Category Archives: Feeds

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Honour Slain Police With Heroes Park Memorial

US President Barack Obama lays a wreath in honour of war dead at National Heroes Park in April. A correspondent has recommended that a monument to honour slain police be established at the park.
US President Barack Obama lays a wreath in hon­our of war dead at National Heroes Park in April. A cor­re­spon­dent has rec­om­mend­ed that a mon­u­ment to hon­our slain police be estab­lished at the park.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is respon­si­ble for the safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and law-enforce­ment duties on the island nation. Numerous cops have been killed in the line of duty, and the cre­ation of a memo­r­i­al to those offi­cers could help improve the pub­lic per­cep­tion of the police.

Such a memo­r­i­al park would serve to remind cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors of the risks that law-enforce­ment per­son­nel take when they per­form their duties, and of the respon­si­bil­i­ties that they take on as mem­bers of the JCF.

Originally cre­at­ed by the British after coloni­sa­tion in 1655, the JCF con­tin­ues to fol­low the frame­work of the British sys­tem with regard to offi­cer rank and some gen­er­al pro­ce­dures. Reorganised mul­ti­ple times over the years, the police force today pro­motes offi­cers from among the ranks, some­thing that was not done pre­vi­ous­ly, and active­ly recruits women to serve as well.

Violent out­breaks in var­i­ous parts of Jamaica con­tin­ue to plague the coun­try peri­od­i­cal­ly, and gang vio­lence has also increased in recent years. Both of these chal­lenges present the JCF with issues that can make the job more dan­ger­ous than in oth­er coun­tries (The History of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, 2011).

More than 30 police per­son­nel have been killed in the three years end­ing in 2011; some of these were killed in the line of duty while oth­ers were killed mere­ly for being known JCF personnel.

Just few days ago, we lost Constable Crystal Thomas, a young, hard-work­ing and bright female cop. The sim­plest and least cost­ly alter­na­tive to memo­ri­alise the slain con­sta­ble, and oth­ers, is erect­ing a wall of hon­our in National Heroes Park.

Slain While Serving

Crystal-Thomas
Crystal-Thomas

This option has been pro­posed and announced on sev­er­al occa­sions, and would list the names of those offi­cers who have been killed. This alter­na­tive has the advan­tage of plac­ing the memo­r­i­al in a park that is already ded­i­cat­ed to hon­our­ing Jamaica’s heroes, includ­ing war heroes, as well as lead­ers such as Marcus Garvey.

In addi­tion, National Heroes Park is already known island­wide, and even inter­na­tion­al­ly, which pro­vides addi­tion­al pub­lic­i­ty for the JCF memorial.

However, the park itself was con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, and hav­ing a police memo­r­i­al erect­ed as part of a larg­er park could decrease the sig­nif­i­cance of the memo­r­i­al in the minds of observers.

I believe the death of Constable Crystal Thomas should give every Jamaican the moti­va­tion for a change of heart about how we view police personnel.

I hope some­thing will hap­pen real soon.

GEORGE G. ROACH
US Army (Retired)
Story first appeared here. Honour Slain Police With Heroes Park Memorial

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Another Cop Shot And Injured

ST CATHERINE Jamaica – Another police­man is in hos­pi­tal after he was alleged­ly shot this morn­ing in Spanish Town, St Catherine.The police’s Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) said the inci­dent hap­pened about 2:30 am and the con­sta­ble is cur­rent­ly being treat­ed at hos­pi­tal. While CCU did not pro­vide details on the shoot­ing, reports reach­ing OBSERVER ONLINE are that the law­man, who is cur­rent­ly on inter­dic­tion, was work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard when he was shot by a firearm hold­er. It is believed to be an acci­den­tal shoot­ing. The inci­dent comes after Monday night’s shoot­ing of a police­man dur­ing a rob­bery in Clarendon. He too was admit­ted for treat­ment at hospital.

