jason Van Dyke to fire six­teen bul­lets hit­ting Laquan McDonald sev­er­al times killing him, even though he was walk­ing away from him.
In that case four(4) oth­er cops were fired from the depart­ment and Van Dyke was found guilty of mur­der­ing McDonald.
It caused rene­gade NYPD cops to fire 41 bul­lets at Amadou Diallo hit­ting him 19 times, killing him.
Reckless, depraved, uncon­cerned about the human­i­ty of mis­ter Diallo. Rudolph Guiliani the then Mayor of the city had giv­en them the green light to dis­re­gard the human­i­ty of the African-American pop­u­la­tion in the city.
The killing of Amadou Diallo would be only one of many peo­ple mur­dered and abused in the most grotesque man­ner by mem­bers of the NYPD.
The most base and crass dis­re­spect imag­in­able. A dis­re­spect which no sane per­son would ever con­tem­plate com­mit­ting against an ani­mal. That most grotesque of dis­dain and utter con­tempt was exact­ed on Abner Louima when he was assault­ed, bru­tal­ized, and sex­u­al­ly abused in 1997 by NYPD thugs, Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese, and oth­ers.
In what should have been one of the safest places for any­one to be, Abner Louima was sodom­ized in the bath­room of a NYPD precinct-house by the afore­men­tioned depraved and sadis­tic ani­mals in uniform.

The list is long: Eric Garner. Philando Castile,. Sandra Bland alleged­ly mur­dered in a Texas jail after a cop pulled her over alleg­ing that she failed to indi­cate before mak­ing a turn.
John Crawford mur­dered by cops in a Walmart for hav­ing a rifle he was hold­ing, even though Walmart sells the guns.
The ques­tion must be, “Would a white man be mur­dered for hav­ing a rifle, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a store in which a large part of their busi­ness is gun sales?
The answer is no!
The dis­re­spect and indif­fer­ence are so per­va­sive that even those who do not hide behind badges feel empow­ered to take the lives of Black peo­ple just because. 

Take for instance Michael Dunn who fatal­ly shot a teenag­er dur­ing a November 2012 argu­ment sparked by loud rap music at a Jacksonville gas sta­tion.
The South Patrick Shores soft­ware devel­op­er was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole for killing Jordan Davis, 17. Prosecutors said Dunn fired 10 shots at a red Dodge Durango car­ry­ing Davis and three oth­er black teenagers dur­ing a Black Friday park­ing-lot dis­pute over the teens’ boom­ing music.
There is not enough time or place in this arti­cle to doc­u­ment the myr­i­ad instances in which this bla­tant dis­re­gard for Black lives, has caused African-Americans their lives.
This leads us to Dallas Cop, 31-year ‑old Amber Guyger who killed the accom­plished 27-year-old Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment. 

Sept. 6, 2018 — Botham Jean, an accoun­tant at the inter­na­tion­al audit­ing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, is in his apart­ment eat­ing ice cream when Guyger, who has just capped off a 13 1/​2‑hour shift as a Dallas police offi­cer by help­ing a SWAT team arrest three sus­pect­ed rob­bers, enters through his unlocked door and fatal­ly shoots him in the chest after mis­tak­ing him for a bur­glar. Moments after the shoot­ing, Guyger real­izes she is in the wrong apart­ment.
Those are Guyger’s allegations.

Sept. 9, 2018 — An arrest war­rant is issued for Guyger, charg­ing her with manslaugh­ter. She is released on $300,000 bond and put on admin­is­tra­tive leave from her job. Guyger, accord­ing to an arrest war­rant affi­davit, told inves­ti­ga­tors she arrived home from work about 10 p.m. and mis­tak­en­ly parked her pick­up truck on the fourth floor of the build­ing instead of the third floor, which cor­re­spond­ed to her apart­ment. She claimed she then walked down a hall­way to an apart­ment she thought was hers, but when she insert­ed the key she found the door was slight­ly ajar. As she entered the apart­ment she heard some­one inside and saw a “large sil­hou­ette” in the near­ly com­plete­ly dark­ened apart­ment that she thought was a bur­glar. She fired twice after telling the person she believed to be an intrud­er to show his or her hands, author­i­ties said. 

Jan. 20, 2019 — A woman who filmed the after­math of the shoot­ing of Jean claims in an inter­view that she has been receiv­ing death threats and was fired from her job after she uploaded the video to social media. The footage shows an appar­ent­ly dis­tressed Guyger, still in her police uni­form, talk­ing on her phone as she paces back and forth out­side Jean’s apart­ment on Sept. 6. 

April 30, 2019 – The 911 call made by Guyger after she shot Jean is obtained by ABC Dallas sta­tion WFAA. In the call, Guyger repeat­ed­ly tells a dis­patch­er, “I thought it was my apart­ment,” and says, “I’m going to lose my job.”
Amber Guyger was more wor­ried about her job than the fact that she had just killed an inno­cent man in his own home.

