NY AG Letitia James Says Mar-a-Lago Was Valued As High As $739M When It Should’ve Been At $75M.

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a law­suit against Trump for vio­lat­ing the law as part of his efforts to gen­er­ate prof­its. She gives the exam­ple that Mar-a-Lago was val­ued as high as $739M when it should’ve been at $75M. In a more than 200 page law­suit, the Attorney General said that Donald Trump, his fam­i­ly, and the Trump Organization com­mit­ted more than 200 crim­i­nal acts by fal­si­fy­ing asset eval­u­a­tions to inflate their wealth. The law­suit also names three of Donald Trump’s chil­dren: Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump. Attorney General James is seek­ing to per­ma­nent­ly bar the Trump fam­i­ly from con­duct­ing busi­ness in New York and $250 mil­lion in penalties.

JAMES: “The club gen­er­at­ed annu­al rev­enues of less than $25 mil­lion dol­lars and should have been val­ued at more than, val­ued at about $75 mil­lion dol­lars. However, Mar-A-Lago was val­ued as high as $739 mil­lion dol­lars. Mr. Trump used inap­pro­pri­ate schemes to inflate the val­ue of his oth­er golf clubs.”

Loyola University Student Created ‘The Safety Pouch’ To Fight Against Police Brutality During Traffic Stops

A junior at Loyola University in New Orleans is off to a tremen­dous start of the school year as he nation­al­ly launch­es his lat­est inven­tion, the Safety Pouch. The bril­liant prod­uct was devel­oped in one of the university’s entre­pre­neur­ship classes.

The Safety Pouch was found­ed and cre­at­ed by its CEO, David Price. During traf­fic stops, this safe­ty tool was designed to fight against police bru­tal­i­ty. In the mid­dle of the pan­dem­ic, while The Black Lives Matter move­ment was going strong and sur­round­ing protests, Price cre­at­ed his busi­ness while draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from a car­ing edu­ca­tor. This sum­mer, Price offi­cial­ly launched The Safety Pouch into more than 400 Walmart stores.
The Safety Pouch is an essen­tial dri­ving tool for civil­ians and law enforce­ment, designed to elim­i­nate active reach­ing dur­ing traf­fic stops. It min­i­mizes move­ment with­in the vehi­cle and allows for com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty and stor­age of all dri­ving cre­den­tials in one place. The Safety Pouch also pro­vides a sense of relief and facil­i­tates quick­er and more effi­cient traf­fic stops for both civil­ians and law enforce­ment. During his fresh­man year at Loyola University, Price cre­at­ed The Safety Pouch as part of an assign­ment to devel­op a prod­uct that could bring change to soci­ety. As com­mu­ni­ties urgent­ly demand­ed calls for racial jus­tice and trans­paren­cy in polic­ing, Price recalled his idea, which he thought of at the age of 16, as he and his par­ents sat and had “The Talk.”

With his professor’s assis­tance, he devel­oped a busi­ness plan, as law pro­fes­sors do offer some pro bono advice. Price launched the Safety Pouch as an e‑commerce brand online after sourc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers. He brought it to mar­ket in June of 2020, and with­in two years, The Safety Pounch saw astound­ing growth exceed­ing six figures.

Although it may sound like a dream, the jour­ney has been far from easy. With the love and sup­port of his fam­i­ly, he start­ed his small bed­room oper­a­tion busi­ness. Price fueled his con­cept dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, slow­ly mak­ing progress by hand-sell­ing pouch­es at car wash­es, pro­duc­ing slow online sales and the sup­port of local Black-owned businesses.

With the assis­tance of high-pro­file appear­ances and endorse­ments from celebri­ties, Price’s prod­uct went viral on social media, earn­ing a media grant offered by the Meredith Corporation val­ued at $100,000.

Gaining the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand into 400 nation­al brick and mor­tar loca­tions is tru­ly life-chang­ing,” David Price, CEO And Founder of The Safety Pouch shared. “With this expan­sion, I hope to get The Safety Pouch in the hands of peo­ple who need it the most and con­tribute to restor­ing trust and secu­ri­ty between civil­ians and law enforcement.”

To learn more about The Safety Pouch, be sure to vis­it the​safe​ty​pouch​.com, and look for it in a local Walmart near you. Also, you can fol­low the brand on Instagram/​Twitter (@thesafetypouch) and Facebook (The Safety Pouch). About The Safety Pouch.

(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Yahoo)

Dissecting The Police Data As Murders Continue To Increase

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Data released by the Jamaica Constabulary Force show a 4% increase over the same peri­od last year while reg­is­ter­ing a 5% reduc­tion in shoot­ings over the same period.
The fol­low­ing are the sta­tis­tics.: The cur­rent mur­der tal­ly is 18 below the num­ber of homi­cides record­ed in Jamaica in 2003 — the last year in the past two decades when mur­ders were below 1,000. 

. St James, St. Catherine North, and Westmoreland are the top three divi­sions since the start of the year with 132, 94, and 89 mur­ders, respectively.
. Portland record­ed the fewest mur­ders, 8, fol­lowed by Trelawny, Hanover, and St Elizabeth, all of which report­ed 26 mur­ders each. . Shootings declined by 4.9 percent.
. The St Andrew South divi­sion had the most, 89, fol­lowed by Westmoreland with 84.
.There were 58 few­er rapes for the peri­od com­pared with 2021.
. Most of the 256 rapes report­ed to the police were record­ed in St Andrew North (32). St. Mary and Kingston Central both had three each.
.Robberies across the island increased by 13 per­cent, with 582 report­ed.
.Robberies declined in sev­en of the 19 police divi­sions, while Manchester record­ed 75 rob­beries, which is the high­est among all divi­sions for the period.
.Break-ins have increased by 5.2 per­cent, as 625 inci­dents were report­ed com­pared to 594 last year.
.As with rob­beries, Manchester had the high­est num­ber of break-ins (114) — two more than it record­ed over a sim­i­lar peri­od in 2021.
.Police divi­sions in Kingston report­ed the least num­ber of break-ins accord­ing to the police.

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As is cus­tom­ary, the dev­il is in the details. Numbers gen­er­al­ly tell a sto­ry that speaks to the effi­ca­cy of pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions and whether or not strate­gies work and gives us an indi­ca­tion of shift­ing dynam­ics. Data is a set of val­ues or infor­ma­tion which, when analysed togeth­er, gives an inference.

. For exam­ple, it would be instruc­tive to under­stand what is behind the increase in Robberies and break-ins plagu­ing the once peace­ful parish of Manchester, par­tic­u­lar­ly when armed rob­bery inci­dents have gone down in sev­en police divisions.
. What is behind the increase in rapes in Saint Andrew North, the last police divi­sion this writer served before leav­ing the department?
The data tend to indi­cate some con­sis­ten­cy as the tra­di­tion­al trou­bled areas of St James, St Catherine North, and Westmoreland con­tin­ue to lead with homicides.
One bright spark in the data is the Portland, Hanover, and Saint Elizabeth parish­es. The three parish­es con­tin­ue to lead with few­er murders.
.Shootings declined by 4.9 per­cent. The St Andrew South divi­sion, what did the police do, if any­thing, that led to this decline?
Were there more police patrols, more vig­i­lance, more cars, motor­cy­cles, and pedes­tri­ans stopped and search­es done? If the answer is in the affir­ma­tive, then it behooves the police to step up those activ­i­ties in a more tar­get­ed and sus­tained way to con­tin­ue the positives.
On the oth­er hand, if these low­er num­bers are attrib­uted to some­thing like every­one watch­ing ath­let­ic games, then nei­ther the police nor the cit­i­zens can take com­fort in what is then a tem­po­rary lull in the violence.
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INSIDE TEH DATA