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Monster Charged With Cop’s Murder

Published: 
Monday, August 3, 2015 selby-update

Christopher “Monster” Selby, the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of a trio of prison escapees, will be charged for the mur­der of police con­sta­ble PC Sherman Maynard. Selby, 30, is also expect­ed to be charged for the dar­ing escape from the Frederick Street, Port-of-Spain prison and sev­er­al oth­er offences. He is expect­ed to appear in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court today to face the charges. The T&T Guardian was informed yes­ter­day that Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard met with and advised the police offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ing the case to lay the charges against Selby. Selby, along with fel­low pris­on­ers Allan “Scanny” Martin, 42, and Hasan Atwell, 41, shot their way out of the Port-of-Spain prison on July 24, killing Maynard as they did so and throw­ing the city into chaos as police and the army went into lock­down mode. Maynard was shot in the front seat pas­sen­ger side of a police vehi­cle as he and two oth­er col­leagues were doing sen­try duty out­side the prison. He died of his injuries while under­go­ing emer­gency surgery.

Martin was shot dead moments after he bolt­ed, after he was cor­nered in the secu­ri­ty guard booth at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. Atwell, who went on the lam for two days, was dis­cov­ered shot sev­er­al times in the back and body at Calvary Hill, East Dry River, Port-of-Spain. He is believed to have been killed by mem­bers of the Rasta City gang. Selby sur­ren­dered to the police at the Barataria Police Station on Sunday. 
See sto­ry : http://​www​.guardian​.co​.tt/​n​e​w​s​/​2​015 – 08-03/monster-charged-cop%E2%80%99s-murder

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Colorado Cops Arrest Mom For Confederate Flag Arson

Chris Keane/Reuters
Chris Keane/​Reuters

COLORADO SPRINGS — It was an hour before mid­night on July 22 when a cop knocked on the door of local Black Lives Matter activist Patricia Cameron. She was asleep at home with her 8‑year-old son. The offi­cer called out her name and asked her to come out­side. Cameron was­n’t dressed, so the cop told her to put on some clothes— he had some­thing for her to sign.

For the past four years Cameron has lived in the small, hip­py-dip­py moun­tain town of Manitou Springs just out­side Colorado’s sec­ond largest city. She’s a vocal pres­ence in the local media and runs a blog and a Twitter feed where she dis­cuss­es top­ics she feels get ignored in Colorado Springs, a very white, heav­i­ly Republican Christian-con­ser­v­a­tive mil­i­tary city. As a young black woman, she says her encoun­ters with police in the area haven’t always gone well. She’s filed at least one com­plaint against offi­cers here.

“I was pet­ri­fied,” she says when she found a uni­formed cop at her door at 11:00 at night. The name of Sandra Bland, a young black woman who was found dead July 13, hang­ing from a trash bag noose in a Texas jail cell days after a traf­fic stop, flashed through her mind. In the hall­way of Cameron’s apart­ment build­ing, the offi­cer told her he was there to serve her with some­thing, and hand­ed her what looked like a tick­et. He asked her to sign it, say­ing it had to do with an inci­dent on July 4. The doc­u­ment was an arrest sum­mons accus­ing her of fourth degree arson.

“I def­i­nite­ly think they were try­ing to intim­i­date me.”
Two weeks pri­or, the sin­gle mom, local polit­i­cal activist and EMT had orga­nized an Independence Day pub­lic burn­ing of a Confederate flag in a local park as a form of peace­ful protest. Online, pho­tos had been spread­ing of accused killer Dylan Roof pos­ing with Confederate flags before police say he car­ried out his attack on nine black parish­ioners in a Charleston, SC church. In announc­ing her plans days before the event, Cameron told a local alt-week­ly reporter the demon­stra­tion was “sim­ply us get­ting togeth­er and reit­er­at­ing the fact that black lives in fact mat­ter.” She’d alert­ed the local police depart­ment about what she’d planned to do, tag­ging them in a post on Facebook, though a police spokesper­son says the depart­ment nev­er saw it. The police chief had also got­ten an anony­mous e‑mail about the event. (Weeks pri­or, the coun­ty sher­if­f’s office had been on alert when a local bik­er club held a pig roast to protest the Islamic hol­i­day of Ramadan.)

Not many peo­ple showed up on the day Cameron and a hand­ful of oth­ers held their flag burn­ing under a park pavil­ion that does­n’t allow bar­be­cu­ing. There, she squirt­ed lighter flu­id on a large Confederate flag, some­one else lit it, and a third man held the pole as the flag burned on a char­coal grill. With an American flag ban­dana cov­er­ing her nose and mouth, Cameron clapped as oth­ers waved signs read­ing “Black Lives Matter” and “Who is burn­ing black church­es?” The local paper dis­patched a sum­mer intern to the scene. A video went up on YouTube. Some local TV sta­tions car­ried the news.

