The Jamaica Police Federation says it has accept­ed the Government’s offer to resume wage negotiations.

Horace Dalley, the Minister with­out Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance, who is lead­ing the nego­ti­a­tions for the gov­ern­ment, wrote to the Federation yes­ter­day invit­ing it to attend a meet­ing sched­uled at the Ministry for Friday after­noon. Meanwhile, chair­man of the police fed­er­a­tion Sergeant Raymond Wilson has tak­en issue with the asser­tion by nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting that police per­son­nel have been offered a 6.5 per cent increase in year one and 5.5 per cent in year two.

Bunting explained the increas­es for both years include a 3.5 per cent annu­al incre­ment which every JCF mem­ber receives. But Sergeant Wilson says this annu­al incre­ment is not a new ben­e­fit and was already cal­cu­lat­ed into the lev­el of ero­sion expe­ri­enced by cops since their last increase. He says not every mem­ber of the force will be enti­tled to the incre­men­tal increase as an indi­vid­ual can only have six such increas­es at each rank. He says this means that a police­man who has already spent six years at a par­tic­u­lar rank will not have this increase to look for­ward to unless he is pro­mot­ed or is approved for senior­i­ty allowance. Police Federation Accepts Dalley’s Invitation

FULL STATEMENT FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:

The Attorney General of Jamaica wish­es to advise that an injunc­tion was tonight obtained from the Supreme Court against the Executive Members of the Jamaica Police Federation and all mem­bers of the Federation.

Pursuant to the Order of the Court per­mit­ting the order to be broad­cast over a com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing sys­tem oper­at­ing in Jamaica, or by pub­li­ca­tion in at least one dai­ly news­pa­per cir­cu­lat­ing in Jamaica, the Attorney General now pub­lish­es the terms of the order as follows:
1. The Respondents be appoint­ed to rep­re­sent the mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation.

2. The Respondents be restrained from con­tin­u­ing any indus­tri­al action in the form of with­hold­ing their ser­vices or otherwise.

3. The Respondents and all the mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation be restrained for a peri­od of twen­ty eight (28) days from caus­ing and/​or attempt­ing to cause and/​or car­ry­ing out acts to cause dis­af­fec­tion amongst the mem­bers of the Constabulary Force and/​or induc­ing and/​or attempt­ing to induce and/​or car­ry­ing out acts to induce mem­bers of the Constabulary Force to with­hold their services.

4. A manda­to­ry injunc­tion instruct­ing the mem­bers of the Force who are with­hold­ing their ser­vices by way of “sick out” and/​or oth­er indus­tri­al action to report for their shifts/​for work as and when sched­uled or due to do so until fur­ther order of the court or for a peri­od of twen­ty eight (28) days whichev­er is earlier.

5. The Order here­in be pub­lished, either by broad­cast­ing same on at least two sep­a­rate occa­sions over a com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing sys­tem oper­at­ing in Jamaica, or by pub­li­ca­tion in at least one dai­ly news­pa­per cir­cu­lat­ing in Jamaica and that this be deemed ser­vice of Notice of the said Order on the Respondents and all the said mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation.

6. The appli­ca­tion will be fur­ther con­sid­ered by the Court on the 18^th day of June 2015 at 10:00 a.m. or so soon there­after as coun­sel may be heard.

The Attorney General reminds the Executive and Membership of the Jamaica Police Federation that fail­ure to com­ply with the terms of the Supreme Court Order will result in them being in con­tempt of court and liable to hav­ing their assets being confiscated.

The gov­ern­ment has obtained an injunc­tion from the Supreme Court against the Executive of the Police Federation and all its mem­bers. The injunc­tion bars them from con­tin­u­ing any indus­tri­al action in the form of with­hold­ing their ser­vices. In a state­ment issued short­ly after mid­night, the Attorney General said all mem­bers of the Federation are restrained for a peri­od of 28 days from with­hold­ing their services.

All police offi­cers who are with­hold­ing their ser­vices by way of “sick out” and/​or oth­er indus­tri­al action have to report for work until a fur­ther order of the court, or for a peri­od of 28 days, whichev­er is ear­li­er. The Attorney General has warned the Executive and mem­ber­ship of the Police Federation that fail­ure to com­ply with the terms of the Supreme Court Order will result in them being in con­tempt of court and liable to hav­ing their assets being con­fis­cat­ed. Gov’t obtains injunc­tion against the Police Federation

The federal agency said the aircrafts are used for specific, ongoing investigations

(WASHINGTON) — The FBI is oper­at­ing a small air force with scores of low-fly­ing planes across the coun­try car­ry­ing video and, at times, cell­phone sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy — all hid­den behind fic­ti­tious com­pa­nies that are fronts for the gov­ern­ment, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ sur­veil­lance equip­ment is gen­er­al­ly used with­out a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for spe­cif­ic, ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. In a recent 30-day peri­od, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the coun­try, an AP review found.

Aerial sur­veil­lance rep­re­sents a chang­ing fron­tier for law enforce­ment, pro­vid­ing what the gov­ern­ment main­tains is an impor­tant tool in crim­i­nal, ter­ror­ism or intel­li­gence probes. But the pro­gram rais­es ques­tions about whether there should be updat­ed poli­cies pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties as new tech­nolo­gies pose intru­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties for gov­ern­ment spying.

U.S. law enforce­ment offi­cials con­firmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the air­craft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake com­pa­nies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the pro­gram are with­held from the pub­lic in cen­sored ver­sions of offi­cial reports from the Justice Department’s inspec­tor general.

“The FBI’s avi­a­tion pro­gram is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a state­ment. “Specific air­craft and their capa­bil­i­ties are pro­tect­ed for oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.” Allen added that the FBI’s planes “are not equipped, designed or used for bulk col­lec­tion activ­i­ties or mass surveillance.”

But the planes can cap­ture video of unre­lat­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty on the ground that could be hand­ed over for prosecutions.

Some of the air­craft can also be equipped with tech­nol­o­gy that can iden­ti­fy thou­sands of peo­ple below through the cell­phones they car­ry, even if they’re not mak­ing a call or in pub­lic. Officials said that prac­tice, which mim­ics cell tow­ers and gets phones to reveal basic sub­scriber infor­ma­tion, is rare.

Details con­firmed by the FBI track close­ly with pub­lished reports since at least 2003 that a gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­gram might be behind sus­pi­cious-look­ing planes slow­ly cir­cling neigh­bor­hoods. The AP traced at least 50 air­craft back to the FBI, and iden­ti­fied more than 100 flights since late April orbit­ing both major cities and rur­al areas.

One of the planes, pho­tographed in flight last week by the AP in north­ern Virginia, bris­tled with unusu­al anten­nas under its fuse­lage and a cam­era on its left side. A fed­er­al bud­get doc­u­ment from 2010 men­tioned at least 115 planes, includ­ing 90 Cessna air­craft, in the FBI’s sur­veil­lance fleet.

The FBI also occa­sion­al­ly helps local police with aer­i­al sup­port, such as dur­ing the recent dis­tur­bance in Baltimore that fol­lowed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sus­tained griev­ous injuries while in police cus­tody. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.

The sur­veil­lance flights com­ply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said. Those rules, which are heav­i­ly redact­ed in pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments, lim­it the types of equip­ment the agency can use, as well as the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions and dura­tion of the surveillance.

Details about the flights come as the Justice Department seeks to nav­i­gate pri­va­cy con­cerns aris­ing from aer­i­al sur­veil­lance by unmanned air­crafts, or drones. President Barack Obama has said he wel­comes a debate on gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance, and has called for more trans­paren­cy about spy­ing in the wake of dis­clo­sures about clas­si­fied programs.

“These are not your grand­par­ents’ sur­veil­lance air­craft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, call­ing the flights sig­nif­i­cant “if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is main­tain­ing a fleet of air­craft whose pur­pose is to cir­cle over American cities, espe­cial­ly with the tech­nol­o­gy we know can be attached to those aircraft.”

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane air­craft. These includ­ed parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

Evolving tech­nol­o­gy can record high­er-qual­i­ty video from long dis­tances, even at night, and can cap­ture cer­tain iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion from cell­phones using a device known as a “cell-site sim­u­la­tor” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pin­point­ed cell­phones into reveal­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers of sub­scribers, includ­ing those not sus­pect­ed of a crime.