Inside the data are indi­ca­tors for the police and the gov­ern­ment to ana­lyze. What mea­sures are in place in Saint James, Westmoreland parish­es, and the Saint Catherine North division?
How long has the police depart­ment imple­ment­ed those strate­gies, and what is the depart­ment doing to craft alter­na­tive mea­sures since the strate­gies, if any, aren’t exact­ly bear­ing fruits?
It would be inter­est­ing to under­stand what is dri­ving the num­ber of rapes com­mit­ted in Saint Andrew North over oth­er police divi­sions. Full dis­clo­sure I last served at the Constant Spring CIB many moons ago, so I have a soft spot for that divi­sion. I thor­ough­ly enjoyed work­ing at the Constant Spring CIB. I was shot in that police pre­scient, which includ­ed Grants Pen dur­ing my time. There was no Grant’s Pen Police Station; we ser­viced the entire area.
Most of the 256 rapes report­ed to the police were record­ed in St Andrew North (32)
The num­ber 32 does not seem alarm­ing to the untrained, but to women, one or two inci­dents of pub­li­cized rapes are enough to dri­ve fear into their hearts as mur­ders do.

Illustration giv­ing an exam­ple of what is being suggested…

Here is a sim­ple tool I devel­oped while serv­ing at Constant Spring. This can be incred­i­bly use­ful for the detec­tives look­ing at seri­ous crime data.
Place a map of the police area on a board and source some pins of dif­fer­ent col­ors. One col­or for mur­ders, one for rapes, anoth­er for rob­beries, and stick the pins into the area on the map com­plainants report­ed crimes against them occurred.
You will be sur­prised to see how those col­ored pins give you a pic­ture of where resources should be tar­get­ed for best results.
Day, date & time memo­ri­al­ized in com­plainant affi­davits gives detec­tives a good idea of who is doing what, where, and when.

The JCF is now top-heavy, with grad­u­ates from var­i­ous col­leges across the Island. Gone are the days when the police were ridiculed for being dunces. Therefore, it is impor­tant that the depart­ment lead­ers under­stand that rank is not to lord over the rank and file; it is for leadership.
But then again, most of the lead­ers in the JCF, from the Commissioner on down, have no clue about polic­ing. Most senior lead­ers have degrees in areas that have noth­ing to do with the dis­tinct dis­ci­pline called law enforce­ment. Nevertheless, they have rank and are run­ning divi­sions but don’t know their head from their asses.

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

Lest We Forget Who They Are…

HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE LYNCHED

From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynch­ings occurred in the U.S., accord­ing to records main­tained by NAACP. Other accounts, includ­ing the Equal Justice Initiative’s exten­sive report on lynch­ing, count slight­ly dif­fer­ent num­bers, but it’s impos­si­ble to know for cer­tain how many lynch­ings occurred because there was no for­mal track­ing. Many his­to­ri­ans believe the true num­ber is underreported.

The high­est num­ber of lynch­ings dur­ing that time peri­od occurred in Mississippi, with 581 record­ed. Georgia was sec­ond with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no record­ed lynch­ings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Black peo­ple were the pri­ma­ry vic­tims of lynch­ing: 3,446, or about 72 per­cent of the peo­ple lynched, were Black. But they weren’t the only vic­tims of lynch­ing. Some white peo­ple were lynched for help­ing Black peo­ple or for being anti-lynch­ing. Immigrants from Mexico, China, Australia, and oth­er coun­tries were also lynched.

ALLEGATIONS BEHIND LYNCHINGS

White mobs often used dubi­ous crim­i­nal accu­sa­tions to jus­ti­fy lynch­ings. A com­mon claim used to lynch Black men was per­ceived sex­u­al trans­gres­sions against white women. Charges of rape were rou­tine­ly fab­ri­cat­ed. These alle­ga­tions were used to enforce seg­re­ga­tion and advance stereo­types of Black men as vio­lent, hyper­sex­u­al aggressors.

Hundreds of Black peo­ple were lynched based on accu­sa­tions of oth­er crimes, includ­ing mur­der, arson, rob­bery, and vagrancy.

Many vic­tims of lynch­ings were mur­dered with­out being accused of any crime. They were killed for vio­lat­ing social cus­toms or racial expec­ta­tions, such as speak­ing to white peo­ple with less respect than what white peo­ple believed they were owed.

HOW NAACP FOUGHT LYNCHING

As Black Americans fled the South to escape the ter­ror of lynch­ings, a his­toric event known as the Great Migration, peo­ple began to oppose lynch­ings in a num­ber of ways. They con­duct­ed grass­roots activism, such as boy­cotting white busi­ness­es. Anti-lynch­ing cru­saders like Ida B. Wells com­posed news­pa­per columns to crit­i­cize the atroc­i­ties of lynching.

And sev­er­al impor­tant civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing NAACP — emerged dur­ing this time to com­bat racial violence. 

NAACP led a coura­geous bat­tle against lynch­ing. In the July 1916 issue of The Crisis, edi­tor W.E.B. Du Bois pub­lished a pho­to essay called “The Waco Horror” that fea­tured bru­tal images of the lynch­ing of Jesse Washington.

Washington was a 17-year-old Black teen lynched in Waco, Texas, by a white mob that accused him of killing Lucy Fryer, a white woman. Du Bois was able to turn post­cards of Washington’s mur­der against their cre­ators to ener­gize the anti-lynch­ing move­ment. The Crisis’s cir­cu­la­tion grew by 50,000 over the next two years, and we raised $20,000 toward an anti-lynch­ing cam­paign.In 1919, NAACP pub­lished Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889 – 1919, to pro­mote aware­ness of the scope of lynch­ing. The data in this study offer the grue­some facts by num­ber, year, state, col­or, sex, and alleged offense. 

Among the cam­paign’s oth­er efforts, from 1920 to 1938, we flew a flag from our nation­al head­quar­ters in New York that bore the words “A man was lynched yes­ter­day.” The cam­paign turned the tide of pub­lic opin­ion and even per­suad­ed some south­ern news­pa­pers to oppose lynch­ing because it was dam­ag­ing the South’s eco­nom­ic prospects.NAACP Office Harlem

We also fought hard for anti-lynch­ing leg­is­la­tion. In 1918, Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri first intro­duced his Anti-Lynching Bill — known as the Dyer Bill — into Congress. NAACP sup­port­ed pas­sage of the bill from 1919 onward, though it was defeat­ed by a Senate fil­i­buster. NAACP con­tin­ued to push for fed­er­al anti-lynch­ing leg­is­la­tion into the 1930s.

National lynch­ing rates declined in the 1930s, a trend that NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White attrib­uted to anti-lynch­ing activism, shifts in pub­lic opin­ion, and the Great Migration. The first full year with­out a record­ed lynch­ing occurred in 1952.

THE LYNCHING OF EMMET TILL

The tide may have turned against lynch­ing, but white suprema­cy and vio­lence con­tin­ued to ter­ror­ize Black com­mu­ni­ties. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was bru­tal­ly mur­dered for alleged­ly flirt­ing with a white woman. Till’s mur­der and sub­se­quent injus­tice deeply affect­ed the Black com­mu­ni­ty and gal­va­nized a young gen­er­a­tion of Black peo­ple to join the Civil Rights Movement.

NAACP declared Till’s mur­der a lynch­ing. Southeast Regional Director Ruby Hurley, Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers, and Amzie Moore, pres­i­dent of the Bolivar County branch in Mississippi, ini­ti­at­ed the homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion and secured wit­ness­es. An all-white jury acquit­ted the two men accused, who lat­er bragged about their crimes in a mag­a­zine article.