Now, near­ly three weeks lat­er, an offi­cer was stand­ing in Cameron’s hall­way ask­ing her to sign an arrest sum­mons that accused her of arson. She was not for­mal­ly arrest­ed and tak­en to jail. “I was con­fused,” she says about how it all went down, espe­cial­ly so late at night— and so long after the very pub­lic incident.
Manitou Springs Police spokes­woman Odette Saglimbeni says an offi­cer show­ing up late at night to issue an arrest sum­mons isn’t com­mon for the department.

“It sort of hap­pened to be that time of night when it hap­pened,” she told The Daily Beast about Cameron’s late-night wake-up call. Officers, she said, might have been pre­oc­cu­pied dur­ing the rest of the day with oth­er duties. “They were just not able to get out there until that time.”

As for why it took near­ly 20 days for the cops to con­tact Cameron, Saglimbeni said the police had con­duct­ed a “pret­ty exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion” after see­ing video of the flag burn­ing. While offi­cers might have known the demon­stra­tion was hap­pen­ing that day, a large struc­ture fire near­by attract­ed their atten­tion, and no police were at the park when the flag went up in flames. Trying to iden­ti­fy all the peo­ple involved also took time, she said, and the police want­ed to make sure they had every­thing in order.

Under state law, fourth degree arson in Colorado is when “a per­son who know­ing­ly or reck­less­ly starts or main­tains a fire or caus­es an explo­sion, on his own prop­er­ty or that of anoth­er, and by so doing places anoth­er in dan­ger of death or seri­ous bod­i­ly injury or places any build­ing or occu­pied struc­ture of anoth­er in dan­ger of damage.”

The charge can be a felony or a mis­de­meanor; Cameron was charged with the later.

“The sit­u­a­tion posed a risk of dan­ger to the prop­er­ty and cit­i­zens of Manitou Springs, as there were mul­ti­ple peo­ple in the area,” reads a July 22 news release from the Manitou Springs Police Department. The release states the depart­ment “strong­ly sup­ports cit­i­zens who wish to employ their first amend­ment rights,” but “would urge those who employ those rights, to do so in a safe manner.”

Cameron’s arrest “has noth­ing to do with what what­ev­er it was she was try­ing to get across,” Saglimbeni said. “We’re just look­ing at the safe­ty of any­one around there, and city prop­er­ty as well. Those flames got pret­ty big pret­ty quick.”

For her part, Cameron has left town for a stint after what she called “neg­a­tive atten­tion” fol­low­ing her arrest. She isn’t com­ment­ing on her involve­ment with the flag burn­ing, but she spoke with The Daily Beast about the way her local police con­duct­ed her late-night arrest.

“It freaks me out that they can show up late at night out­side my house,” she says. “I kind of felt like … in this day in age, and the atten­tion on all cops, you might want to mind your Ps and Qs when it comes to your inter­ac­tions with the public.”

“I def­i­nite­ly think they were try­ing to intim­i­date me,” she said. Read more here: Colorado Cops Arrest Mom for Confederate Flag Arson

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Sgt. James Brown, 26, Survived Two Tours In Iraq Only To Die Begging For His Life In Texas Jail

Newly released video has revealed the dying moments of an African-American active-duty sol­dier who checked him­self into the El Paso, Texas, coun­ty jail for a two-day sen­tence for dri­ving under the influ­ence, and died while in cus­tody in 2012. Authorities claimed Sgt. James Brown died due to a pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tion, but shock­ing new video from inside the jail rais­es new ques­tions about what hap­pened. The video shows guards swarm­ing on top of him as he repeat­ed­ly says he can’t breathe and appears not to resist. By the end of the video, he is shown naked, not blink­ing or respond­ing, his breath­ing shal­low. Attorneys say an ambu­lance was nev­er called. Brown was even­tu­al­ly brought to a hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead. His fam­i­ly had long sus­pect­ed foul play in his death but received lit­tle infor­ma­tion from author­i­ties. They’ve now filed a law­suit against El Paso County say­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed. We are joined by Brown’s moth­er, Dinetta Scott.