Officials say cell­phone sur­veil­lance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights orbit­ing large, enclosed build­ings for extend­ed peri­ods where aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy would be less effec­tive than elec­tron­ic sig­nals col­lec­tion. Those includ­ed above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes cir­cling over Baltimore in ear­ly May, the AP began ana­lyz­ing detailed flight data and air­craft-own­er­ship reg­is­tra­tions that shared sim­i­lar address­es and flight pat­terns. That review found some FBI mis­sions cir­cled above at least 40,000 res­i­dents dur­ing a sin­gle flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, accord­ing to Census data and records pro­vid­ed by the web­site FlightRadar24​.com.

Most flight pat­terns occurred in counter-clock­wise orbits up to sev­er­al miles wide and rough­ly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newslet­ter from the com­pa­ny FLIR Systems Inc., which makes cam­era tech­nol­o­gy such as seen on the planes, described fly­ing slow­ly in left-hand­ed patterns.

“Aircraft sur­veil­lance has become an indis­pens­able intel­li­gence col­lec­tion and inves­tiga­tive tech­nique which serves as a force mul­ti­pli­er to the ground teams,” the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1 mil­lion for the program.

Recently, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and web­sites have cit­ed com­pa­nies traced to post office box­es in Virginia, includ­ing one shared with the Justice Department. The AP ana­lyzed sim­i­lar data since ear­ly May, while also draw­ing upon air­craft reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments, busi­ness records and inter­views with U.S. offi­cials to under­stand the scope of the operations.

The FBI asked the AP not to dis­close the names of the fake com­pa­nies it uncov­ered, say­ing that would sad­dle tax­pay­ers with the expense of cre­at­ing new cov­er com­pa­nies to shield the government’s involve­ment, and could endan­ger the planes and integri­ty of the sur­veil­lance mis­sions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the com­pa­nies’ names — as well as com­mon address­es linked to the Justice Department — are list­ed on pub­lic doc­u­ments and in gov­ern­ment databases.

At least 13 front com­pa­nies that AP iden­ti­fied being active­ly used by the FBI are reg­is­tered to post office box­es in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a region­al air­port used for pri­vate and char­ter flights. Only one of them appears in state busi­ness records.

Included on most air­craft reg­is­tra­tions is a mys­te­ri­ous name, Robert Lindley. He is list­ed as chief exec­u­tive and has at least three dis­tinct sig­na­tures among the com­pa­nies. Two doc­u­ments include a sig­na­ture for Robert Taylor, which is strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to one of Lindley’s three hand­writ­ing patterns.

The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. gov­ern­ment employ­ee. The AP unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to reach Lindley at phone num­bers reg­is­tered to peo­ple of the same name in the Washington area since Monday.

Law enforce­ment offi­cials said Justice Department lawyers approved the deci­sion to cre­ate fic­ti­tious com­pa­nies to pro­tect the flights’ oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the prac­tice. One of the Lindley-head­ed com­pa­nies shares a post office box open­ly used by the Justice Department.

Such elu­sive prac­tices have endured for decades. A 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office not­ed that, in July 1988, the FBI had moved its “head­quar­ters-oper­at­ed” air­craft into a com­pa­ny that wasn’t pub­licly linked to the bureau.

The FBI does not gen­er­al­ly obtain war­rants to record video from its planes of peo­ple mov­ing out­side in the open, but it also said that under a new pol­i­cy it has recent­ly begun obtain­ing court orders to use cell-site sim­u­la­tors. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion had until recent­ly been direct­ing local author­i­ties through secret agree­ments not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encour­ag­ing pros­e­cu­tors to drop cas­es rather than dis­close the technology’s use in open court.

A Justice Department memo last month also express­ly barred its com­po­nent law enforce­ment agen­cies from using unmanned drones “sole­ly for the pur­pose of mon­i­tor­ing activ­i­ties pro­tect­ed by the First Amendment” and said they are to be used only in con­nec­tion with autho­rized inves­ti­ga­tions and activ­i­ties. A depart­ment spokes­woman said the pol­i­cy applied only to unmanned air­craft sys­tems rather than pilot­ed airplanes.

_​_​_​

Associated Press writ­ers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Joan Lowy and Ted Bridis in Washington; Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; and news researchers Monika Mathur in Washington and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed 

W YORK, N.Y. — Speaking pub­licly for the first time since com­plet­ing gen­der tran­si­tion, Caitlyn Jenner com­pares her emo­tion­al two-day pho­to shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the July cov­er of Vanity Fair to win­ning the gold medal for the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics. She tells Pulitzer Prize – win­ning V.F. con­tribut­ing edi­tor and author ofFriday Night Lights Buzz Bissinger, “That was a good day, but the last cou­ple of days were bet­ter.… This shoot was about my life and who I am as a per­son. It’s not about the fan­fare, it’s not about peo­ple cheer­ing in the sta­di­um, it’s not about going down the street and every­body giv­ing you ‘that a boy, Bruce,’ pat on the back, O.K. This is about your life.”

Jenner tells Bissinger about how she suf­fered a pan­ic attack the day after under­go­ing 10-hour facial-fem­i­niza­tion surgery on March 15 — a pro­ce­dure she believed would take 5 hours. (Bissinger reveals that Jenner has not had gen­i­tal surgery.) She recalls think­ing, “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” A coun­selor from the Los Angeles Gender Center came to the house so Jenner could talk to a pro­fes­sion­al, and assured her that such reac­tions were often induced by pain med­ica­tion, and that sec­ond-guess­ing was human and temporary.

Jenner tells Bissinger the thought has since passed and not come back: “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and nev­er ever did any­thing about it, I would be lying there say­ing, ‘You just blew your entire life. You nev­er dealt with your­self,’ and I don’t want that to happen.”

Bissinger spent hun­dreds of hours with the man the world knew as Bruce Jenner over a peri­od of three months, and then count­less hours with Caitlyn, also attend­ing the pho­to shoot with Leibovitz at Jenner’s Malibu home.

Bissinger apol­o­gizes to Jenner for repeat­ed pro­noun con­fu­sion and asks whether she is sen­si­tive about it. “I don’t real­ly get hung up,” she tells him. “A guy came in the oth­er day and I was ful­ly dressed — it’s just habit, I said, ‘Hi, Bruce here,’ and I went, Oh fuck, it ain’t Bruce, I was screw­ing up doing it.”

Bissinger speaks exten­sive­ly with Jenner’s four chil­dren from his first two mar­riages — Burt, 36, and Cassandra, 34, with first wife Chrystie, and Brandon, 33, and Brody, 31, with sec­ond wife Linda — and describes an insen­si­tive father who had been absent for years at a time. Jenner open­ly acknowl­edges mis­takes made with them as Bruce, and express­es gen­uine regret. Says Burt, “I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a bet­ter per­son than Bruce. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to that.”

Watch a behind-the-scenes video of Annie Leibovitz’s pho­to shoot, as Caitlyn dis­cuss­es how much liv­ing ful­ly as a woman means to her.

For the Jenner chil­dren, the issue of the tran­si­tion has become a non-issue. They were already aware of their father’s iden­ti­ty as a woman when he told them indi­vid­u­al­ly about the tran­si­tion — Burt and Cassandra had learned from their moth­er rough­ly 20 years ear­li­er, when they were 13 and 11; Brandon had assumed it because of the obvi­ous phys­i­cal changes he had observed; and Brody was told by his moth­er when he was 29. They tell Bissinger they feel both hap­pi­ness for their father and inspi­ra­tion at his brav­ery, and they all still see their dad as their dad regard­less of any gen­der label. Brandon said he was a lit­tle tak­en aback when he saw Caitlyn for the first time after surgery and she pulled her top up to reveal her new breasts. “Whoa, I’m still your son,” he remind­ed her.