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, Emmet Till’s moth­er, decid­ed to hold an open-cas­ket funer­al to put her son’s bru­tal­ized body on dis­play for the world to see. Jet Magazine pub­lished pho­tos of his body in the cas­ket, along with the head­line “Negro Boy Was Killed for ‘Wolf Whistle,’ ” caus­ing nation­al out­rage among Black and white Americans alike, help­ing to cat­alyze the Civil Rights Movement.

MODERN-DAY LYNCHINGS
Emmett Till

You might think of lynch­ings as a dis­grace­ful and bar­bar­ic prac­tice from the past, but they con­tin­ue to this day. In 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white suprema­cists and dragged to his death in the streets of Jasper, Texas. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was fatal­ly shot while jog­ging near Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men charged with killing Arbery claimed he was tres­pass­ing.The video­taped death of George Floyd was a mod­ern-day lynch­ing. Floyd was killed in broad day­light by police offi­cer Derek Chauvin, who held Floyd down with a knee on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Lynchings like these should not be part of American soci­ety today just as they should not have been 100 years ago. NAACP will con­tin­ue to fight back against white suprema­cy and vio­lence, and demand that peo­ple respon­si­ble, includ­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers, be held accountable.

President Johnson

What we wit­nessed with George Floyd was that same pub­lic spec­ta­cle: some­one in broad day­light with onlook­ers around, being killed at the hands of a law enforce­ment offi­cer who has just com­plete dis­re­gard for human life and felt he was above the law. - Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO.

WALTER WHITE, INVESTIGATOR

In 1918, Walter White, NAACP Assistant Secretary, ini­tial­ly joined NAACP as an inves­ti­ga­tor. His fair skin and straight hair made him effec­tive in con­duct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of lynch­ings and race riots in the South. He could “pass” and talk to whites but iden­ti­fied as Black. Through 1927, White would inves­ti­gate 41 lynchings.

WALTER WHITE LYNCHING INVESTIGATIONS FEATURED IN THE CRISIS:

The Lynching of Mary Turner, May 19, 1918 – Georgia

The lynch­ing of Mary Turner in Brooks-Lowndes County, Georgia, was one of the lynch­ing inves­ti­ga­tions by Walter White on behalf of NAACP. Abusive plan­ta­tion own­er, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed. A week-long man­hunt result­ed in the killing of Mary Turner’s hus­band, Hayes Turner. Mary denied that her hus­band had been involved in Smith’s killing, pub­licly opposed her hus­band’s mur­der, and threat­ened to have mem­bers of the mob arrested.

On May 19, 1918, a mob of sev­er­al hun­dred brought her to Folsom Bridge, tied Mary’s ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, doused her in gaso­line and motor oil and set her on fire. She was still alive when a mem­ber of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife. Her unborn child fell to the ground, was stomped and crushed. Mary’s body was rid­dled with hun­dreds of bullets.

The September 1918 issue of The Crisis car­ried an account of the lynching.

The Lynching of Jesse McIlherron, February 1918 – Tennessee 

The lynch­ing of Jesse McIlherron was anoth­er Walter White inves­ti­ga­tion for NAACP. Jesse was a Black man who resent­ed the slights and insults of white men. He stayed armed and the sher­iff feared him. On February 8, 1918, he got into a quar­rel with three young white men who insult­ed him. Threats were made and McIlherron shot and killed two of the men.

McIlherron fled to the home of a Black cler­gy­man who aid­ed him to escape and was lat­er shot and killed by a mob. McIlherron was cap­tured and lynched. McIlherron was chained to a hick­o­ry tree, a fire was built, and the tor­ture began. Bars of iron were heat­ed and the mob amused itself by putting them close to McIlherron, at first with­out touch­ing him. He grasped at a bar and as it was jerked from his grasp, the inside of his hand came with it. Then, the real tor­tur­ing began, last­ing twen­ty minutes.

During that time, while his flesh was slow­ly roast­ing, Jesse nev­er lost nerve. He cursed those who tor­tured him and almost to the last breath, derid­ed the attempts of the mob to break his spirit.

An account of the lynch­ing of Jesse was car­ried in the May 1918 issue of The Crisis.

Seven Years After Mother Emanuel…

After the sav­age mur­der of nine parish­ioners at Mother Emanuel AME church in South Carolina my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed the Church as so many oth­ers have.
A pro­file view of the famous church

My wife Cheryl signed the board, like thou­sands of oth­ers before and after us did.

So did I.

No words

Addit

Wild Wild West In The Tourism Mecca…

The right to bear arms is [not] a con­sti­tu­tion­al right in Jamaica. Nevertheless, from the way guns are read­i­ly avail­able and used on the tiny island nation of under three mil­lion peo­ple, one would think that gun rights are enshrined in the constitution.
As we have seen in oth­er soci­eties where guns are read­i­ly avail­able, guns do not solve prob­lem; they cre­ate problems.
There is absolute­ly no rea­son that the Jamaican Government should be in the busi­ness of allow­ing guns into the hands of Jamaicans, who are known for default­ing to vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion remedy.
At this point, it is already water under the bridge, it is a sit­u­a­tion that will remain because those with pow­er demand these perks, and those with­out want them too. And that means even if they have to acquire them illicitly.
This was the scene in Sam Sharpe square Montego Bay on Tuesday between two dum­b­ass­es who, as you may have guessed, have licensed firearms, pop­ping off shots in the crowd­ed city center.

Most dis­tress­ing of all, look at the law enforce­ment response to this dan­ger­ous and crim­i­nal act between two morons who should nev­er have guns.

Having the pos­ses­sion and care of a firearm is a tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty; even as a law enforce­ment offi­cer, I felt a tremen­dous bur­den and a duty of care to be judi­cious and pru­dent with the weapon and under what cir­cum­stances that weapon may be dis­charged cer­tain­ly as the last resort.
Civilians are allowed weapons, and clear­ly, they feel no duty of care or bur­den to be respon­si­ble. It is like the wild west, and the poor police offi­cers, so berat­ed and beat­en down, have no idea how to respond. We are slow­ly los­ing our coun­try day by day.

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

Cop Fired Two Years Ago For Assaulting 14-year-old Boy Given His Job Back By Arbitrator…

Even though American police are some of the most vio­lent and dan­ger­ous any­where in the world, they clear­ly are not near­ly vio­lent enough for some Independent Arbitrators who review actions tak­en against vio­lent cops and have the pow­er to deter­mine whether they get their jobs back or not, if fired.
Independent Arbitrators means a neu­tral and impar­tial arbi­tra­tor (i) who is list­ed on the American Arbitration Association’s nation­al ros­ter of arbi­tra­tors, (ii) who has not had and does not have any past, cur­rent or poten­tial busi­ness, pro­fes­sion­al, or per­son­al rela­tion­ship with any of the par­ties involved in the arbi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings which would inter­fere with the exer­cise of inde­pen­dent judg­ment in car­ry­ing out their respon­si­bil­i­ties as an arbi­tra­tor, and (iii) whose con­duct is guid­ed by the Code of Ethics for Arbitrators in Commercial Disputes.
The sad real­i­ty for aggriev­ed indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties that have borne the brunt of police vio­lence this def­i­n­i­tion is not worth the paper it is written.
In far too many cas­es, the so-called inde­pen­dent arbi­tra­tors who review cas­es of police abuse gen­er­al­ly end up sid­ing with the police, even though they rep­re­sent a clear and present dan­ger to the com­mu­ni­ties they policed.
What’s worse is that in more cas­es than not, they get to return to police com­mu­ni­ties that no longer want their ser­vice or wish to see them as author­i­ty fig­ures in those communities.
We report­ed on this case where a Sacramento Sheriff’s deputy roughed up a 14-year-old boy two years ago, result­ing in the fir­ing of the deputy. Now an arbi­tra­tor has ruled that the deputy’s fir­ing was too harsh, so the Sheriff was forced to give the ex-deputy his job back.
This mon­ster now has the pow­er and the back­ing to do more harm, and he can now kill the inno­cent based on a sin­gle arbi­tra­tor that is behold­en to the police.