YouTube player
TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush tran­script. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today with a sto­ry about an Iraq War vet­er­an who served two tours in Iraq only to die in a coun­ty jail in El Paso, Texas. Sergeant James Brown was just 26 years old when he mys­te­ri­ous­ly died in 2012 after he report­ed to jail for a two-day sen­tence for dri­ving while intox­i­cat­ed. Brown, who was African-American, was suf­fer­ing from post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der at the time. His fam­i­ly had long sus­pect­ed foul play in his death but received lit­tle infor­ma­tion from author­i­ties, who said he died because of a pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tion. Well, a local news sta­tion, KFOX14, recent­ly obtained video from inside the jail show­ing Brown’s last moments.

AMY GOODMAN: The video shows some­thing hap­pened which caused Brown to bleed in his cell. When he refus­es to speak with guards, a team in riot gear storms in and swarms on top of him, while he repeat­ed­ly says he can’t breathe and appears not to resist. A warn­ing to our audi­ence: The fol­low­ing video is disturbing.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: I can’t breathe! Dude, I can’t breathe! Help me! Help me! Help! I can’t breathe! I’m chok­ing on my blood! Help me! I’m chok­ing on my blood! I’m chok­ing on my blood! I’m chok­ing on my blood!

AMY GOODMAN: “I’m chok­ing on my blood!” said Sergeant James Brown. As his con­di­tion dete­ri­o­rates, as he’s car­ried to an infir­mary and has a mask placed over his face, he’s then giv­en an injec­tion. He begs for water and is giv­en half a Dixie cup as he heaves. Sergeant Brown repeat­ed­ly states he’s hav­ing severe trou­ble breathing.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: Now that’s block­ing too much air. That’s over my nose and my mouth. Could you unhook my arm out of this?

PRISON GUARD: You need to calm down first.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: Can I lay on the floor?

PRISON GUARD: No, sir.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: Well, you’re going to have to do one or the oth­er to help my breath­ing. Please, that’s all I ask.

PRISON GUARD: You got to calm down a lit­tle bit first.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: I will. I just need the mask — please.

PRISON GUARD: Relax.

SGT. JAMES BROWN: Please. Please. I can’t breathe. I can’t relax. You’ve got to take this mask off, dude, please.

PRISON GUARD: Can’t take it off, sir. I’m sorry.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: By the end of the video, Brown has said he can’t breathe at least 20 times. Then he is left naked in a cell, not blink­ing or respond­ing, his breath­ing shal­low. Attorneys say an ambu­lance was nev­er called. Brown was even­tu­al­ly brought to a hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead. Authorities claim he died from nat­ur­al caus­es after an autop­sy report cit­ed a, quote, “sick­le cell cri­sis.” But his fam­i­ly says he died as a result of his treat­ment in jail. The family’s attor­ney, B.J. Crow, spoke to KFOX.

B.J. CROW: When a 26-year-old active mil­i­tary per­son checks in to jail for a court-imposed sen­tence on a Friday, and he leaves Sunday, you know, in a cas­ket, some­thing went hor­ri­bly wrong there. He was bleed­ing out the ears, the nose, the mouth. His kid­neys shut down. His blood pres­sure dropped to a very dan­ger­ous lev­el. And his liv­er shut down.

AMY GOODMAN: Sergeant James Brown’s fam­i­ly has filed a law­suit against El Paso County say­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed. Democracy Now! invit­ed El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles to join us on Democracy Now! today, but he declined. He did send a state­ment say­ing, quote, “Mr. Brown’s death was an unfor­tu­nate tragedy. The Sheriff’s Office has con­duct­ed a thor­ough review of the facts sur­round­ing Mr. Brown’s death and, based upon all the evi­dence obtained, deter­mined that his death was caused by a pre-exist­ing med­ical condition.”

Well, for more, we go to Seattle, Washington, where we’re joined by Sergeant James Brown’s moth­er, Dinetta Scott.

Ms. Scott, wel­come to Democracy Now! Can you explain the sig­nif­i­cance of this video that has now been released because a local TV sta­tion in El Paso had been try­ing to get it for years now? The death of your son, Sergeant Brown, occurred in 2012. It’s now 2015. Tell us about the sig­nif­i­cance of what you know now.