Amber Guyger was just found guilty of mur­der in a Dallas County court yes­ter­day. On Sept. 11, 2018 — Lee Merritt, an attor­ney for Jean’s fam­i­ly, calls Guyger’s sto­ry “high­ly implau­si­ble.” Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said at the time she had not ruled out a mur­der indict­ment. She made true on her words.
The fact is that even if one agrees with Miss Guyger’s sto­ry there are some fun­da­men­tal flaws in what she did, even if she thought there was an intrud­er in her home.
She did not call for back­up as she was sup­posed to as per pro­to­col. She nev­er once claimed that she saw a gun or any oth­er weapon in mis­ter Jean’s hand.
In fact, the evi­dence is that mis­ter Jean dressed in a T‑shirt and a pair of shorts was set­tled on his couch eat­ing a bowl of ice cream.
Miss Guyger could have tak­en pro­tec­tive cov­er and called for back­up as I stat­ed ear­li­er, after all, who would want to kill an intrud­er in their own home?
Without ever see­ing a weapon or being attacked Amber Guyger lied that mis­ter Jean was advanc­ing on her when she shot him. Ballistics experts even­tu­al­ly debunked that lies as the tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let showed that the 5 – 3″ Guyger shot the 6 -+ Jean as he was in a crouch­ing posi­tion.
Arguably shot as he was fright­ened at some­one in his home and was about to get up from the couch.
Nevertheless, Amber Guyger felt at lib­er­ty to put down the Black man in what she thought was her apart­ment and so she put two bul­lets in mis­ter Jean’s body, one of which went straight through his heart.
Would she have shot at a white man giv­en sim­i­lar circumstances? 

At the sen­tenc­ing phase of the tri­al on Wednesday, the defense trot­ted out an alleged for­mer drug abuser, a 67-year-old African-American woman who claimed that Guyger influ­enced her to clean up her life. She tes­ti­fied that she was influ­enced to change her life and that Guger attend­ed her grad­u­a­tion after she had com­plet­ed her grad­u­a­tion.
Ironically, she then tes­ti­fied that she begged for Guyger to attend the event, was so it was not some feel­ing of love or com­pas­sion that Amber Guyer had for her.
In fact, at the time Guyger met her in a drug den she wrote her a tick­et, so much for her car­ing, lov­ing spirit.

Immediately after the death of Botham Shem Jean ele­ments with­in the Dallas Police Department released what they thought would be dam­ag­ing evi­dence that Botham Shem Jean deserved to be mur­dered in his own home.
This is a prac­tice of American police when they mur­der black peo­ple, they then assas­si­nate their char­ac­ter as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their killing.
Fortunately, as evi­dence of the young man’s char­ac­ter began to emerge they shelved that strat­e­gy. The alle­ga­tions that they had found mar­i­jua­na dust in mis­ter Jean“s apart­ment would have been enough to jus­ti­fy the death of many young African-Americans. It would not hold water for the accom­plished and upright young man from St Lucia who attend­ed a Christian col­lege, had a bunch of white friends and had done tremen­dous work in his young life help­ing peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty.
The smear would not work, so they jumped off the Amber Guyger ship and tried to save them­selves the shame.

In the end, it may be the text mes­sages between Amber Guyger and the oth­er morons in the Dallas Police depart­ment which will be her ulti­mate undo­ing as it relates to the sen­tence she receives.

n March 2018, her work part­ner and lover Officer Martin Rivera texted her, “I was at this area with 5 dif­fer­ent black offi­cers !!! Not racist but damn.”

“Not racist but just have a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing and it shows,” she responded.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day that year, anoth­er cop also texted her to com­plain about a parade in the civ­il rights activist’s hon­or: “When does this end lol.”

Guyger respond­ed: “When MLK is dead … oh wait …”

And just two days before she killed Jean, a friend texted her that they had recent­ly adopt­ed a German Shepard that “may be racist.”

“It’s okay .. I’m the same,” Guyger respond­ed. A minute lat­er, she added: “I hate every­thing and every­one but y’all.”

According to NBC News, Guyger also once shared a pic­ture of a mil­i­tary sniper with the text: ” Stay low, go fast; kill first, die last; one shot, one kill; no luck, all skill.”
Yes, racism is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Black com­mu­ni­ty but the cost to white America is begin­ning to add up as well.
In the end, Amber Guyger would receive only ten years for mur­der­ing Botham Shem Jean in his own home. According to state law, she will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing five of those ten years. She is now 31-years-old, by all accounts she will walk out of prison at the ten­der age of 36 and live a full life. Botham Shem Jean is only a mem­o­ry.
After the ver­dict sup­port­ers of mis­ter Jean left the court­room shout­ing” no jus­tice no peace”. And so it continues.