Arbitrator Gives Job Back to California Deputy Captured on Video Beating 14-Year-Old Boy, Says Termination Was Too Harsh

Arbitrator Gives Job Back to California Deputy Captured on Video Beating 14-Year-Old Boy, Says Termination Was Too Harsh“The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office will com­ply with the man­date of the inde­pen­dent arbi­tra­tor and inte­grate Deputy Fowell back into the orga­ni­za­tion,” a state­ment from the sheriff’s office said in part.

The rein­state­ment sparked out­rage in the activist com­mu­ni­ty. Local NAACP pres­i­dent Betty Williams said she is “pissed” about the deci­sion to bring him back into law enforcement.

I’m pissed,” Williams said. “This is basi­cal­ly a slap in the face to the com­mu­ni­ty that he is back.” 

She con­tin­ued, “How can we trust your law enforce­ment when you know you have an offi­cer who did some­thing like this and you bring him back to that same com­mu­ni­ty and you ask us to trust you? That is absolute­ly a slap in the face.”

The alter­ca­tion between the offi­cer and the teen was cap­tured in a 15-sec­ond cell­phone video in April 2020 and went viral caus­ing mil­lions to chime in, includ­ing then-Sen. Kamala Harris, who called the deputy’s actions “a hor­rif­ic abuse of power.”

In the clip of the detain­ment, Fowell is seen grab­bing the back of Tufono’s neck, push­ing his face into the ground, and punch­ing the teen three times in his arm. The clip does not show what led up to the inci­dent or what hap­pened after.

A per­son claim­ing to be Tufono’s sis­ter post­ed on Twitter, “My baby broth­er who is 14 years old. All of this over a swish­er there’s more footage but I wasn’t able to upload it all. Please repost, we just want jus­tice for my baby!“He was charged with ‘resist­ing arrest.’ But what was he even being arrest­ed for?? For hav­ing a swish­er? & they end­ed up let­ting him go so what was all of this for?? Smh he was left with scratch­es and chest pains! this was so unnec­es­sary!” she wrote.

The offi­cer approached the young man after he asked a stranger for some tobacco. 

And that’s when the cop pulled up,” Tufono said at the time. “And he asked me what was that in my hand. And I had gave him, as soon as he asked me that, I just gave it to him.”

He said ini­tial­ly he was not coöper­a­tive, say­ing that was his “mis­take.”

Two years ago, after the alter­ca­tion, the teen’s aunt Leata Tufono said at a press con­fer­ence that he was emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly scarred, ABC 10 reports.

The deputy was ter­mi­nat­ed by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office after a pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards unit inves­ti­gat­ed his engage­ment with the 14-year-old, deter­min­ing he went too far when detain­ing him.

Fowell’s attor­ney William Creger filed his appeal on his client’s behalf in October 2020, claim­ing his ter­mi­na­tion was unwarranted.

The sheriff’s office was enti­tled to take Deputy Fowell out of the pub­lic spot­light for a while,” the lawyer said. “The arbi­tra­tor said (Fowell) didn’t do every­thing per­fect­ly, he could’ve han­dled it in a dif­fer­ent way … but it didn’t need to rise to the lev­el of termination.”

An arbi­tra­tor deter­mined he was unjust­ly fired, rul­ing his employ­ment should be restored.

Touting acco­lades like the offi­cer being named the 2019 “Employee of the Quarter” for the force and lat­er the same year receiv­ing the life-sav­ing medal for his sav­ing a lit­tle girl’s life by using CPR, the lawyer argued Fowell’s exem­plary law enforce­ment record was instru­men­tal in the deci­sion in his favor.

Much of the details of his restora­tion to the police force are not pub­lic. Fowell is con­sid­ered a “peace offi­cer” under California law and their records are pro­tect­ed and not available.

According to a recent amend­ment approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 30, 2021, relat­ing to peace offi­cers, “peace offi­cer per­son­nel records and spec­i­fied records main­tained by any state or local agency, or infor­ma­tion obtained from these records” are to be kept “con­fi­den­tial” and not “dis­closed in any crim­i­nal or civ­il pro­ceed­ing except by discovery.

Tufano’s attor­ney John Burris said in a state­ment, “It rais­es real safe­ty con­cerns for the client who’s been ner­vous about this offi­cer and hopes that he doesn’t have the chance to see him.”

At the end of the day, I hope the offi­cer has been retrained on how to deesca­late sit­u­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when he’s deal­ing with teenagers who are involved with minor trans­gres­sions,” the lawyer said. 

His con­duct, in this case, was over the top and clear­ly did not give con­sid­er­a­tion that this was a young person.”

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office has not released any fur­ther state­ments on Fowell’s rehiring.


Atlanta Mother Wants Answers From Police After She And Her Children Were Handcuffed

Day in day out, peo­ple of col­or are exposed to these out­ra­geous actions from Jackasses in uni­form and for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than the peo­ple they are abus­ing are Black.
Speaking as a for­mer police offi­cer who faced real dan­ger, not a con­trived dan­ger, intend­ed to evoke sym­pa­thy if you are told there was a rob­bery. You receive the infor­ma­tion from the dis­patch­er that the car is a cer­tain make, mod­el, col­or, with a cer­tain col­or per­son in it. Aren’t you at least clued in that there will be dozens of cars that make, mod­el, and col­or around? So you must read care­ful­ly not to overreact?


Worse yet, if you are told that the per­son in the car is a tall slim man, why would you stop at gun­point a car with a woman and her chil­dren and hand­cuff them?
I’ll tell you why. They do not feel a duty of care, and they would not stop the same car with a white woman and her chil­dren, yank them out, cuff them and sub­ject them to the ter­ror of their wannabe-Rambo war­rior-style policing.
How do these men­tal-midgets put hand­cuffs on the girl and her moth­er when the dis­patch told them the per­son they were look­ing for was a tall slim male.
But that is what they did to Deondra Hawkins, her autis­tic son, and her 14-year-old daugh­ter at an Atlanta gas station.
http://<iframe src=”//content.jwplatform.com/players/8DXURwcj-srWXYojL.html” width=“640” height=“360” frameborder=“0” scrolling=“auto”></iframe

It was pure con­fu­sion. The police pulled up with their guns out and demand­ed we get out of the car, and I had no idea what I could have pos­si­bly have done,” Hawkins said.
This not polic­ing; it is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of amped-up morons with too much pow­er and sup­port act­ing out their Rambo fan­tasies on vul­ner­a­ble people.
Hawkins and her chil­dren were hor­ri­fied as police yelled con­flict­ing com­mands at her and her shocked chil­dren. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that her son is an autis­tic male who could have become flus­tered and made a sud­den move that would unleashed a bar­rage of cop-bul­lets, killing all three.
Or maybe the con­flict­ing com­mands are designed for exact­ly that out­come, know­ing they will not be held accountable?