DINETTA SCOTT: Amy, I have not watched this video in its entire­ty. I have seen four sec­onds of it, and I heard my son beg­ging for his life. I can’t watch it. I do know that it is very dis­turb­ing. The part that I did see, where he is unable to breathe, it’s dev­as­tat­ing. It’s inhu­mane. It’s unex­plain­able what hap­pened to him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Were you ever told by author­i­ties that the video exist­ed and why it’s nev­er come to light or been made pub­lic since then?

DINETTA SCOTT: No, that was nev­er explained to us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the autop­sy report, did author­i­ties — what did they tell you about how your son died?

DINETTA SCOTT: The med­ical exam­in­er stat­ed that it was a sick­le cell cri­sis due to him being restrained. That’s why he went into a sick­le cell cri­sis. And he stat­ed that he had viewed this on the video. And that’s when we said, “A video exists. We would like that video.” And noth­ing ever came of that until two-and-a-half years lat­er, which is where we’re at now.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the video is just aston­ish­ing. But can you go back to 2012 to — did you talk to your son before he self-report­ed into the jail? He was stopped for DUI, and he was going to be held — what? For two nights?

DINETTA SCOTT: Correct. He received the DWI in 2011, and they had con­tin­u­ous­ly went to court. When he got his sen­tenc­ing, it was five days with time served, so since he had already served three days when they ini­tial­ly picked him up, he only had to do the week­end. I spoke to him pri­or to him check­ing in on that Friday night, and then I received a call from him Saturday morn­ing, stat­ing that the jail­ers had said he was going to have to stay incar­cer­at­ed for sev­en days instead of the ini­tial two days. And he said, “Could you please send mon­ey so that I can pay the court fine, so that I can leave here? Because I need to report to duty on Monday.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, he had already served two tours in Iraq, and he was still on active duty?

DINETTA SCOTT: Correct.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when was he diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress?

DINETTA SCOTT: I believe it was the begin­ning of 2011.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he talk to you about the con­di­tions in the jail, Dinetta Scott?

DINETTA SCOTT: No, he just basi­cal­ly said he need­ed to get out of there, and could I please get the mon­ey so that he could leave, and he would explain every­thing to me when he got out.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe your son, Sergeant James Brown, to us?

DINETTA SCOTT: Excuse me. He was a joke­ster. He was very con­fi­dent, a nat­ur­al born leader, loy­al to no fault, a lov­ing per­son. Either you liked him, or you didn’t. He didn’t real­ly care what peo­ple thought of him. He just was a lov­ing kind of guy, one of a kind. And I’m not say­ing that just because he’s my son. He just was a gen­uine per­son. He didn’t sug­ar­coat things, and he didn’t lie to you. If you want­ed to know the truth, that’s the per­son that you would ask. And many of his friends said, you know, if you want­ed some­body to have your back, you want­ed James Brown to have your back.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the ter­ri­ble irony of him com­ing back from serv­ing his coun­try twice in Iraq to end up in a cell, dead in a cell, in El Paso, Texas?

DINETTA SCOTT: In that video, I heard my son beg­ging for his life on U.S. soil. This was not his ene­my that he was fac­ing. This was a U.S. cit­i­zen that was treat­ing him like he was an ani­mal. And it should not be allowed. That should not hap­pen to any­one in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: We were just show­ing pic­tures of James. How many kids does he have?

DINETTA SCOTT: Two.

AMY GOODMAN: How old are his children?

DINETTA SCOTT: His step­son, Armani, is 12, and his daugh­ter, Jayliah, is five.

AMY GOODMAN: When did he join the military?

DINETTA SCOTT: In 2005.

AMY GOODMAN: Was it right out of high school?

DINETTA SCOTT: No, he grad­u­at­ed in 2004, and he was in a car — a motor­cy­cle acci­dent in 2003, which he had to have a rod put into his femur, so he opt­ed to wait a year to have that rod removed so that he could join the mil­i­tary. So his join­ing was delayed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the past year or two, we’ve seen this enor­mous growth of the Black Lives Matter move­ment as a result of what’s hap­pened in Ferguson and Cleveland and oth­er African-American men killed under — in police cus­tody. Your son died almost three years ago. And your sense of the con­nec­tion to this move­ment that has grown up in the United States in the last two years?