As part of the tran­si­tion, Jenner start­ed host­ing small gath­er­ings called “girls’ nights” with wine and food where Jenner could dress as desired and feel nat­ur­al in the pres­ence of women, and it was there that her daugh­ter Cassandra met Caitlyn for the first time. “I was just ner­vous that I wouldn’t make her feel com­fort­able,” Cassandra tells Bissinger. “I was wor­ried I wouldn’t say the right things or act the right way or seem relaxed.” But almost all of it melt­ed away when she got there. “We talked more than we ever have. We could just be girls together.”

Despite the renewed rela­tion­ship with their father, the Jenner chil­dren have refused to par­tic­i­pate in Caitlyn’s docu-series for the E! net­work, set to debut this sum­mer, for­go­ing finan­cial gain in favor of pre­serv­ing their father’s lega­cy. Initially, Caitlyn was “ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed and ter­ri­bly hurt,” but has come to accept their deci­sion. For her part, Caitlyn is pre­pared for the crit­i­cism that it’s a pub­lic­i­ty stunt: “‘Oh, she’s doing a stu­pid real­i­ty show. She’s doing it for the mon­ey. She’s doing this, she’s doing that.’ I’m not doing it for mon­ey. I’m doing it to help my soul and help oth­er peo­ple. If I can make a dol­lar, I cer­tain­ly am not stu­pid. [I have] house pay­ments and all that kind of stuff. I will nev­er make an excuse for some­thing like that. Yeah, this is a busi­ness. You don’t go out and change your gen­der for a tele­vi­sion show. O.K., it ain’t hap­pen­ing. I don’t care who you are.”

Shocking body cam­era video shows two Southern California cops slam an eight-months preg­nant woman to the ground after a park­ing lot dis­pute start­ed as the woman dropped her child off at school. The city of Barstow, an Inland Empire city in San Bernardino County, defend­ed the offi­cers’ actions, writ­ing in a state­ment that Charlena Michelle Cooks was active­ly resist­ing arrest dur­ing the January inci­dent. “The Barstow Police Department con­tin­ues to be proac­tive in train­ing its offi­cers to assess and han­dle inter­ac­tions with emo­tion­al­ly charged indi­vid­u­als while con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion, for the pro­tec­tion of every­one involved,” the state­ment, obtained by the Desert Dispatch, reads. The bizarre con­fronta­tion began when Cooks and anoth­er woman, a school employ­ee, got into a “road rage” con­fronta­tion in the park­ing lot at Crestline Elementary School, where Cooks was drop­ping off her sec­ond-grade daughter.

The offi­cer, speak­ing to the oth­er woman, says no crime has been com­mit­ted and he’ll go speak to Cooks about what hap­pened and “doc­u­ment her name.” As Cooks explains her side, the offi­cer sud­den­ly cuts her off and asks for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, some­thing he hadn’t done with the oth­er woman. “I don’t even think that that dis­agree­ment in the park­ing lot was enough to war­rant a call to the police,” Cooks told the Dispatch. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which took up Cooks’ case and released the video, says California law does not require some­one to iden­ti­fy them­selves “for no rea­son.” Cooks, in the video, tells the offi­cer that she’d like to call her boyfriend and ver­i­fy the law about iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. But the offi­cer, after first promis­ing to give her “two min­utes” to find out whether she must give up her name, walks up to Cooks after 20 sec­onds and grabs her arm as she wrig­gles and starts to yell.

“Do not touch me, do not touch me, I’m preg­nant!” Cooks begs as she’s pushed against a chain link fence. “What the f – k is going on!” A sec­ond offi­cer comes over and the offi­cer with the cam­era on asks, “Why are you resist­ing, ma’am?” He and the oth­er offi­cer then took her to the ground, stom­ach down, and hand­cuffed her behind her back. “This is ridicu­lous, what are you doing?” the incred­u­lous Cooks asks. “I didn’t even do any­thing wrong.” “I don’t think I’ve ever been that ter­ri­fied in my life,” Cooks recent­ly told the Dispatch. “I nev­er saw that com­ing. I told him I was preg­nant so he could pro­ceed with cau­tion. That did­n’t hap­pen and the first thing I thought was I did­n’t want to fall to the ground. I felt the pres­sure on my stom­ach from falling and I was call­ing for help. But those guys are sup­posed to help me. But who is sup­posed to help me when they are attack­ing me?”

Cooks was put in the back of a police cruis­er and lat­er booked on a charge of resist­ing or obstruct­ing a police offi­cer, a charge lat­er tossed by a judge. The offi­cer involved in the inci­dent is shown on video recount­ing for anoth­er offi­cer what hap­pened. “I gave her a minute to give up her name and I went to put her under arrest and she resist­ed arrest,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.” Cooks lat­er gave birth to a heatl­hy baby girl, but she’s been banned from the school prop­er­ty and is con­sid­er­ing leav­ing Barstow after the inci­dent. “I’m still try­ing to process every­thing and get in a good state of mind,” she told the Dispatch. “I’m in a very fear­ful state of mind. Barstow is so small and I used to be com­fort­able liv­ing here. Not any­more. I real­ly felt like after all that hap­pened I had some of my every­day free­doms tak­en from me.”
Body cam video cap­tures California cops tus­sle 8‑months preg­nant woman to ground, cuff her for ‘resist­ing arrest

Two for­mer cops in New Mexico could soon be the ones behind bars after video of the December 2014 beat­ing of a hand­cuffed arrestee was released and cap­tured the bru­tal, unwar­rant­ed assault. The local dis­trict attor­ney and the state Attorney General plan to present their case against Las Cruces police Richard Garcia and Danny Salcido to a grand jury in June. Both offi­cers, on admin­is­tra­tive duty since March, were fired ear­li­er this month after the depart­ment fin­ished an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the Dec. 23, 2014 beat­ing of 47-year-old Ross Flynn. Flynn is suing the depart­ment for $12.5 mil­lion. “The alle­ga­tions against both offi­cers were reviewed and it was found that these offi­cers vio­lat­ed inter­nal poli­cies and pro­ce­dures which war­rant­ed their dis­charge from employ­ment with the Las Cruces Police Department,” LCPD Chief Jaime Montoya said in a May 19 state­ment announc­ing the termination.

Flynn was being arrest­ed two days before Christmas on charges stem­ming from a dis­pute with his neigh­bor when, he says, he asked offi­cers to adjust his hand­cuffs, which were dig­ging into his wrists. That’s when he light­ly kicked a cell door, get­ting the atten­tion of the two offi­cers, who walked in and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed attack­ing Flynn, who was cuffed to waist chains. The near­ly two minute clip shows the offi­cers slam him against the wall, while one grabs him by the head, as they throw him onto a met­al bench and one begins to apply knee strikes to the cuffed man’s body. They fling him around and face first into the wall before toss­ing him on the cell floor, video shows. The offi­cers then drag him over to the bench and prop him against the wall and again pick him up and move him to a sec­ond por­tion of the bench before leaving.

Flynn was lat­er hos­pi­tal­ized with a frac­tured skull, bleed­ing on the brain, a cracked cheek­bone and cracked rib, accord­ing to KVIA-TV.

The offi­cers in their reports on the inci­dent claimed Flynn was strug­gling and resist­ing offi­cers dur­ing the confrontation.

“We then start­ed strug­gling with Mr. Flynn in try­ing to force him to have a seat but he then began to resist and start­ed mov­ing and push­ing us around,” Salcido wrote in his report, obtained by the ABC affil­i­ate. “We con­tin­ued to make every effort pos­si­ble to try to get Mr. Flynn to have a seat but then he con­tin­ued to move us around and push us around and con­tin­ued to move his hands as in a way attempt­ing to grab ahold of us or our equipment.”

But Flynn’s attor­ney says the secu­ri­ty cam­era tells a dif­fer­ent story.

“You can see from the video that Mr. Flynn was help­less, defense­less, he had hand­cuffs on and he’s being thrown around that cell like a rag­doll,” attor­ney Jeff Lahann told KVIA. Flynn was booked on charges of aggra­vat­ed assault with a dead­ly weapon, assault on a police offi­cer and resist­ing or obstruct­ing a police offi­cer. It’s unclear what the out­come of the case was, but Flynn said he’s been in fear of police ever since his bru­tal encounter with the two cops. “The whole thing has been real­ly painful,” Flynn told KVIA. “I used to have a lot of respect for local police no mat­ter where I was. In this case I feel I was ambushed. All my rights were vio­lat­ed. I was beat­en while in restraints. The gen­er­al atti­tude in the com­mu­ni­ty are that the LCPD are a lit­tle bit vicious. I’d like to see more training”.