Hawkins says near­ly a week after the hor­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, the police have not reached out to her to apol­o­gize, and she and her chil­dren are deal­ing with the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of their police encounter. She wants the police to receive bet­ter train­ing to pre­vent inci­dents like this from hap­pen­ing to oth­er inno­cent people.
Better train­ing so they don’t han­dle peo­ple so rough­ly and bet­ter train­ing where they don’t sus­pect every­one of being a sus­pect,” she said.
No dear, train­ing is not the prob­lem, they are doing exact­ly what they are told to do. Abusing you is exact­ly the point.

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

California Woman Filming Arrest In Her Own Yard Is Left With Scars After Police Manhandle Her For Obstruction;

A California moth­er and daugh­ter have filed a law­suit against police offi­cers for exces­sive force. 
Mariah Hereford and her moth­er Monet Hereford said Hemet Police vio­lent­ly arrest­ed them and Mariah’s fiancé in front of their home while her chil­dren watched. The inci­dent was cap­tured on video and also wit­nessed by neighbors.
“Help! Help! You’re hit­ting my head! Help!” Mariah screamed and cried in cell­phone video.

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The Hereford’s attor­ney said an offi­cer grabbed Mariah by the hair and repeat­ed­ly slammed her head on the ground. The offi­cer hooked his fin­gers under­neath the woman’s jaw and yanked her, attor­ney Toni Jaramilla said. The inci­dent left Mariah with a con­cus­sion, bruis­es and a scar.

Mariah Hereford has a per­ma­nent scar after Hemet Police offi­cers slammed her head on the ground. (Photo cour­tesy of Toni Jaramilla)

Mariah and her moth­er said they were record­ing Hemet police offi­cers as they arrest­ed her fiancé when offi­cers knocked their phones out of their hands and grabbed the women.

Cellphone video cap­tured the offi­cers as they wres­tled with fam­i­ly pets while Hereford’s four chil­dren cried and screamed. Hemet Police Chief Eddie Pust said the old­er woman refused to back away when asked. Body cam­era video shows that the offi­cers were con­fronting the younger woman about car keys when they arrest­ed her.
Attorneys said Ryan Gadison was on his way home from work last March when two Hemet Gang Enforcement offi­cers fol­lowed him in his 2020 Dodge Challenger. They flagged him in his driveway.
Mariah, Monet and the chil­dren, who are between the ages of 3 and 9, met Gadison out­side. Police offi­cials said Gadison repeat­ed­ly honked his horn.

Gadison told the offi­cers he was ner­vous because of the “stereo­type” about inter­ac­tions between Black men and white police offi­cers, video shows. The offi­cer tells Gadison, he is “mis­in­formed.” The body cam­era video shows the offi­cer told Gadison that his license was sus­pend­ed and ordered him to put down his keys and wal­let down and get out of the car. The offi­cer also asked for per­mis­sion to search Gadison’s car. Gadison refused, the video shows.
Can you get a lit­tle clos­er and record this guy,” Gadison said as he motioned to the women.
“I am record­ing,” the offi­cer said in the video.
Gadison threw the keys out of his win­dow. Police said he threw it in the same direc­tion as the women.

The attor­neys said offi­cers tar­get­ed Gadison because he was “dri­ving while Black” in a “nice” car. Cellphone video shows Gadison was pinned to the car and arrest­ed. The attor­neys said the police searched his car but noth­ing ille­gal was found.
Cellphone video show offi­cers approached Mariah Hereford’s 54-year-old moth­er and told her to “back up” and “move” as she filmed the arrest.
When the video panned away, an offi­cer knocked the cell­phone to the ground and “threw her against the vehi­cle and tight­ly hand­cuffed her,” the family’s attor­neys allege. Video from Mariah Hereford’s phone shows the arrest, and police body cam­era video also con­firmed. Pust said the women were get­ting in “close prox­im­i­ty to the offi­cers.” Body cam­era video showed the exchange between offi­cers and the moth­er and daugh­ter before Monet Hereford was arrested.

I am going to take both of you to jail if you don’t back up,” an offi­cer said.

For what?” Both of the women asked.

For obstruct­ing an arrest,” the offi­cer said.

I am ask­ing a ques­tion,” one of the women said off camera.

A hand­cuffed Gadison told Mariah to stand by the dogs that were chained clos­er to the house as one of the offi­cers attempt­ed to pull him away to the squad car, the body cam­era video shows. He also instruct­ed one of the women to close his car door and lock it. The attor­neys allege that a male offi­cer searched the old­er woman by grab­bing and prob­ing between her legs and groin area, even though a female offi­cer was present. “This case is just atro­cious,” Jaramilla said. “They had an absolute right to video­tape what was hap­pen­ing, and that was what caused them to get angry and retal­i­ate and vio­late their rights when they were doing that.” Mariah Hereford backed away from the car after her mother’s arrest and stood near the dogs. Officers approached her, the video shows. In the cell­phone footage, she can be heard scream­ing “back up,” “let go of me,” as her phone appears to hit the ground. The cell­phone video went dark, but the phone still cap­tured the audio.

Police body cam­era shows one of the dogs bit an offi­cer as he charged at Hereford. Another offi­cer pulled the dog off from the back of its col­lar, and Hereford tried to grab the dog from officers.

Rocky! Rocky! Let go, Rocky!” Hereford said.

The body cam­era video showed Mariah Hereford con­tin­ued to reach for the dog as offi­cers con­tin­ued to pull it away.

Let go of the key now,” an offi­cer said.

I don’t have the key. Get out of my face,” Hereford said. She placed one hand up and anoth­er offi­cer grabbed the other.

Shut your f — ing mouth,” an offi­cer said.

No, you shut your f — ing mouth,” Hereford said.

Body worn cam­era shows the offi­cers tack­led the woman. The children’s screams and cries over­pow­ered the sound of an active car alarm. Hereford let out sev­er­al screech­es and cries for help. At one point, she told police offi­cers that they hit her head. The entire scuf­fle was not caught on video. “Stop! Just give them what they want! Just give them what they want,” one of the chil­dren said. The voice stretch­es over all the oth­er noise. “Please! Stop! Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” The Herefords have filed a civ­il rights law­suit against Hemet and its offi­cers and are seek­ing dam­ages for vio­la­tion of rights, tres­pass­ing, wrong­ful arrests and impris­on­ment, emo­tion­al dis­tress, assault and battery.

The attor­neys said Gadison and Monett Hereford were each arrest­ed for obstruct­ing arrest, a mis­de­meanor. Mariah Hereford was arrest­ed for resist­ing a peace offi­cer result­ing in injury, a felony, but no actu­al charges were filed against any­one. “The fight against injus­tice and vio­lence against women is also about law enforce­ment need­less­ly vio­lat­ing women for sport,” Jaramilla said. “Nothing about Mariah and Monett Hereford was a threat to these offi­cers or jus­ti­fied the bru­tal­i­ty these offi­cers inflict­ed on a moth­er and grand­moth­er,”Jaramilla said Americans have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to record law enforce­ment offi­cers pro­tect­ed under the First Amendment.Federal case law states: Americans have “a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right to video­tape police car­ry­ing out their duties.” “We should all do that because often­times, these videos are what’s going to be the key to achiev­ing jus­tice,” Jaramilla said. The Hemet Police Department did not respond to requests for com­ment, but the chief released a video state­ment with body cam­era footage on March 14.

The Hemet Police Department takes claims of exces­sive use of force or mis­con­duct very seri­ous­ly,” Pust said. “We believe it is impor­tant to be trans­par­ent and pro­vide fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic as soon as pos­si­ble to uphold depart­ment account­abil­i­ty, main­tain trust with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. First appeared @ AtlantaBlackstar

Yah

Chang & Paulwell Begs Diaspora Criminals Not To Send Guns, When Has Begging Criminals Ever Worked?