This arti­cle was updat­ed from its orig­i­nal form after publication.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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Guyger, 31, says she entered Botham Jean’s home by mis­take and shot him dead because she thought he was an intruder

A Texas jury has found a white for­mer police offi­cer who shot a black neigh­bor in his own apart­ment guilty of murder.

Amber Guyger fatal­ly shot Botham Jean in his apart­ment in Dallas on 6 September last year. The 31-year-old claimed she parked on the wrong floor of the com­plex by mis­take and entered Jean’s flat, think­ing it was hers.

In emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny last week, Guyger said she shot the 26-year-old because she thought he was an intrud­er and feared for her life. She was fired from the Dallas police depart­ment and indict­ed on a mur­der charge.

The jury had been sequestered because of the high pro­file of the case. Jean’s death was wide­ly cov­ered in the media and prompt­ed protests in Dallas against police bru­tal­i­ty and racism.

Jurors spent sev­er­al hours delib­er­at­ing on Monday, the sev­enth day of the tri­al, and con­tin­ued on Tuesday. They had to decide if Guyger had a valid defense under Texas’ so-called “cas­tle doc­trine”, a stand-your-ground law. Judge Tammy Kemp con­tro­ver­sial­ly ruled on Monday that it could fac­tor into their deliberations.

The law allows for the use of dead­ly force in self-defense by civil­ians on their prop­er­ty. Guyger’s lawyers argued that she thought she was in her home when she killed Jean and sin­cere­ly believed her life was under threat.

A pros­e­cu­tor, Jason Fine, told the jury the “cas­tle doc­trine” should not apply: “It pro­tects home­own­ers against intrud­ers – and now all of a sud­den the intrud­er is try­ing to use it against the homeowner.”

He described much of her tes­ti­mo­ny as “garbage”, argu­ing that it was absurd for a trained police offi­cer to miss numer­ous signs in the com­plex that she was one floor too high, and that Jean, who was unarmed and set­tling down on his couch to watch tele­vi­sion and eat ice cream, did not rep­re­sent an urgent dead­ly threat.

Rather than act rea­son­ably, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, once Guyger decid­ed there was an intrud­er in “her” apart­ment she burst in like a “com­man­do”, ful­ly intend­ing to shoot.

Guyger plead­ed not guilty. Murder car­ries a poten­tial life sen­tence. Kemp allowed the jury to con­sid­er con­vict­ing her of manslaugh­ter, which typ­i­cal­ly car­ries a sen­tence of between two and 20 years.

Dara Sharif

The two Sacramento, Calif., cops who shot and killed an unarmed Stephon Clark as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard last year not only will face no charges — but they have been cleared to return to duty.
Minutes after the Justice Department decid­ed not to pur­sue civ­il rights charges against Officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet in the March 2018 shoot­ing death of Clark, Sacramento police on Thursday announced they had cleared them as well, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Echoing the Justice Department’s find­ing of no cul­pa­bil­i­ty on Mercadal’s and Robinet’s parts, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said, “The use of dead­ly force, in this case, was law­ful. Our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed that there were no vio­la­tions of depart­ment pol­i­cy or train­ing.” But while that find­ing came as no sur­prise, no mat­ter how unwel­come for Clark’s fam­i­ly, Hahn’s next state­ment was jar­ring: “The offi­cers involved in this case will return to full, active duty.” Clark’s broth­er, Stevante Clark, in a Facebook mes­sage he post­ed Thursday as he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers met with DOJ and Sacramento police offi­cials, expressed bit­ter­ness about the outcome.

“These peo­ple have failed when it comes to #Accountability,” he wrote, the Sacramento Bee reports, lat­er telling the paper: “I’m not sur­prised or shocked, we’ve been denied jus­tice for gen­er­a­tions. The only thing that caught me off guard, was Chief Hahn is let­ting one of the offi­cers back to patrol on the streets. That is fucked up. Our streets are not safe with a mur­der­er on the streets.”
Stephon Clark was only 22 when he was killed the night of March 18, 2018, as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard. Police who arrived on the scene after a report of some­one try­ing to break into cars in the neigh­bor­hood say they mis­took the cell­phone Clark was hold­ing for a gun when they opened fire. Clark’s death sparked protests and calls for jus­tice.
However, Sacramento’s dis­trict attor­ney ear­li­er this year also cleared the offi­cers. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert called Clark’s death “a tragedy,” but found that under the cir­cum­stances the police had a “rea­son­able belief that they were in immi­nent dan­ger.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at https://​www​.the​root​.com/​s​a​c​r​a​m​e​n​t​o​-​c​a​l​i​f​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​a​n​-​u​n​a​r​m​e​d​-​1​8​3​8​5​0​9​200