Two fired New Mexico cops could face charges in jail cell beat­ing of hand­cuffed man (VIDEO)

A Cleveland cop accused of fatal­ly shoot­ing two unarmed peo­ple in a 137-shot bar­rage of police gun­fire is not guilty of vol­un­tar­i­ly manslaugh­ter, an Ohio judge ruled Saturday. Michael Brelo, 31, was one of 13 offi­cers who unleashed a hail of bul­lets into the cou­ple’s car dur­ing a high-speed chase in November 2012, killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Prosecutors said Brelo reloaded his gun after they were no longer a threat, mount­ed the car’s hood and fired 15 rounds into the

wind­shield. Brelo wept as the long judge’s rul­ing was read Saturday and at times crossed him­self and held his head in his hands. After being declared not guilty, he hugged his attor­neys in the crowd­ed court­room. The ver­dict capped a four-week tri­al that end­ed on May 5.

Russell, 43, and Williams, 30, were each shot more than 20 times in less than eight sec­onds. The chase began after offi­cers in a patrol car mis­took the sound of the cou­ple’s car back­fir­ing for gun shots on Nov. 29, 2012. More than 60 squad cars chased the man and woman for about 20 miles. Five oth­er offi­cers were indict­ed on less­er charges of dere­lic­tion of duty and are await­ing tri­al. There were weapons found in the cou­ple’s car.

Judge John P. O’Donnell was seeking free publicity for his Ohio Supreme Court race in setting Oct. 22 trial date in Cleveland police shooting case, defense attorney says (document)

The con­tro­ver­sial shoot­ing is one of sev­er­al not­ed in a 2014 U.S. Justice Department report that showed the Cleveland Police Department has pat­tern of using exces­sive force. “The offi­cers, who were fir­ing on the car from all sides, report­ed believ­ing that they were being fired at by the sus­pects. It now appears that those shots were being fired by fel­low offi­cers,” the report said of the fusil­lade of bul­lets. The rul­ing fol­lows a year of out­rage and demon­stra­tions over police shoot­ings of unarmed black peo­ple in Missouri, New York, Baltimore and anoth­er Cleveland shoot­ing involv­ing 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who shot to death by police after he was seen play­ing with a gun, which turned out to be a toy.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cleveland-michael-brelo-found-not-guilty-2012-shootin-article‑1.2233146

Malcolm X, the famed Civil Rights leader and min­is­ter of the Nation of Islam, would have turned 90 years old this week. While America annu­al­ly marks the sig­nif­i­cance of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is only in Black com­mu­ni­ties nation­al­ly, and local­ly in Harlem, that we mark and cel­e­brate the birth of King’s most for­mi­da­ble racial adver­sary. Undoubtedly this has some­thing to do with the very forth­right and unflinch­ing man­ner in which Malcolm X talked about race in the 1960s. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, as Malcolm X was oth­er­wise known, did not have any hope that white peo­ple could or would change when it came to race. Although King was far less opti­mistic at the end of his life about the capac­i­ty of white peo­ple to change, too, he still has the March on Washington speech, which rep­re­sent­ed the zenith of his racial optimism.

And indeed we did get a front row seat to such insan­i­ty this week, when three bik­er gangs in Texas, had a shootout in a park­ing lot that left nine peo­ple dead and 18 peo­ple injured. More than 165 peo­ple have been arrest­ed for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in this thug­gish, rug­gish, dead­ly, vio­lent, white-on-white street brawl but there has been no mass out­cry from the coun­try about this. Though these motor­cy­cle gangs were already under sur­veil­lance because of known par­tic­i­pa­tion in con­sis­tent and orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, as Darnell Moore notes at Mic, “the police didn’t don riot gear.” Moore fur­ther notes that “leather and rock music weren’t blamed,” and there hasn’t been any “hand-wring­ing over the prob­lem of white-on-white crime.”

Brittney Cooper is a con­tribut­ing writer at Salon, and teach­es Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers. Follow her on Twitter at@professorcrunk.

WASHINGTON — In an unex­pect­ed move, President Barack Obama on Monday will ban the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from pro­vid­ing cer­tain mil­i­tary equip­ment to police depart­ments. Effective imme­di­ate­ly, the gov­ern­ment will no longer pro­vide local law enforce­ment with armored vehi­cles, grenade launch­ers and bay­o­nets. Other items like explo­sives and riot equip­ment will be trans­ferred to police only if they pro­vide addi­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and assur­ances that the gear will be used respon­si­bly. The changes stem from rec­om­men­da­tions made to the pres­i­dent in a new report pro­duced by a White House work­ing group. Obama cre­at­ed the task force ear­li­er this year via exec­u­tive order.

The pres­i­den­t’s action is part of a broad­er effort to relieve ten­sions between law enforce­ment and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties after the deaths of sev­er­al black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; and oth­er cities. In Ferguson, for exam­ple, local police rolled out armored tanks and riot gear in response to protests over the 2014 death of Michael Brown, a reac­tion that many saw as mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse.

“The idea is to make sure that we strike a bal­ance in pro­vid­ing the equip­ment, which is appro­pri­ate and use­ful and impor­tant for local law enforce­ment agen­cies to keep the com­mu­ni­ty safe, while at the same time putting stan­dards in place so that there’s a clear rea­son for the trans­fer of that equip­ment, that there’s clear train­ing and safe­ty pro­ce­dures in place,” White House Director of Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz said in a Sunday call with reporters.

The rea­son police depart­ments have access to mil­i­tary-style weapons at all goes back to the gov­ern­men­t’s ini­tial response to the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks. But the work­ing group con­clud­ed there is “sub­stan­tial risk of mis­us­ing or overus­ing these
items, which are seen as mil­i­taris­tic in nature,” and that their use by police “could sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­mine com­mu­ni­ty trust.”

News of the ban on mil­i­tary weapons comes ahead of Obama’s Monday vis­it to Camden, New Jersey, where he will high­light the suc­cess of the city’s police depart­ment in build­ing trust with its com­mu­ni­ty. The pres­i­dent will vis­it police head­quar­ters and meet with offi­cers before giv­ing pub­lic remarks. He will also announce $163 mil­lion in grants to encour­age police depart­ments to adopt the rec­om­men­da­tions of the White House work­ing group report.

Beyond Monday’s action, the admin­is­tra­tion has been tak­ing oth­er steps to pro­mote account­abil­i­ty for

law enforce­ment. The Justice Department ear­li­er this month announced a $20 mil­lion grant pro­gram for

increas­ing the use of body cam­eras by police. Obama has also pro­posed increas­ing that amount in his 2016 budget.

“What we’re wit­ness­ing in cities across the coun­try is not only about polic­ing, but it’s also about oppor­tu­ni­ty and cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for all,” Valerie Jarrett, White House senior advis­er, said on the call.

UPDATE: 3:07 p.m. — During his remarks Monday in Camden, Obama explained his rea­son­ing for pulling cer­tain mil­i­tary equip­ment from police departments.

“We’ve seen how mil­i­ta­rized gear can some­times give peo­ple the feel­ing like there’s an occu­py­ing force as opposed to a force that’s part of the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said to applause. “We’re going to pro­hib­it some equip­ment made for the bat­tle­field that is not appro­pri­ate for local police departments.”
http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​5​/​1​8​/​o​b​a​m​a​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​r​y​-​e​q​u​i​p​m​e​n​t​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​_​n​_​7​3​0​4​5​0​4​.​h​tml

Claire Bernish
May 12, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) In what could hard­ly be called a sur­prise, the UN Human Rights Council chas­tised the US over its epi­dem­ic of police vio­lence, dis­crim­i­na­tion, need­less killings, and gen­er­al neglect, fol­low­ing through with rec­om­men­da­tions made in its first review in 2010.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) takes place every four years to scru­ti­nize the human and civ­il rights prac­tices of each of the UN’s 193 mem­ber nations. Delegates from 117 coun­tries took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lam­baste the US’ record of civ­il rights vio­la­tions exact­ed by its bru­tal and racist police forces. In an attempt to fend off the inevitable, James Cadogan, a senior coun­selor in the Department of Justice’s Human Rights Division, saidthe US must “reded­i­cate our­selves to ensur­ing that our civ­il rights laws live up to their promise,” list­ing sev­er­al“trag­ic deaths” that sparked numer­ous demon­stra­tions and wide-scale unrest across the coun­try. However, he seemed to be blind to the fun­da­men­tal basis for such out­rage say­ing the US wish­es to“iden­ti­fy and address poten­tial polic­ing issues before they become sys­temic prob­lems,”, even assert­ing a fic­ti­tious good record for hold­ing vio­la­tors account­able. As Mary McLeod, act­ing legal advis­er to the US Dept of State, put it, “We’re proud of the work we’ve done since our last UPR.” Most would disagree.