Two days ago, I wrote about com­ments the Jamaican Prime Minister made in Montego Bay about the lethal­i­ty of the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing in Jamaica in an arti­cle titled Jamaican Prime Minister shook over Haitian lead­er’s demise.
In a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, I mocked the PM for only con­clud­ing that the gangs he for­mer­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed in words and pol­i­cy now all of a sud­den threat­en Jamaica’s sov­er­eign­ty because his con­tem­po­rary in Haiti was murdered.
Tongue-in-cheek or not, the mes­sage was seri­ous; those of us who have spent time in the trench­es have not been silent about the threat these crim­i­nal gangs pose, not just to indi­vid­ual Jamaicans but to the nation’s sov­er­eign­ty itself.
This medi­um was cre­at­ed over a decade ago to high­light exact­ly these events that have been allowed to fes­ter in our country.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​p​m​-​s​h​o​o​k​-​o​v​e​r​-​h​a​i​t​i​a​n​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​d​e​m​i​se/
In my Wednesday arti­cle, I name-checked Horace Chang, he hap­pens to be the Member of Parliament for one of the Island’s most intractable gar­risons; Chang is also the Island’s National Security Minister; oxy­moron, I know!
I name-checked Chang because Prime Minister Holness made his com­ments in the Parish of Saint James and ref­er­enced areas in Chang’s con­stituen­cy with­in Saint James.

Horace Chang

Needless to say, now two mem­bers of par­lia­ment, one from either polit­i­cal par­ty, have called for peo­ple in the dias­po­ra to [stop] send­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion to gang­sters in Jamaica.
As you may guess, the two have gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies; Horace Chang of the JLP has a St James con­stituen­cy, and Phillip Paulwell of the PNP has the infa­mous East Kingston and Port Royal constituency.
The two made the com­ments dur­ing a sit­ting of the joint select com­mit­tee that is con­sid­er­ing the four-year-old Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures) Act, that the admin­is­tra­tion has been using as its pri­ma­ry crime-fight­ing tool.
It is good to see that final­ly, these two polit­i­cal dinosaurs after decades in pol­i­tics, have come to their sens­es and are speak­ing with one voice against this can­cer of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal gangs.
Nothing brings home to politi­cians the seri­ous­ness of kiss­ing the ass of crim­i­nals than see­ing one of their own get­ting delet­ed, albeit in anoth­er country.
All of a sud­den it’s all eyes wide open, “I guess we aren’t as safe and untouch­able as we once thought”.

Phillip Paulwell

Both Chang and Paulwell spoke out about what they sur­mise to be a pipeline of guns and ammu­ni­tion flow­ing into Jamaica, even as they blame inter­na­tion­al part­ners for not doing enough to help stop it.
Hahaha, I’m going to do some sur­mis­ing myself. Do these guys even read or under­stand any­thing that is hap­pen­ing in the world?
Let me guess; at the very min­i­mum, one of the unnamed inter­na­tion­al part­ners is the United States, right?
Quick ques­tion though, are you guys up to speed with what is hap­pen­ing in the United States? I mean seri­ous­ly, the United States will not take action to ban the weapons that are slaugh­ter­ing thou­sands of its own cit­i­zens each year; what makes you think this so-called inter­na­tion­al part­ner care about your situation?
There is no ‘they’ to fix our sit­u­a­tion, ‘they’ are inca­pable of fix­ing their own. Therefore, ‘they’ is ‘us’, it is up to ‘us’, ‘we’ as a col­lec­tive of Jamaicans to step up to the plate and take care of our own shit.
I am tired of the worn-out excus­es that there is no mon­ey, you find mon­ey to do oth­er things, train and equip the secu­ri­ty forces, they have the strength and for­ti­tude to do what you politi­cians and oth­ers are too chick­en-shit to even under­stand much less attempt.
How about both of you Members of Parliament, (just refer­ring to you as such makes me nau­seous, how about you tell the police about the crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in your gar­risons for a start? Talk is cheap it begins with the man in the mirror.

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

Why Does INDECOM Feel Obligated To Issue Press Releases?

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

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

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

The Qanon Party, Formerly House Republicans

Liz Cheney sur­vived being boot­ed from her num­ber 3 lead­er­ship spot in the Qanon par­ty, for­mer­ly known as the Republicans.
I post­ed on my social media page this evening the fol­low­ing statement.
Quote: “I want you all to think on this, the Republican cau­cus in the house is tak­ing a secret vote on whether Liz Cheney should keep her post. Cheney stood up for Democracy.
Not on whether to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene”.
That was the point, I thought. Not that Liz Cheney even­tu­al­ly sur­vived and will keep her lead­er­ship post in a secret bal­lot, but Cheney was being forced to run the gaunt­let for stand­ing up for truth and her oath to the Republic.
While the Qanon right-wing cau­cus in con­gress gave Marjorie Green a stand­ing ovation.
I shed no tears that Liz Cheney was forced to run the gaunt­let; she is a neo-con whose pol­i­tics should scare any ratio­nal American.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

The impor­tant thing in this lat­est iter­a­tion of Marjorie Green’s shit-show, is that the speak­er of the house, the great Nancy Pelosi, will sched­ule a vote on Thursday, February 4th, that vote will decide whether Marjorie Green gets to sit on the House’s edu­ca­tion and bud­get committees.
The real laugh about this solemn vote is that the trai­tor­ous Qanon right-wing par­ty will have to vote pub­licly, with no secret bal­lot. Pelosi will place them on the record hav­ing to either con­demn her hate and luna­cy with a vote of yes to remove her. Risk being run out of the par­ty by the Trump insur­rec­tion­ist mob, or vote no and for­ev­er be iden­ti­fied as Qanon mem­bers of the house. A beau­ti­ful choice for me if you ask me.

Image result for kevin mCcARTHY
Kissing the ring of the loser.

The Democrats asked Kevin McCarty to attend to the press­ing issue of Marjorie Green. McCarthy held a four-hour meet­ing with his sedi­tious cau­cus- then appeared with his face red from the stress of prepar­ing to lie and his lips drip­ping with the putrid sali­va of mendacity.
Kevin McCarthy came out of the meet­ing, mis­pro­nounced Qanon, and said he does­n’t know what it is. What a stink­ing liar; he absolute­ly knows what it is; his entire cau­cus is Qanon.
Kevin McCarthy was dead set that they will be retak­ing the house in 2022, but I have news for him. I would humbly sug­gest here and now that. Democrats will hold the house with an improved majority.
David Perdue pre­tend­ed he could not pro­nounce Kamala Harri’s name in the run­ning to hold on to his Georgia Senate seat.
He lost.

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Kevin McCarthy will not become speak­er in 2022; he is a pathet­ic con­niv­ing lit­tle man with no char­ac­ter., he stands for noth­ing, and will even­tu­al­ly fall and be stepped over by the more caus­tic Jim Jordon.
All McCarthy can hear are the foot­steps of Jim Jordon in the back­ground. Jordon will take over the cau­cus as soon as he slips, and the trans­for­ma­tion will be complete.

Louisville Police Officially Fire 2 Detectives For Their Roles In Fatal Shooting Of Breonna Taylor

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Louisville Metro Police Department has offi­cial­ly fired two detec­tives and sanc­tioned oth­ers for their actions sur­round­ing the raid that left Breonna Taylor, 26, dead in her apartment.

Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes, who were fired Tuesday, are the lat­est detec­tives the depart­ment has ter­mi­nat­ed in con­nec­tion with the fatal police shoot­ing of Taylor.