DINETTA SCOTT: I believe it — race isn’t an issue. I believe it’s men who have been giv­en a cer­tain amount of author­i­ty who are abus­ing it. It’s very unfor­tu­nate that all the vic­tims have been African-American, but this lies with­in our sys­tem. These are peo­ple that are abus­ing their author­i­ty and using it inappropriately.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dinetta Scott, what has hap­pened to these guards? One, the pile-on we see in the cell, then this mask is put over him. He is beg­ging, say­ing he’s not — he can’t take the mask off, can they take the mask off, that he can’t breathe, that he is chok­ing on his own blood. What hap­pened to all these guards?

DINETTA SCOTT: Absolutely nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play one clip for you. KFOX14 in El Paso inter­viewed one of the last peo­ple to see Sergeant Brown alive, a fel­low pris­on­er who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity.

ANONYMOUS PRISONER: He was like, “I didn’t do noth­ing. You know what? I’m stay­ing back here. I’m keep­ing my mouth shut.” Well, he grabbed him. They took him out, and they took him to a lit­tle room in front of us. They took him back there. They kind of roughed him up. And when they were bring­ing him out, a guard from behind gave him a — I don’t know what this shot is called. Some guys here were telling me that some places can do that. I nev­er knew they can do that. They gave him a shot, and he col­lapsed. I guess he didn’t react good to it. And when he col­lapsed, that’s when they jumped on him, and they kind of beat him up and picked — I mean, he was out of con­scious, so real­ly there was no need for them to jump on him the way they did. Pretty bad. Like he was already out of con­scious, and it’s like you jump­ing on some­body and putting your elbow in their neck. You know, you can prob­a­bly snap somebody’s neck like that. And they picked him up and dragged him out.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was a fel­low pris­on­er who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. He was speak­ing on a jail phone through a glass. Dinetta Scott, can you respond to what he described about what hap­pened to your son, Sergeant James Brown?

DINETTA SCOTT: It’s inex­cus­able. They all need to be held account­able for what they did to my son. The sher­iff made a state­ment that my son died of nat­ur­al caus­es. There was noth­ing nat­ur­al about the way that he died. They nev­er should have went in that cell. They nev­er should have pulled him out. And if there was a prob­lem, they should have con­tact­ed the mil­i­tary, or they should have con­tact­ed men­tal health, some­body that was able to deal with him, instead of rush­ing him like that and attack­ing him and beat­ing him when he’s down and can’t defend his self. It’s unacceptable.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you ask­ing for in the lawsuit?

DINETTA SCOTT: I want change. I want poli­cies and pro­ce­dures put in place that will pro­tect our sol­diers when they are in pub­lic facil­i­ties, that the mil­i­tary step in and take account­abil­i­ty for their sol­diers. These are men that they trained. They should nev­er be put in the hands of civil­ians, because civil­ians live one life, and sol­diers live anoth­er life. And they need to be dealt with by sol­diers. Policies need to be put in place for CID, that when an inci­dent hap­pens in a pub­lic facil­i­ty, they need to go in and inves­ti­gate, instead of just tak­ing the word of that insti­tu­tion. They need to find out what hap­pened to their sol­dier. And if they have a liai­son in place, they would already know what went wrong, when it went wrong, or what­ev­er the case may be. I believe if my son would have had a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the mil­i­tary with him every step of the way, we wouldn’t be here today.

AMY GOODMAN: One last ques­tion: Do we know what your son was inject­ed with? In that video, we see him inject­ed at least once by the guards.

DINETTA SCOTT: According to the report, it was [Haloperidol] and Ativan, com­bi­na­tion. I am not sure on the exact amount that was giv­en to him, but accord­ing to the jail report, that is what they state they gave him.

AMY GOODMAN: Dinetta Scott, we want to thank you for being with us, moth­er of Sergeant James Brown, also our con­do­lences. Sergeant James Brown died after being held in an El Paso County jail in 2012. He served in Iraq two tours of duty before he came home. He was on active duty at the time.

This is Democracy Now!, democ​ra​cynow​.org, The War and Peace Report. Do black women’s lives mat­ter? That’s the ques­tion that’s being raised by a group of peo­ple around the coun­try, those who have lost loved ones, black women, at the hands of author­i­ties, of police. Stay with us. SEE STORY HERE: Sgt. James Brown, 26, Survived Two Tours in Iraq Only to Die Begging for His Life in Texas Jail