What the US rep­re­sen­ta­tives tout­ed as improve­ments, actu­al­ly do more to high­light the sys­temic issue they claim to be on the look­out for. Cadogan cit­ed 400 instances in the past six years in which charges were brought against law enforce­ment offi­cials, but this doesn’t fig­ure in the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly light pun­ish­ment that often results from pros­e­cu­tion of police offi­cers. Even his own pre­emp­tive state­ment, nam­ing Michael Brown and Eric Garner as exam­ples, speaks far more to police impuni­ty than account­abil­i­ty — and is hard­ly reflec­tive of the total­i­ty of inci­dents.Over 400 peo­ple have been killed by police in 2015 alone.

“Chad con­sid­ers the United States of America to be a coun­try of free­dom, but recent events tar­get­ing black sec­tors of soci­ety have tar­nished its image,” said Awada Angui, the del­e­gate from that country.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Namibia, Gladice Pickering, echoed the gen­er­al con­sen­sus say­ing the US needs “to fix the bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem that con­tin­ues to dis­crim­i­nate against [mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties], despite recent waves of protest over racial pro­fil­ing and police killings of unarmed black men.” Critics across the board urged improve­ments in train­ing meth­ods and leg­is­la­tion and includ­ed goals to elim­i­nate racism and end exces­sive force. “I’m not sur­prised that the world’s eyes are focused on police issues in the US,”said Alba Morales of Human Rights Watch. “There is an inter­na­tion­al spot­light that’s been shone [on the issues], in large part due to the events in Ferguson and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate police response to even peace­ful pro­test­ers.” A fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion was launched on Friday to deter­mine if police in Baltimore have insti­tut­ed a pat­tern of dis­crim­i­na­tion fol­low­ing reports from res­i­dents of bru­tal abuse before and after Freddie Gray was killed in police cus­tody. Such inves­ti­ga­tions are often too lit­tle, too late for vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, who see them more akin to the cyn­i­cal joke; “we inves­ti­gat­ed our­selves and found we did noth­ing wrong.”

Martinez Sutton, whose 22-year-old sis­ter, Rekia Boyd, was shot by an off-duty Chicago police offi­cer in 2012, observed from the side­lines. He feels that her killer’s acquit­tal three weeks ago is frus­trat­ing­ly typ­i­cal: “I do not expect them to do any­thing because – I mean: Let us be real, it has been going on for years and what has been done? As I stat­ed before, they say the guilty should be pun­ished. I want them to show us instead of tell us. My sis­ter was inno­cent, so why isn’t any­body pay­ing for her death?” The UN will issue its report on the review along with rec­om­men­da­tions on Friday, though its con­tents prob­a­bly won’t be of much con­se­quence con­sid­er­ing the US “large­ly failed” to imple­ment any of the 171 changes sug­gest­ed in the pre­vi­ous report. There isn’t much com­fort to be found in an atmos­phere where call­ing the cops for assis­tance could poten­tial­ly be your own death sen­tence. But if our own gov­ern­ment doesn’t see a prob­lem with its polic­ing poli­cies, at least 117 oth­er coun­tries around the world are start­ing to ask questions.

This arti­cle (117 Countries Slam American Police Brutality at UN Human Rights Council) is free and open source. You have per­mis­sion to repub­lish this arti­cle under a Creative Commons license with attri­bu­tion to the author andTheAntiMedia​.org. Tune in to the Anti-Media radio show Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/​8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos:edits@​theantimedia.​org.

Jamaica comes in at num­ber 5 on the Homicide Monitor Map by the Igarape Institute of Brazil which reveals the glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of homi­ci­dal vio­lence. Latin America and the Caribbean dom­i­nate the top 10 spots on the state-of-the art inter­ac­tive map, with three Caribbean coun­tries, name­ly Anguilla, US Virgin Islands and Jamaica com­pris­ing the Caribbean contingent.

On Jamaica, the report notes, “In Jamaica, the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to dri­ve down the rate by using the threat of the death penal­ty, as well as police patrols, cur­fews and actions to break up and con­trol gangs.” The Homicide Monitor Map’s data was com­piled from pub­licly report­ed killing reports from 219 coun­tries from the new cen­tu­ry to the lat­est avail­able year.

Surprisingly, the US Virgin Islands comes up as the third most dan­ger­ous place in the world for mur­der with a rate of 52.6 per 100,000 per­sons. Half of the vic­tims of the Brazilian study showed they were aged between 15 and 29 with 92 per cent being male. More than 75 per cent were killed by guns.

Honduras has the high­est mur­der rate in the world, with 7,172 killings in 2012 – that’s 85.5 per 100,000 people.

The top 10 coun­tries for mur­der, accord­ing to the new study, are:

1. Honduras
2. Venezuela
3.US Virgin Islands
4. Belize
5. Jamaica
6. El Salvador
7. Anguilla
8. Guatemala
9. Swaziland
10. Columbia

Courtesy of Loop News Service

BRADY LEARNS HIS FATE BUT WILL IT STAND ?

So the NFL has moved to penal­ize The New England Patriots and the league’s gold­en-boy Tom Brady.
Brady has been sus­pend­ed for the first four games in the 2015 sea­son for vio­lat­ing the NFL’s integri­ty of the game pol­i­cy. He’ll lose about $2 mil­lion in salary dur­ing the sus­pen­sion, which could be reduced upon appeal.
The recent­ly released Wells Report ruled Brady most like­ly took part in cir­cum­vent­ing the rules when he had mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion, Jim McNally and John Jastremski, con­spire to release air pres­sure from game balls to ille­gal lev­els after they were inspect­ed by NFL offi­cials. McNally and Jastremsky have been sus­pend­ed indef­i­nite­ly from foot­ball operations.
The team has been fined $1 mil­lion and los­es a pair of NFL Draft picks: their 1^st round selec­tion in 2016 and their 4^th round pick in 2017. Source: http://​www​.nbc​sandiego​.com/.
Ill leave the cham­pagne on ice for now , after all Brady still have the option to appeal which he has inti­mat­ed he will do.
In the end Brady is like­ly to have his sen­tence over­turned or sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced. 
On that basis we will with­hold fur­ther com­ment until a final ver­dict is reached on this cheater. 

Prosecutor says Madison police officer won’t be charged for shooting Tony Robinson

A pros­e­cu­tor in Wisconsin said that a police offi­cer in Madison, Wis., will not face crim­i­nal charges for fatal­ly shoot­ing an unarmed man ear­li­er this year.

The deci­sion came more than two months after Anthony Robinson Jr., 19,was shot by Matthew Kenny, 45, as the police offi­cer respond­ed to calls about a disturbance.

“I con­clude that this trag­ic and unfor­tu­nate death was the result of a law­ful use of dead­ly police force and that no charges should be brought against Officer Kenny in the death of Tony Robinson Jr.,” Ismael Ozanne, the Dane County dis­trict attor­ney, announced Tuesday after­noon at a news conference.

Local author­i­ties say they have pre­pared for protests that could fol­low the announce­ment, which comes amid increased scruti­ny on how police use lethal force. Over the past sev­er­al months, protests have erupt­ed in mul­ti­ple cities — includ­ing Madison — after deaths at the hands of police.

Robinson’s March 6 death prompt­ed days of sus­tained, peace­ful demon­stra­tions in Wisconsin’s sec­ond-largest city. Police say they were respond­ing to mul­ti­ple calls about a dis­tur­bance involv­ing Robinson, includ­ing calls that said he had assault­ed oth­er peo­ple and run into traffic.