A third detec­tive, Brett Hankison, was fired in June for “blind­ly” fir­ing 10 rounds into her apartment.

Cosgrove, who the FBI con­clud­ed fired the shot that killed Taylor, vio­lat­ed pro­ce­dures for use of force, and fail­ing to use a body cam­era dur­ing the March 13 search warrant.

Jaynes, mean­while, the offi­cer who secured the search war­rant for Taylor’s apart­ment, was found in vio­la­tion of depart­ment pol­i­cy for truth­ful­ness and search war­rant preparation.
Read more here; https://​www​.usato​day​.com/​n​e​ws/

Supreme Court’s Qualified Immunity, A Death-warrant On Black Americans

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Before I say what I will, let me first say this, what­ev­er you will tell me about how dif­fi­cult Policing is, how offi­cers have to make life and death deci­sions in sec­onds. I know. I have been there. And I did it all.
Glad I got that out of the way.

The American courts are par­tial­ly cul­pa­ble for the impuni­ty with which the nation’s police offi­cers use lethal force, begin­ning with the Supreme Court’s shield, known as [qual­i­fied immunity].
Consequently, low­er courts have all but giv­en police carte blanch to do as they please in the process of enforc­ing the laws.
Local pros­e­cu­tors are sup­posed to pros­e­cute offend­ers, regard­less of who they are when they break the laws. They, in large mea­sure, have all but giv­en up on pros­e­cut­ing killer cops. Instead, they have become tax-pay­er fund­ed lawyers that defend cops from being pros­e­cut­ed. This they do through a series of meth­ods, includ­ing pre­sent­ing only excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence to empan­eled grand juries with a view toward results of ‘no true bill”, non-indictments.
Even in cas­es where the evi­dence is clear as day, pros­e­cu­tors twist them­selves into pret­zels to explain why they can­not indict the kkk ‑killers in uniform.
When pros­e­cu­tors act as defense lawyers to cor­rupt and mur­der­ous cops, they don’t need to hire defense attor­neys. The peo­ple are forced to pay pros­e­cu­tors to defend when they should be prosecuting.
The final bar­ri­er to police account­abil­i­ty is police unions. Contrary to the grip­ing about them, how­ev­er, the unions are not near­ly as pow­er­ful as the politi­cians would have us believe. They pre­tend to have no lever­age in chang­ing how police behave because the unions pro­tect dirty, killer cops.
It is a lie. An employ­ee can­not hold an employ­er to ran­som. The sad real­i­ty is that Police unions help fund the cam­paigns of judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and politi­cians and all the way up the food chain.
It isn’t easy to move deci­sive­ly against the peo­ple who fund your polit­i­cal cam­paign. So the politi­cians dither around the edges, but noth­ing sub­stan­tive gets done to change police behavior.
Even if you set aside the fore­gone, Legislatures can throw out the rules and enact new laws that remove police unions from hav­ing a say in how police offi­cers are disciplined.
In fact, police unions should only have a say in pay and work­ing con­di­tions, not whether police offi­cers who com­mit crimes are allowed to get away with mur­der. Legislatures have it in their pow­er to change those real­i­ties; their close ties to the police unions stand in the way.

For instance, Columbus, Ohio cop Adam Coy, was allowed to remain in the depart­ment for 19-years, despite a report­ed his­to­ry of com­plaints and issues with exces­sive force dur­ing his time with the police department.
Coy, who is white, was only fired on Monday after he mur­dered Andre Hill, a 46-year-old African-American man, whom he ordered out of his car.
Hill was sit­ting in his parked car in the garage of a home where he is known, and was report­ed­ly expected.
Andre Hill was wear­ing a Black Lives Matter t‑shirt at the time he was mur­dered by Coy. He had no weapons, and did noth­ing to trig­ger the bar­rage of bul­lets Adam Coy sent his way, snuff­ing out his life.
Ask your­selves, whether a white, mid­dle-aged man would have been ordered from his car, much less mur­dered by police who weren’t even sent to inter­act with him?
This ques­tion is one that I have asked on numer­ous occa­sions, and have answered myself. That answer is an unequiv­o­cal no!
A white Andre Hill would have been deemed to have a right to be where he was. Nothing would have caused his death at the hands of Adam Coy, includ­ing his skin col­or, or what he was wearing.
Adam Coy fired his ser­vice weapon (a) because he [believed] there would be no con­se­quence for killing Andre Hill. (b)Adam Coy fired his weapon because he had no respect for the black life of Andre Hill.
© Neither Adman Coy, nor the female cop with him admin­is­tered life-sav­ing first aid. Why was this you ask? They placed [no] val­ue on the life of Andre Hill.

YOU DECIDE WHETHER THESE ARE PROTECTORS OF THE PUBLIC OR CRIMINALLY COMPLICIT MURDERERS?

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When the stan­dard for the use of dead­ly force is the irra­tional deci­sion-mak­ing of seri­ous­ly flawed indi­vid­u­als, these are the results. When poor­ly trained racists are allowed to kill, then galling­ly claim that they thought the per­son had a gun, these are the results. When cops, who time and again abuse the very cit­i­zens they are sworn to pro­tect, and are allowed to remain as police offi­cers, and in many cas­es are reward­ed with pro­mo­tions, what incen­tive do they have to stop mur­der­ing inno­cent citizens?
The tragedy inher­ent in these killings, is the mealy-mouthed respons­es of the politi­cians in both polit­i­cal par­ties. When asked to respond to these crimes against human­i­ty, they default to the canned praise of police BS; the major­i­ty of our police offi­cers are decent, hard-work­ing peo­ple who lay their lives on the line to pro­tect all of us”.
What unadul­ter­at­ed bull­shit by the way? No one asked them to join, they joined because they want­ed the job, they have every respon­si­bil­i­ty to fol­low the laws, not break them.
Rather than force­ful­ly respond­ing to the crimes of the mur­der­ers in uni­form., the polit­i­cal hacks engage in canned praise for the killers.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that in the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, agents of the state can sum­mar­i­ly take the lives of some cit­i­zens using irra­tional argu­ments, “I thought he had a gun” or “I feared for my life.”
If you kill some­one because you could not wait to see if they had a gun, you are basi­cal­ly say­ing that police have the legal right to mur­der any cit­i­zen as long as they can­not see the per­son­’s hands.
If you have such irra­tional fears, you have no busi­ness being a police offi­cer. Many of you who read this arti­cle will ques­tion these asser­tions; you are free to do so; nev­er­the­less, the very dis­re­spect­ful words of Adam Coy toward the shot and dying Andre Hill speaks volumes.
The offi­cer’s lack of action to stop the bleed­ing of the wound­ed Andre Hill, speaks direct­ly to their lack of respect for his humanity.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

Violent White Terrorists Continue To Get A Pass, No Matter Haw Many They Slaughter…

The nation­al silence at the well-planned, well-exe­cut­ed Christmas Morning RV bomb­ing in Nashville, Tennessee, is strik­ing. The entire inci­dent and the com­plex­i­ty of the act itself, has fad­ed away with 2020 like a bad mem­o­ry as if it nev­er happened.
But the real­i­ty is that it did hap­pen. (Anthony Quinn Warner, a white male, did rig a vehi­cle with explo­sives, and he did det­o­nate it in a major metrop­o­lis, alleged­ly killing him­self in the process. That ought to dri­ve ter­ror into the hearts of the nation, but it has­n’t, because Anthony Quinn Warner just hap­pen to be a white male.
Stop just for a minute and think about the media feed­ing fren­zy that would be in high gear today, had the bomber being iden­ti­fied as Jamal Muhammed?
Forget about the gullible cor­po­rate media for a sec­ond and imag­ine the lan­guage that would be com­ing out of the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike.
Many politi­cians would be call­ing for bomb­ings, and in all like­li­hood, war plans would have been on the table for airstrikes on the Nation to which the bomber may have had some ties, no evi­dence needed.
Think this state­ment is hyper­bol­ic? Please explain the ratio­nale for the attack on Iraq?