In a brief state­ment after the shoot­ing, police said that when they found Robinson, “a strug­gle ensued” and he was shot. Kenny was placed on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave, and the police chief apol­o­gized for the shoot­ing and asked for patience dur­ing the investigation.

[How the response to protests over police force changed from Ferguson to Baltimore]

Robinson’s death was inves­ti­gat­ed by the state Division of Criminal Investigation, because Wisconsin has a law requir­ing an out­side agency to look into offi­cer-relat­ed deaths. The state’s inves­ti­ga­tion involved dozens of inter­views with wit­ness­es and anoth­er series of inter­views with res­i­dents of the neigh­bor­hood, the agency said. Once the agency com­plet­ed its inves­ti­ga­tion, it turned over the details to the dis­trict attor­ney to decide whether to file any charges. “At the end of the day, this is a human tragedy for Tony Robinson’s fam­i­ly and for the police offi­cer involved,” Brad Schimel, the Wisconsin attor­ney gen­er­al, said in a state­ment short­ly after Robinson’s death.

Ozanne, who was appoint­ed in 2010, is a life­long Madison res­i­dent and the first black dis­trict attor­ney in Wisconsin his­to­ry, accord­ing to his office. He said he viewed his respon­si­bil­i­ties through this lens as “a man who under­stands the pain of unjus­ti­fied pro­fil­ing” and described dis­cus­sions he has had recent­ly with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who are dis­trust­ful of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. “My deci­sion will not bring Tony Robinson Jr. back,” Ozanne said Tuesday. “My deci­sion will not end the racial dis­par­i­ties that exist in the jus­tice sys­tem, in our jus­tice system.”He described his review of the evi­dence as method­i­cal, out­lin­ing a process that involved sift­ing through 800 pages of reports, view­ing sur­veil­lance footage and inter­view­ing res­i­dents, police offi­cers and emer­gency responders.

Ozanne said that the evening of the shoot­ing, three calls were made to 911 with­in four min­utes, all report­ing issues involv­ing Robinson. The first call came from a friend of Robinson’s who report­ed that the 19-year-old “was tweak­ing” after tak­ing mush­rooms, Ozanne said. The pros­e­cu­tor also described calls about an unarmed man who matched Robinson’s descrip­tion punch­ing a pedes­tri­an in the face and anoth­er call from some­one who said Robinson had tried to choke him. Robinson was also seen try­ing to assault peo­ple on the side­walk and block­ing traf­fic, Ozanne said.

Toxicology reports lat­er con­firmed that Robinson had mush­rooms, mar­i­jua­na and Xanax in his body at the time of his death, accord­ing to Ozanne. Kenny, who was inter­viewed by pros­e­cu­tors, said he heard “inco­her­ent yelling and scream­ing” from an upstairs apart­ment when he arrived, accord­ing to Ozanne. Kenny said that when he went up the stairs, Robinson hit him in the head and knocked him into a wall, Ozanne said. The offi­cer said he opened fire after fear­ing that he would be hit again and his gun could be tak­en and used to shoot him or oth­ers. Kenny fired sev­en shots in three sec­onds, and all of the shots hit Robinson on the front of his body, Ozanne said.

After the shoot­ing, Kenny said, he did not know how he got to the bot­tom of the stairs but that Robinson was still con­scious at the time. Kenny said he tried to give first aid to Robinson until the para­medics arrived, Ozanne said. “A young man lost his life far too soon,” Ozanne said. He urged peo­ple to respond with­out any vio­lence. Michael Koval, the Madison police chief, released a lengthy state­ment after Ozanne announced his deci­sion, again offer­ing his con­do­lences to Robinson’s fam­i­ly. “As a father of two adult sons, I can­not begin to grasp at the mag­ni­tude of their loss,” Koval wrote. “The dif­fi­cul­ties that they have faced have been for­mi­da­ble and I hope that some mea­sure of heal­ing can begin.”

Kenny will remain on admin­is­tra­tive leave until the police depart­ment fin­ish­es an inter­nal review to deter­mine whether any of its pro­ce­dures were vio­lat­ed, Koval said. In his state­ment Tuesday, Koval wrote that Madison “finds itself at a cross­road” after the deci­sion. Protesters can respond with the prop­er­ty dam­age and dis­or­der seen in oth­er cities, he said, or they can “take the high­er road” of non­vi­o­lent civ­il dis­sent and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. “Unrest like we have wit­nessed else­where in our coun­try can­not pos­si­bly aid in con­struc­tive engage­ment and only holds us back,” Koval wrote. “The envi­ron­ment for heal­ing and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion has been forged, owing to the incred­i­ble capac­i­ty of the Robinson fam­i­ly and their urg­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty to deal with the issues at hand with respon­si­ble activism.”

In addi­tion, Koval detailed what kinds of protest activ­i­ties are legal­ly allowed and what types of activ­i­ties could lead to fines or jail time for pro­test­ers. He wrote that some peo­ple will choose to get arrest­ed and called that “a hall­mark of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence,” though he encour­aged peo­ple to vio­late city ordi­nances (which car­ry fines) rather than com­mit­ting mis­de­meanors or felonies (which lead to jail time). The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin said the deci­sion “leaves a cloud of uncer­tain­ty” over who is respon­si­ble for Robinson’s death. “If Officer Kenny did not vio­late the law, then is any­one legal­ly respon­si­ble for Mr. Robinson’s death?” Chris Ahmuty, the group’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, said in a state­ment. “Does the crim­i­nal law pro­tect indi­vid­u­als like Mr. Robinson from dead­ly force exer­cised by police offi­cers? Are police offi­cers above the law?” Decisions not to charge offi­cers in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City last year were fol­lowed by heavy protests in those cities. The Young Gifted and Black Coalition, a group that orga­nized protests after Robinson’s death, said it planned to hold a march on Wednesday. The group ear­li­er post­ed on Facebook that it did not expect charges against Kenny but said it did not plan to lead any activ­i­ties on Tuesday out of respect for Robinson’s fam­i­ly. [Thousands of police shoot­ings, but crim­i­nal charges rarely follow]

Jim Palmer, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, released a state­ment call­ing the deci­sion “appro­pri­ate,” say­ing that Kenny was act­ing in response to a dead­ly threat. City offi­cials said police in Madison have spent weeks prepar­ing for the announce­ment and meet­ings with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. “It is our hope — that work­ing togeth­er — Madison can come through these chal­leng­ing days ahead with­out vio­lence or prop­er­ty dam­age,” the city said in a state­ment. In the days after Robinson’s death, protests in Madison stretched into the state capi­tol, with demon­stra­tors march­ing from the University of Wisconsin’s cam­pus to the capitol’s rotun­da. Madison author­i­ties said they know protests could fol­low the deci­sion about charges, and they vowed that police will help demon­stra­tors march safe­ly in the city. “It is our belief that Madison can endure with­out being frac­tured,” the city’s state­ment said.

After Robinson’s death, the police chief, may­or and oth­er city lead­ers described the shoot­ing as a tragedy, promised answers and called for changes. This quick response under­scored what observers say is a changed atmos­phere since last summer’s ini­tial protests in Ferguson, as author­i­ties have tried to act quick­ly to avoid unrest. Madison schools are plan­ning on pro­vid­ing “struc­tured oppor­tu­ni­ties” for stu­dents to dis­cuss the deci­sion once it is announced, accord­ing to the school dis­trict . In addi­tion, the dis­trict said that while mid­dle and high school stu­dents may want to par­tic­i­pate in protests, it has urged par­ents to encour­age their chil­dren to remain in class dur­ing the school day. “While we have been proud of how respon­si­bly and safe­ly our stu­dents have par­tic­i­pat­ed in events through­out the com­mu­ni­ty, we also think it is impor­tant for you to talk with your child about both their rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties as part of a protest if they choose to par­tic­i­pate, as well as the con­se­quences of a pos­si­ble arrest,” Jennifer Cheatham, super­in­ten­dent of the Madison Metropolitan School District, wrote in a mes­sage to fam­i­lies in the community.

Right-Wing Media Accuse “Angry” Michelle Obama Of “Race Baiting” In Tuskegee Commencement Address

Right-wing media accused First Lady Michelle Obama of “wast­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty,” “play­ing the race card,” and recit­ing a “litany of vic­tim­iza­tion” after the first lady’s com­mence­ment address at Tuskegee University in Alabama.

Bloomberg: Michelle Obama “Spoke Frankly” About The Role Of Race During Her Commencement Address.  During Michelle Obama’s com­mence­ment address at Tuskegee University on May 9, Obama spoke about the role her racial iden­ti­ty played in the 2008 cam­paign, slights African-Americans face every­day, and the fact that those expe­ri­ences were “not an excuse” to “lose hope.” [Bloomberg, 5/​10/​15]

Right-Wing Media Accuse “Angry” Obama Of “Race Baiting”, “Playing The Race Card”

Cue up the sad David Brooks vio­lin play­ing soft­ly in the cor­ner of a dark alley at 3 a.m., because Americans have no faith in pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions any­more. One of those insti­tu­tions would be the mar­bled shrine atop our third branch of American gov­ern­ment, the Supreme Court. A new Associated Press poll shows that “only 1 per­son in 10 is high­ly con­fi­dent that the jus­tices will rely on objec­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of the [Affordable Care Act] rather than their per­son­al opin­ions” in the Court’s impend­ing King v. Burwell decision.

That next hit job may come soon in King v. Burwell, which, if ruled for the plain­tiffs, would inval­i­date pre­mi­um sub­si­dies for those who’ve pur­chased indi­vid­ual health insur­ance plans on fed­er­al­ly facil­i­tat­ed exchanges. The expect­ed deci­sion based on tea-leaf read­ings com­ing out of oral argu­ments was 5 – 4 or 6 – 3 in favor of uphold­ing the sub­si­dies, which tells you a lot about how weak the case is. But there is anoth­er pos­si­ble out­come: 5 – 4 to strike down the sub­si­dies, because the Supreme Court is ruled by a five-mem­ber major­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices who think that the Affordable Care Act is dumb.

The last time a legal chal­lenge to Obamacare of this breadth made it to the Supreme Court, four jus­tices vot­ed not just to strike down the indi­vid­ual man­date but the entire law as well, because they believed that the law was dumb. They didn’t like it! Get rid of it! John Roberts orig­i­nal­ly sided with them but then, to the con­ster­na­tion of his con­ser­v­a­tive col­leagues, switched his vote because such a hack­ish deci­sion would have made the Supreme Court look too hack­ish. Roberts con­tent­ed him­self mere­ly to gut the hell out of the Medicaid expan­sion and force the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to acknowl­edge that the indi­vid­ual man­date is a tax.

Very few Court watch­ers are bas­ing their pre­dic­tions of the King deci­sion on the mer­its of the case, and right­ly so. If it was being decid­ed on the mer­its of the case, every­one would be bet­ting that it would be upheld 9 – 0. Does any­one think that’s going to hap­pen? No. It will all come down to how John Roberts, and per­haps Anthony Kennedy, feel about man­ag­ing the pol­i­tics. They want to screw over Obamacare but yeeeesh, would that back­fire on the Court and con­ser­v­a­tives? Would that make life more dif­fi­cult for the Republican par­ty head­ing into 2016? On the oth­er hand: Would John Roberts ever eat lunch in Conservative This Town again if he sided with The Libruls to uphold a core com­po­nent of Obamacare? It’s all about find­ing the right bal­ance of these com­pet­ing polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. The Democratic and Republican par­ties right­ly rec­og­nize the nature of the sit­u­a­tion here and have spent months try­ing to get inside John Roberts’ head. It is what it is.

Let’s con­sid­er a more gen­er­ous ver­sion of what’s hap­pened to the Supreme Court of late: that it’s mere­ly fol­lowed the broad­er trend in American pol­i­tics towards polar­iza­tion. Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be look­ing at the same piece of leg­is­la­tion before them but see­ing some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, so diver­gent have the lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive world­views become. And these are jus­tices who were appoint­ed a gen­er­a­tion ago. The next round of jus­tices will have made their careers dur­ing this time of high-stakes judi­cial polarization.

That next round of jus­tices may come very soon, since sev­er­al Supreme Court jus­tices are approx­i­mate­ly one mil­lion years old. As Ian Millhiser writes at Think Progress, Rick Perry cor­rect­ly empha­sized the impor­tance of the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in a speech this weekend:

“Something I want you all to think about is that the next pres­i­dent of the United States, who­ev­er that indi­vid­ual may be, could choose up to three, maybe even four mem­bers of the Supreme Court,” Perry told the South Carolina audi­ence. So this elec­tion “isn’t about who’s going to be the pres­i­dent of the United States for just the next four years. This could be about indi­vid­u­als who have an impact on you, your chil­dren, and even our grand­chil­dren. That’s the weight of what this elec­tion is real­ly about.”

I hate the “you have to vote in the next elec­tion because of the Supreme Court!” argu­ment. I hate it because it lets the can­di­dates off the hook: they can offer noth­ing what­so­ev­er to vot­ers and then rely on SCOTUS fear­mon­ger­ing to get out the vote. I also hate it because it’s a very cred­i­ble argu­ment. There is nev­er going to be anoth­er David Souter, or a jus­tice who gets con­firmed and then has an ide­o­log­i­cal shift on the bench. This next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion will also be an elec­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of the Supreme Court, and it’s no tragedy that most Americans under­stand this cyn­i­cal reality.
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State and fed­er­al offi­cials are inves­ti­gat­ing the hang­ing death of a black man whose body was dis­cov­ered Monday morn­ing rough­ly 70 miles east of Atlanta in Greene County, Georgia. The man was iden­ti­fied as 43-year-old Roosevelt Champion III, NBC News reports. Champion was found hang­ing from a tree behind a res­i­dence that was not his own, the Greensboro Police Department told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Law enforce­ment said that Champion was hang­ing by a strap like those used to secure car­go on car roofs, with no vis­i­ble wounds and his feet brush­ing the ground, NBC reports.

Though homi­cide has not been ruled out, Rusty Andrews, deputy direc­tor of inves­ti­ga­tion at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told Action 2 News that inves­ti­ga­tors ini­tial­ly found no signs of strug­gle or oth­er trau­ma to Champion’s body or any­thing else that would indi­cate some­one oth­er than the vic­tim was involved. Champion had been inter­viewed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of a woman on May 2 but had not been charged, Andrews told the station.

GBI Special Agent Joe Wooten said that sev­er­al peo­ple have already been inter­viewedin con­nec­tion with Champion’s death, accord­ing to NBC. “I under­stand that there is a lot of con­cern” raised by the news of a black man being hanged in the Deep South, Wooten said. “Because of that, we’re going to be as trans­par­ent as we can be.” Over a month ago, Otis Byrd, a 54-year-old black man, was found hanged from a treein Claiborne County, Mississippi. The FBI has dis­closed the autop­sy results to Byrd’s fam­i­ly but has not said pub­licly whether his death was by sui­cide or homi­cide. Huffingtonpost​.com

The nation focused its atten­tion last year on deaths result­ing from some police offi­cers’ con­tro­ver­sial use of force. But just as ten­sions rose between law enforce­ment and cit­i­zens in 2014, so did killings of offi­cers. The FBI released pre­lim­i­nary sta­tis­tics on Monday show­ing that 51 law enforce­ment offi­cers were felo­nious­ly killed in the line of duty in 2014. That’s an 89 per­cent increase in felo­nious cop slay­ings com­pared to 2013. However, the num­ber of offi­cers killed has been declin­ing in recent years. The 2014 fig­ure is well below the 64 offi­cers who were killed on aver­age each year between 1980 and 2014. The year 2013 actu­al­ly saw the low­est num­ber of offi­cers killed in action in the last 35 years. Only 27 offi­cers were killed felo­nious­ly that year, which means that while 2014’s num­ber appears to be a spike, it’s actu­al­ly low­er than the aver­age fig­ure from the past sev­er­al years.