So how does a nation man­age this bi-polar response to actions that amount to the same thing? Sources famil­iar with the Nashville bomb inves­ti­ga­tion told the media that author­i­ties are look­ing into evi­dence that Anthony Quinn Warner was inter­est­ed in var­i­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing some involv­ing “lizard peo­ple.” Authorities believe Warner also spent time hunt­ing for alien life forms in a near­by state park.
So there you have it, folks, the poor guy is just a para­noid whack-job with men­tal issues, that ought to put every­thing to rest, right?
Have you noticed that for the most part, when­ev­er these white ter­ror­ists exact harm on the nation using vio­lence, they all seem to have three names? Just a thought!
More shock­ing than the fact that there is silence from the White House to the lit­tle house on Main street, is the sad real­i­ty that these acts are not even seen as acts of terror.
Many in the Republican Party, includ­ing William Barr, Michael Flynn, and oth­ers, want­ed Demonstrators peace­ably demon­strat­ing against police vio­lence to be charged with Sedition against the United States. For these same clowns, the com­plex pre­med­i­tat­ed act of build­ing and det­o­nat­ing an explo­sive device in a major American City does not rise to sedition.
If Republicans believe that Anthony Quinn Warner is an American ter­ror­ist, we are yet to hear it from them.
In fair­ness, the Democrats are just as silent as their Republican and Media contemporaries.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

It Will Be Interesting To See Who The Nashville Bomber Turns Out To Be

Indications are that inves­ti­ga­tors going through the Nashville blast-scene may now have a per­son or per­sons of inter­est in mind.
The blast — which injured three peo­ple and caused mas­sive dam­age to the city’s down­town area — emanat­ed from a white RV parked on 2nd Avenue at 6.40 am on Christmas morning.
Some ana­lysts the­o­rize that the RV, which broad­cast­ed a record­ed mes­sage warn­ing peo­ple to get away from the area and gave a count­down before the blast occurred, may have been designed to tar­get law-enforcement.
The idea is that as law-enforce­ment is drawn to the area to inves­ti­gate, the RV would det­o­nate, killing them.
The blast report­ed­ly injured sev­er­al people.

At this point, there has been no con­fir­ma­tion from the FBI or local police as to who was involved, whether tis­sue alleged­ly found at the scene was indeed human tis­sue, or who exact­ly may have been involved at this ear­ly stage of the investigations.
White suprema­cist groups have been known to pose the great­est dan­ger to the United States. They are heav­i­ly armed, and well orga­nized. They have demon­strat­ed their desire and capa­bil­i­ties to take inno­cent lives on a grand scale. From Timothy McVeigh in the Okholohama city bomb­ing, to Mother Emanuel, to Kyle Rittenhouse, their goal is to mur­der the innocent.
Despite the clear and present dan­ger they pose, law enforce­ment author­i­ties’ atten­tion, includ­ing local police depart­ments, seems to be focused elsewhere.

The Cruelty Is The Point Of Trump’s Approval Of Hanging And Firing Squads As Execution Methods

By Austin Sarat

The Trump administration on Friday dramatically expanded the federal government’s ability to carry out the death penalty and use archaic methods of execution that would prove to be a national embarrassment if used in Trump’s waning days as president.

At a time when every oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy and many reli­gious faiths have con­demned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because of its cru­el assault on human dig­ni­ty, Trump and his cronies have again thumbed their noses at the world and at com­mon decency.
The new rule is word­ed with decep­tive sim­plic­i­ty: “Federal exe­cu­tions are to be car­ried out by lethal injec­tion or by any oth­er man­ner pre­scribed by the law of the State in which the sen­tence was imposed.” Behind this bureau­crat­ic prose hides a stark fact: In our sup­pos­ed­ly civ­i­lized nation, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment now will be able to hang, elec­tro­cute, gas, or shoot indi­vid­u­als if it does not want to kill them by lethal injection

While lethal injec­tion is by no means an exe­cu­tion panacea, Trump and his min­ions have embraced out­dat­ed ways of car­ry­ing out death sen­tences. They have revived them almost entire­ly for their sym­bol­ic val­ue rather than their need to use them in the unlike­ly event some­thing goes awry with the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. But, prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, noth­ing now stands in the way of the fed­er­al government’s plan to put peo­ple to death by a sin­gle dose of pentobarbital.
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is cru­el­ly tak­ing advan­tage of the fact that this country’s 22 remain­ing death penal­ty states, because they have had real dif­fi­cul­ties obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs, have kept old­er meth­ods on the books as a last resort.
Today, nine Southern and bor­der states pre­scribe death by elec­tro­cu­tion as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. Six states autho­rize exe­cu­tion by gas, and the fir­ing squad is the alter­na­tive in three more. Remarkably, three states — Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington — still allow for death by hang­ing if lethal injec­tion is unavail­able or impractical.

Read more here:https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​1​1​/​t​r​u​m​p​-​a​p​p​r​o​v​e​s​-​h​a​n​g​i​n​g​-​f​i​r​i​n​g​-​s​q​u​a​d​s​-​e​x​e​c​u​t​i​o​n​s​.​h​tml

Despite Losing In 2016, In By Elections & Receiving An Ass Whooping In 2020 PNP Still Clueless

Here is a brief obser­va­tion of the PNP.
Socialism, as a polit­i­cal con­struct, has been a fail­ure across the Globe, save and except for the Scandinavian region of Europe that prac­tice a kind of pseu­do-social­ism in their almost homoge­nous­ly white societies.
The social­ism that they prac­tice, guar­an­tees every­one a rather com­fort­able stan­dard of liv­ing if they pay a much high­er rate of taxation.
of note is the fact that those soci­eties were pre­vi­ous­ly inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy nations, some of which had con­quered parts of Africa and plun­dered its resources.
Note: the social­ism they prac­tice is not the ide­o­log­i­cal, beret-wear­ing fist thrust­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary style social­ism that the PNP con­tin­ues to offer to the Jamaican people.

The drub­bing the PNP suf­fered at the polls over the last two elec­tion cycles, along with the loss­es they sus­tained in the by-elec­tions, would be a wake-up call to a seri­ous polit­i­cal par­ty that under­stands polling data and trends.
Unfortunately, the par­ty fails to see that the younger gen­er­a­tion is more inter­est­ed in a mar­ket econ­o­my that allows them to shine on their own.
Young peo­ple see how oth­er mil­len­ni­als and gen­er­a­tion Xers are liv­ing in oth­er coun­tries and they want that lifestyle.….…
They do not want a polit­i­cal par­ty that is offer­ing them free­bies that they know it can­not deliv­er anyway.

Jamaicans do not want Socialism/​Communism, China, Russia, and most of the Eastern European nations that had sub­scribed to that polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy have moved their economies away from that failed con­struct since the fall of the Soviet Union.
It is shock­ing that in 2020 almost three decades since Michael Manley took Jamaica down the rab­bit hole of Democratic Socialism, that these washed up idiots are still expect­ing Jamaicans to vote for them and their failed ide­ol­o­gy that peo­ple all around the world have long eschew, except for China, Cuba, North Korea, and Belarus to a cer­tain extent.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.