Some key sta­tis­tics from the report include:

• 46 of the 51 offi­cer killings involved offend­ers using guns;
• Of those 46 inci­dents, 32 of the inci­dents involved hand­guns, 11 involved rifles and three involved shotguns;
• 35 of the 51 offi­cers were wear­ing body armor at the time;
• 17 offi­cers were killed in the South, 14 in the West, 8 in the Midwest, 8 in the Northeast and 4 in Puerto Rico;
• An addi­tion­al 44 offi­cers were acci­den­tal­ly killed in the line of duty;
• Of those 44 offi­cers, 28 died in vehic­u­lar col­li­sions, and only 15 of them were wear­ing seat belts.

The report comes short­ly after the funer­al of NYPD Officer Brian Moore, who was shot and killed on patrol in Queens. Thousands of cops trav­eled to New York City Friday to mourn Moore’s death.

The FBI isn’t able to accu­rate­ly com­pile a list of cit­i­zens killed by offi­cers in any giv­en year. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Officer-involved shoot­ings and uses of force aren’t sta­tis­tics that can be accu­rate­ly gath­ered nation­al­ly, and even if they could be, inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions are han­dled and report­ed dif­fer­ent­ly — if at all — in almost every jurisdiction.

The FBI’s most recent report on “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cides” by police offi­cers shows that 461 felons were killed by a cop in the line of duty in 2013. According to The New York Times, how­ev­er, the fig­ures are incom­plete and wide­ly contested:

Federal experts have long acknowl­edged that that esti­mate is too low, and a hand­ful of more recent, unof­fi­cial reports — online data­bas­es com­piled and fact-checked by vol­un­teers — place the toll much high­er, at about 1,100 deaths a year, or three a day. Yet they do not sug­gest that the pace of police killings or the racial com­po­si­tion of vic­tims as a group has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last two years or so.

The NFL sus­pend­ed New England Patriotsquarterback Tom Brady for the first four games of the 2015 sea­son Monday as part of sweep­ing pun­ish­ment against the orga­ni­za­tion for its actions in the so-called Deflategate scandal.

The league also fined the Patriots $1 mil­lion and docked them two draft picks — a first-rounder in 2016 and a fourth-rounder in 2017 — for vio­lat­ing the play­ing rules “and the fail­ure to coöper­ate in the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion” co-led by attor­ney Ted Wells.

On Facebook: Did the NFL get Patriots’ ‘Deflategate’ penal­ties right?

Brady was sus­pend­ed “for con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of the NFL” after a 243-page report released last week by Wells indi­cat­ed he was more like­ly than not “at least gen­er­al­ly aware of the inap­pro­pri­ate activ­i­ties” by two low-lev­el team employees.

Those employ­ees, John Jastremski and James McNally, were sus­pend­ed indef­i­nite­ly with­out pay by Patriots own­er Robert Kraft effec­tive Wednesday, the league said, adding that they can­not be rein­stat­ed with­out approval by NFL exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of foot­ball oper­a­tions Troy Vincent.

REWIND: Breaking down Patriots vs. Seahawks

But most strik­ing was the sus­pen­sion of Brady, who is vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain to appeal. If the appeal fails, Brady would be eli­gi­ble to play no soon­er than an Oct. 18 Sunday night road game against the Indianapolis Colts — the team that first alert­ed the NFL to the mat­ter of whether the Patriots were using under­in­flat­ed foot­balls dur­ing last sea­son’s AFC Championship Game.

“With respect to your par­tic­u­lar involve­ment, the report estab­lished that there is sub­stan­tial and cred­i­ble evi­dence to con­clude you were at least gen­er­al­ly aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employ­ees involved in the defla­tion of the foot­balls and that it was unlike­ly that their actions were done with­out your knowl­edge,” Vincent wrote to Brady in a let­ter excerpt­ed by the NFL.

FOR THE WIN: The lega­cy of cheater Tom Brady won’t be ruined by Deflategate

“Moreover, the report doc­u­ments your fail­ure to coöper­ate ful­ly and can­did­ly with the inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing by refus­ing to pro­duce any rel­e­vant elec­tron­ic evi­dence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extra­or­di­nary safe­guards by the inves­ti­ga­tors to pro­tect unre­lat­ed per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and by pro­vid­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that the report con­cludes was not plau­si­ble and con­tra­dict­ed by oth­er evidence.

“Your actions as set forth in the report clear­ly con­sti­tute con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of and pub­lic con­fi­dence in the game of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. The integri­ty of the game is of para­mount impor­tance to every­one in our league, and requires unshak­able com­mit­ment to fair­ness and com­pli­ance with the play­ing rules. Each play­er, no mat­ter how accom­plished and oth­er­wise respect­ed, has an oblig­a­tion to com­ply with the rules and must be held account­able for his actions when those rules are vio­lat­ed and the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the game is called into question.”

Brady has three days to appeal the sus­pen­sion to Commissioner Roger Goodell or his designee. His agent, Don Yee, said “the dis­ci­pline is ridicu­lous and has no legit­i­mate basis” and that Brady will appeal.

“And if the hear­ing offi­cer is com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent and neu­tral, I am very con­fi­dent the Wells Report will be exposed as an incred­i­bly frail exer­cise in fact-find­ing and log­ic,” Yee said in a statement.

Statement from the NFL

“The New England Patriots were noti­fied today of the fol­low­ing dis­ci­pline that has been imposed for vio­la­tions of the NFL Policy on Integrity of the Game and Enforcement of Competitive Rules relat­ing to the use of under-inflat­ed foot­balls in the AFC Championship Game of this past season:

For the vio­la­tion of the play­ing rules and the fail­ure to coöper­ate in the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion, the New England Patriots are fined $1 mil­lion and will for­feit the club’s first-round selec­tion in the 2016 NFL Draft and the club’s fourth-round selec­tion in the 2017 NFL Draft. If the Patriots have more than one selec­tion in either of these rounds, the ear­li­er selec­tion shall be for­feit­ed. The club may not trade or oth­er­wise encum­ber these selections.

Patriots own­er Robert Kraft advised Commissioner Roger Goodell last week that Patriots employ­ees John Jastremski and James McNally have been indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend­ed with­out pay by the club, effec­tive on May 6^th. Neither of these indi­vid­u­als may be rein­stat­ed with­out the pri­or approval of NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent. If they are rein­stat­ed by the Patriots, Jastremski is pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing any role in the prepa­ra­tion, super­vi­sion, or han­dling of foot­balls to be used in NFL games dur­ing the 2015 sea­son. McNally is barred from serv­ing as a lock­er room atten­dant for the game offi­cials, or hav­ing any involve­ment with the prepa­ra­tion, super­vi­sion, or han­dling of foot­balls or any oth­er equip­ment on game day.

Quarterback Tom Brady will be sus­pend­ed with­out pay for the first four games of the 2015 reg­u­lar sea­son for con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of the NFL. Brady may par­tic­i­pate in all off-sea­son, train­ing camp and pre-sea­son activ­i­ties, includ­ing pre-sea­son games.

Commissioner Goodell autho­rized the dis­ci­pline that was imposed by NFL Executive President Troy Vincent, pur­suant to the com­mis­sion­er’s dis­ci­pli­nary author­i­ty under the NFL Constitution and Bylaws and the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NFL Players Association.

“We reached these deci­sions after exten­sive dis­cus­sion with Troy Vincent and many oth­ers,” Commissioner Goodell said. “We relied on the crit­i­cal impor­tance of pro­tect­ing the integri­ty of the game and the thor­ough­ness and inde­pen­dence of the Wells report.”

PHOTOS: SUPER BOWL XLIX

Patriots cor­ner back Malcolm Butler inter­cepts a pass intend­ed for Seahawks wide receiv­er Ricardo Lockette in the clos­ing minute of Super Bowl XLIX at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale on Feb. 1, 2015. The Patriots won the game 28 – 24. (Photo: David Wallace/​azcentral sports)

The Patriots did not imme­di­ate­ly com­ment on the punishments.

The Mac Attack: Roger Goodell’s future could be tied to Tom Brady

New England’s first four games in 2015

Sept. 10 — Steelers

Sept. 20 — at Bills

Sept. 27 — Jaguars

Oct. 11 — at Cowboys

New England’s fifth game is at Indianapolis on Sunday, Oct. 18. It is the prime-time NBC game.